Culture news This Oscar-winning film never shows the face of Jesus. This is one of the great qualities of the film and there is a legal reason behind it
The 11 Oscar-winning film which marked the history of cinema with its excess has a little design secret which managed to give the production a certain strength.
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The biblical epic Ben-Hur, directed by William Wyler in 1959, marked the history of cinema. At 212 minutes long, it features Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd in a spectacular epic, certain scenes of which are still cited in film schools, like the famous chariot race sequence. The most Oscar-winning feature film of all time (with 11 awards, tied with Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) definitely left its mark on its generation.
Centered on the character of Judah, a rich prince of Judea sent to the galleys, Ben-Hur also tells the story of Jesus. Throughout the work, the path of the protagonists is closely linked to that of Christ, to the point that the feature film begins with his birth and ends just after his crucifixion. However, as recalled Sensacin and Allocin, the portrait of Jesus in Ben-Hur is radically different from what we are used to, since we never see his face. This strong specificity of staging nevertheless does not come from William Wyler.
Hide this face that I cannot see
It is a fact that throughout Ben-Hur we do not see the face of Christ and we do not hear his voice. We could be tempted to see this choice of staging as a desire on the part of the director not to want to represent what, according to him, cannot be shown because of biblical grandeur, for example. We could also see this filmic trick as a way of letting spectators form their own image of Christ, without imposing one. The reality, as Allocine explains, is that the production was forced to show nothing because of a British law at the time, prohibiting the physical or vocal representation of Jesus in cinema, unless he was the main protagonist of the film.
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What could have been detrimental to the work quickly becomes a strength, this time thanks to the talents of the director who will use his frames and the acting of the actors to give real power to the representation of Jesus, without so that it does not appear from the front on the screen. American actor Claude Heater, who played the role of Christ in the film, was not even credited in the credits. If you want to (re)discover Ben-Hur, know that it is available on Amazon Prime Video.
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