Big Screen Rome - Amazon Web Services

erupt later in the film in Sheik Ilderim’s barely disguised resentment of
the Roman occupation and Judah’s personal desire for revenge against
Messala. Then a subtle tableau of the nativity introduces the character
of Balthasar, one of the Magi, and the motif of his search for the child as
a grown man, linking the birth and life of Jesus with the parallel life of
Judah Ben-Hur. Following the nativity sequence, a lone shepherd blows a
single solemn note on his ram’s horn trumpet, and the sound turns into
the rousing brass and drums of the Roman musical theme, signaling the
intersection of the film’s two main concepts, Jewish and Roman, conflicting
yet inextricably bound together.
This conflict between Judaea and Rome is embodied by the two male
protagonists, Judah and Messala, and their intricate, complex relationship
indicates both the attraction between the two ideas as well as their utter
incompatibility; as the film will prove, one is destined to annihilate the
other. Fresh off his heroic starring role as Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s The
Ten Commandments (1956), Heston was considered the perfect choice for
the exacting title role, as Judah appears in all but a dozen scenes in the
film. One of the most prominent leading men of Hollywood epic films,
Heston later starred in El Cid (1961) and as Michelangelo in The Agony
and the Ecstasy (1965). Tall, granite-jawed, with a voice part American
heartland and part god, Heston received his sole acting Oscar for the role
of Judah in Ben-Hur, perhaps the most impressive performance of his
career. Irish actor Stephen Boyd did much to influence the role of Messala,
whose commanding physical presence, although on screen for only about
25 minutes, permeates the film and resonates long after his death. To
intensify Messala’s dusky gaze, on Wyler’s direction Boyd’s sparkling blue
eyes were darkened by brown contact lenses (Solomon, 2001a, 205). Boyd
was later cast as Mark Antony in Cleopatra (1963), but when production
stalled due to Elizabeth Taylor’s illness, the actor withdrew and the part
was recast with Richard Burton. The following year, Boyd would take the
role of Livius in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).
In the plot of Ben-Hur, Messala and Judah once shared a close bond in
their youth, but times are changing and national politics will brutally
intervene to destroy their friendship. Judah is now a wealthy trader, a
Jewish aristocrat, who has a strong sense of ethnic identity with his family
and the people of the city. His boyhood friend, Messala, has achieved his
longtime dream of attaining the Jerusalem command post, and his burning
ambition and the pleasure he takes in the autocratic exercise of power are
on naked display from the beginning of the film. He believes in the imperial
authority and destiny of Rome, a conviction articulated in a series of
BEN-HUR (1959) 75