Ben-Hur (1959) William Wyler, dir.: (My opinions and thoughts of the movie)

My first thought after pressing play for the movie Ben-Hur was, “is it working?” I thought that the video player was not working because all I kept hearing was music and I thought that the film had frozen and it was just the audio part that was working.  After I realized that the overture was over six minutes long, I decided to skip the Overture and go straight into the movie.  Since the name of the movie is Ben-Hur Tale of Christ my expectations for the film were that it was going to be more focused on the story of Christ and that Ben-Hur was just going to be another follower of Christ. About a quarter of the way into the movie I realized that I had seen this movie before.  But it was not this version of the movie that I had seen; it was the 2010 mini TV series of Ben-Hur that I had seen before.  The only reason that I had seen it was because, during summer break last year, the television in my mothers house only has Spanish channels and one of the channels was showing that mini series as a film.  I thought that the 1959 version of Ben-Hur was done very well and the adaptation of that film to the 2010 mini series was pretty good as well.  If no one had told me that the film was from 1959 I would of probable have guessed that it was made in the later 1900’s.  This film really is a film for any time era.  A lot of the scenes were a little long for my liking but if you can get past the extremely long film then I am sure that a few long scenes wont be a bother.  One of the best scenes in this film was the chariot race, which also happens to be one of the longer scenes in this film.  The fact that it is a long scene made me enjoy the scene a lot more.  Usually when I am watching more modern films, the action scenes are so short that I am left wanting more, since the chariot scene is so long in Ben-Hur, I was able to fully enjoy the scene and was not left wanting for more spectacle.