There have been three makes of the 1880 novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, by Lew Wallace. Wallace had been a major general in the Civil War, commanding a Union division in combat. Ben Hur is
... considered "the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century". It became a best-selling American novel, surpassing Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) in sales. The book also inspired other novels with biblical settings and was adapted for the stage and motion picture productions. Ben-Hur remained at the top of the US all-time bestseller list until the publication of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936). The 1959 MGM film adaptation of Ben-Hur is considered one of the greatest films ever made and was seen by tens of millions, going on to win a record 11 Academy Awards in 1960, after which the book's sales increased and it surpassed Gone with the Wind. [Wikipedia]The first motion-picture adaptation was a silent film released in 1925, the most recent was released in 2016. All three versions feature the famous chariot race as the hinge of the narrative, about which all else revolves.
The 1959 version has justifiably gone down in cinematic history as one of the towering achievements of the silver screen. Here is an explanation of the its chariot race from Turner Classic Movies' FB page:
At the time of its release in 1959, MGMS’s lavish quasi-biblical spectacle Ben-Hur was the most expensive film ever made, with a budget of nearly $16 million. The famed chariot race alone required an 18 acre set at Rome’s Cinecitta Studios, a five week shooting schedule & 7,000 extras, won a record 11 Academy Awards.
The chariot race in Ben-Hur was directed by Andrew & Yakima.The chariot arena covering 18 acres, was the largest film set ever built at that time. Constructed at a cost of $1 million, it took a thousand workmen more than a year to carve the oval out of a rock quarry. The racetrack featured 1,500-foot long straights & five-story-high grandstands. Over 400 km of metal tubing were used to erect the grandstands.A chariot track identical in size was constructed next to the set & used to train the horses & lay out camera shots. Planning for the chariot race took nearly a year to complete. Seventy-eight horses were bought & imported from Yugoslavia and Sicily in November 1957, exercised into peak physical condition, and trained by Hollywood animal handler Randall to pull the quadriga.Here is a clip from the 1959 chariot race.
The firm of Danesi Brothers built 18 chariots, nine of which were used for practice, each weighing 410 kg. Principal cast members, stand-ins, and stunt people made 100 practice laps of the arena in preparation for shooting. Heston & Boyd both had to learn how to drive a chariot. Heston, an experienced horseman, took daily three-hour lessons in chariot driving after he arrived in Rome. The chariot scene took over three months to film at a total cost of $1 million & required more than 320 km of racing to complete.
The cameras used during the chariot race also presented problems. The 70mm lenses had a minimum focusing distance of 50 feet, and the camera was mounted on a small Italian-made car so the camera crew could keep in front of the chariots. The horses, however, accelerated down the 1,500-foot straight much faster than the car could, and the long focal length left cinematographers with too little time to get their shots. The production company purchased a more powerful American car, but the horses were still too fast, and even with a head start, the filmmakers only had a few more seconds of shot time. As filming progressed, vast amounts of footage were shot for this sequence. The ratio of footage shot to footage used was 263:1, one of the highest ratios ever for a film for this 11 minute spectacle and rest is history.
And here is a similar sequence from the 2016 release. Not nearly as much construction was needed for it because of CGI.
And the 1925 race, when anything remotely resembling special effects, as we know it, was unheard of then.
Finally, just for kicks and grins, what if retired NASCAR driver Darrel Waltrip had narrated the 1959 race?
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