William Wyler's Film "Ben-Hur"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the conservative classical ensemble music in the film "Ben-Hur" emphasizes the emotion in the film and highlights the scale and grandiosity of both the motion picture and the Biblical story. The author points out that the movie's camerawork shows the big-budget epic tradition of pioneering new camera technology as an important facet of this movie, in this film, a process known as "MGM Camera 65", a 70mm anamorphic print at an aspect ratio of 2.76:1, considered to be one of the widest prints ever made, having a width of almost three times its height. The paper relates the skill of director Wyler to balance the many different elements of the film--the themes of religiosity, the historical accuracy right and the dramatic tension of the plot--without being over-analyzed or pompous.



Table of Contents
Music
Cinematography
Camera Work/Editing
Actors
Directors
Script

From the Paper:

"The advanced nature of the cinematography of Ben-Hur is another aspect of the film that shows it to be a big-budget epic film, but unlike some of the other mentioned areas of moviemaking that have changed more over time and become less strictly representative of convention since the fifties, advanced and expensive cinematography is still an area of moviemaking that is closely associated with the big-budget epic film, even in movies that are not necessarily straight action pictures. The cinematography in "Ben-Hur" is no exception to this general rule, as many other areas of movie making represented by this film are also stridently conventional. Bigger, better, and faster seems to be the
rule of thumb for this sort of film when approached from the area of cinematography, whatever the time-period. Although the cinematographers of Ben-Hur did not have the advanced effects available today through CGI and computer aided design, this in a way
makes their efforts even more impressive when seen through the perspective of hindsight."

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