Big Screen Rome - Amazon Web Services

Rome in 1957 enlisted almost fifty thousand extras, and fifteen thousand
alone were assigned to the chariot race sequence. The Ben-Hur shoot
became a regular tour-bus stop in Rome, with well over three hundred
different sets constructed at the Cinecittà Studios, covering 148 acres and
housing nine sound stages, some of which were refurbished sets from the
earlier film, Quo Vadis. Dominating eighteen acres of the studio back lot
was the arena for the chariot race scene, modeled after the ancient circus
in Jerusalem and built at a cost of $1 million. It took hundreds of workmen
more than a year to carve the oval out of a rock quarry, and with
1,500-foot straight-aways on either side of the spina, or central island, this
was by far the largest single movie set ever built. The stands of the arena
reached five stories high, sturdy enough to hold thousands of extras, with
the top half filled in by ingenious matte painting shots. Forty thousand
tons of sand were carted in from Mediterranean beaches and laid down
along the track’s racing surface.
The chariot race sequence required a year of advance planning, since
seventy-eight thoroughbred horses from Yugoslavia and Sicily had to be
collected, conditioned, and trained by Hollywood animal wranglers to
pull chariots. Heston wanted to be a convincing charioteer, so the actor
took three-hour lessons in driving the quadriga, the Roman four-horse
chariot (Solomon, 2001a, 207–8). Second unit directors Andrew Marton
and Yakima Canutt were brought in solely to direct the breathless race
scene, and the director’s son, Joe Canutt, did Heston’s most dangerous
stunts, including the white team’s famous leap over chariot wreckage that
left the stuntman with a gash on his chin. A total of three months went
into the actual filming of the chariot race, and it is still considered one
of the most exhilarating sequences ever recorded on film. Although contradictory
anecdotal reports exist about the fatality of a stuntman during
the filming of this dangerous scene, no published accounts of the film
mention any serious injuries or accidents.
Other elaborate sets include the sumptuous Roman villa of Quintus
Arrius, which boasted forty-five separate water fountains, and many of the
extras at the party were real Roman aristocrats who wanted to be in on the
excitement. The sets representing the streets of Jerusalem covered ten city
blocks, with the Gate of Joppa reaching 75 feet into the sky. Additional
scenes were filmed in the mountains and on the beaches near Rome. For
the galley shots and the sea-battle sequence, a large water tank in the Hollywood
studio was filled with bluing chemicals and outfitted with realisticlooking
model boats based on ancient Roman naval designs. In filming
Ben-Hur, Wyler utilized the most recent advancements in wide-screen
BEN-HUR (1959) 73