New digital restoration of BEN-HUR will have special screening at the New York Film Festival
BEN-HUR (William Wyler, 1959)
Alice Tully Hall
1941 Broadway at 65th St.
Saturday, October 1, $24, 10:30 am
Festival runs September 30 – October 16
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
One of the grandest epics ever made, William Wyler’s Ben-Hur is screening October 1 at Alice Tully Hall as part of the New York Film Festival’s Masterworks sidebar, which also includes Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, Sara Driver’s You Are Not I, and the thirty-seven-film “Velvet Bullets and Steel Kisses: Celebrating the Nikkatsu Centennial.” The digital restoration of Wyler’s remake of Fred Niblo’s 1925 silent version starring Ramón Novarro and Francis X. Bushman (there was also a fifteen-minute Ben Hur made in 1907, all adapted from Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel) celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the eleven-time Oscar winner, which garnered Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Charlton Heston as Judah Ben-Hur), Best Supporting Actor (Hugh Griffith as Sheik Ilderim), Best Score (Miklós Rózsa), Best Cinematography, Best Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, and Best Special Effects, among other trophies. The $15 million blockbuster tells the story of two childhood friends, Judah Ben-Hur and Messala (Stephen Boyd), who get caught up in religion, politics, and slavery in first-century Rome and eventually have a magnificent showdown on the chariot course. As cinema spectacles go, they don’t get much better than this. The special screening at the New York Film Festival will be introduced by Wyler’s daughter Catherine and Heston’s son Fraser.