DIRECTOR: William Wyler
It’s the big one. William Wyler’s Ben‑Hur is the granddaddy of Hollywood religious epics, starring Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd as childhood friends whose bond curdles into hatred—and then explodes in spectacular fashion to Miklós Rózsa’s pounding score. Some purists still argue that the chariot race in the 1925 Fred Niblo/Ramon Novarro silent version is superior, but Wyler’s remains the definitive cinematic thunderbolt.
And if you believe Gore Vidal, the emotional engine of the film is simple: a lover’s quarrel. Vidal claimed he wrote the reunion scene between Judah Ben‑Hur (Heston) and Messala (Boyd) as if they had once been lovers, with Messala still carrying a torch. Wyler and Boyd were in on the ruse; Heston, famously, was not. Boyd plays the scenes with unmistakable longing, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. There is far more here than a bromance—if Wyler hadn’t yelled “Cut,” you half‑expect the two men might have embraced in a very different way.
I persuaded the producer, Sam Zimbalist (this was an MGM film and the writer worked not with the director but the producer; later the director, in this case William Wyler, weighed in) that the only way one could justify several hours of hatred between two lads–and all those horses–was to establish, without saying so in words, an affair between them as boys; then, when reunited at picture’s start, the Roman, played by Stephen Boyd, wants to pick up where they left off and the Jew, Heston, spurns him.
COUNTERPUNCH: GORE VIDAL RESPONDS TO CHARLTON HESTON. LOS ANGELES TIMES, JUNE 17. 1996.
