William Wyler's Ben-Hur is built around a decision easy to overlook on a first viewing: the film never shows the face of the man its subtitle names. Jesus appears twice in Judah Ben-Hur's story, offering him water as a condemned prisoner marching through Nazareth and, at the film's close, carrying his cross to Calvary, and both times the camera holds him from behind, at a distance, or in shadow. The role was performed by Claude Heater, an American opera singer, and the choice was neither an accident of budget nor a directorial timidity: it continued a reverence-driven convention biblical epics of the period generally observed, treating Christ's face as a thing the camera should not presume to render.
Around that restraint sits a production of almost the opposite instinct, spectacle without restraint at all. The nine-minute chariot race, still cited as one of the most technically accomplished action sequences ever filmed, took five weeks to shoot on an eighteen-acre arena set built for a million dollars, with a ratio of more than 260 feet of film exposed for every foot that made the final cut. At $15.175 million, Ben-Hur was the most expensive film yet made when it premiered on November 18, 1959.
The gamble paid off decisively. Ben-Hur won eleven of its twelve Academy Award nominations, missing only Best Adapted Screenplay, a record that stood alone for thirty-eight years until Titanic matched it in 1998 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King matched it again in 2003. No film has yet won twelve.