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of water after their rescue at sea. Other images of water highlight Judah’s
spiritual journey, such as the array of spurting water fountains that decorate
Arrius’ villa in Rome, the place of Judah’s rebirth, the stream where
Judah drinks at the Sermon on the Mount, and the water he tries to offer
to Jesus as he carries the cross to Golgotha. At the end of the film, the
curative rain from the crucifixion storm mixes with Jesus’ blood to wash
away the pain of Judah’s hatred and heal his family’s sickness, and as they
are reunited in their home, the film shows the courtyard drenched in
water. In the words of one scholar: “It is supremely ironic that a director
who later claimed that Ben-Hur ‘was never intended to be anything more
or less than an adventure story with no artistic pretentiousness at all’
should have given the cinema the richest, and perhaps noblest, historical
epic of all” (Elley, 135).
Themes and Interpretations
Ben-Hur was an enormously successful film, and still ranks as one of the
most commercially and critically acclaimed productions in Hollywood
history. The film grossed over $80 million worldwide, and boasted one of
the first epic marketing campaigns, with immensely profitable product
tie-ins such as toy armor, model chariots, and “Ben-His and Ben-Hers”
matching towels (Solomon, 2001a, 213). The film received an unprecedented
twelve Academy Award nominations, winning eleven statuettes:
Best Picture, Director, Lead Actor (for Heston), Supporting Actor (for
Griffith), Musical Score, Film Editing, Cinematography, Art Direction/Set
Decoration, Sound, Costume Design, and Special Effects. A total victory
sweep was prevented only by a loss in the Screenplay category, probably
because of the controversy over crediting all the writers. Ben-Hur’s phenomenal
and long-standing record of eleven Oscar wins has only recently
been matched by James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) and Peter Jackson’s The
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). It is no surprise Ben-Hur
ranks among the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest films of
all time.
The political content of Ben-Hur has been much discussed. Many critics
put Ben-Hur in the tradition of other Hollywood historical epics of the
1950s that portray the Roman Empire as a cinematic analogue for modern
militaristic or totalitarian regimes. In the tense political atmosphere of the
period following World War II, American biblical epics such as Quo Vadis,
The Robe, and Ben-Hur all employed the rhetoric and ideology of the Cold
BEN-HUR (1959) 83