Ben Hur (1959)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Ben Hur |
| Original title | Ben Hur |
 | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1959 |
| length | 222 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | William Wyler |
| script |
Karl Tunberg Gore Vidal Christopher Fry Maxwell Anderson S. N. Behrman |
| production | Sam Zimbalist / MGM |
| music | Miklós Rózsa |
| camera | Robert Surtees |
| cut |
John D. Dunning, Ralph E. Winters |
| occupation | |
| |
Ben Hur is an American film directed by William Wyler from the year 1959 . It is based on the novel of the same name by Lew Wallace . Charlton Heston plays the title role of the Israelite Prince Judah Ben-Hur, whose conflict with his former friend Messala ( Stephen Boyd ) has tragic consequences. The monumental film set numerous production records and was awarded eleven Oscars , among others . This brand, which Ben Hur still shares with the films Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King , is unsurpassed to this day.
Ben Hur was also the first film to work intensively with blue screen technology . With a budget of $ 15 million (around $ 131 million in 2020), Ben Hur is - adjusted for inflation - one of the most lavish productions in film history. The film premiered in New York on November 18, 1959 .
action
The film depicts the life of the fictional Jewish prince and merchant Judah Ben-Hur, who lived in Jerusalem at the beginning of the 1st century AD as a contemporary of Jesus Christ . The prologue of the film shows the birth of Jesus.
In the year 26 AD: Judah Ben-Hur's childhood friend, the Tribune Messala, who once saved his life, becomes commander in Jerusalem and is willing to nip every act of rebellion in the bud. Judah, his mother Miriam and his sister Tirzah as well as Messala are initially very happy to meet again. However, the years of separation have severely shaken the friendship. It quickly becomes clear that the life of the two men has taken an opposite turn. While Judah was committed to his family and homeland, Messala developed an unconditional sense of mission in the military . He believes in having to assert the interests of the Roman Empire regardless of losses . He accepts the most serious breaches of law and thinks he can win Judah over for it. After a great gesture of friendship from Judah, who gave his old friend a valuable Arabian horse , Messala asks him to name all influential people who would have criticized Rome's supremacy in Judea . Judah refuses to accept such a request. Messala, however, does not give in and gives him the choice: "Either you are for me or against me." Judah replies without hesitation: "If that is the choice, then I am against you!" Severely disappointed and leaves in an argument Messala immediately took over the friend's property and also offended Miriam and Tirzah, who were preparing the banquet.
When Judah's steward Simonides from Antioch appears for the annual report, his daughter Esther is also there, since an arranged marriage with a merchant is planned for her. Judah inherited Simonides as a slave from his father and thus also his daughter. However, Judah makes it clear that he thinks nothing of slavery and serfdom and regards Simonides as a friend of the house. She has to ask her master's permission to marry, and Judah gives her freedom as a wedding gift. However, both have known each other since childhood and have feelings for one another.
Judah is still single because he has not yet found a woman he loves. On the night before the terrible events that follow, both confess their love for each other. Judah takes Esther's "slave ring" and puts it on his little finger. At the same time he vows to wear this ring until he finds the woman he wants to marry.
When the new governor Valerius Gratus begins his service in Jerusalem, Judah and Tirzah watch the parade in his honor from the roof terrace of their house. Just as Gratus is riding past below them, Tirzah leans over the parapet, causing some loose roof tiles to fall down and hit right next to Gratus. Gratus's horse shies and throws off its rider. Roman soldiers then break into the house of the Judah Ben-Hur family. Against his better judgment, Messala accuses his childhood friend Judah of an assassination attempt and has him and his family sent to prison. Only then does Messala check the facts about this alleged attack on the roof terrace and convince himself that other bricks are actually loose in the area of the accident site. So it must be clear to him that he is wrong if he upholds his charges .
While in prison, Judah vows to take revenge on Messala. When the administrator Simonides heard of the arrest, he tried to intercede for Judah, but he too was arrested during his conversation with Messala. He is tortured and later released as a disabled person. Judah is found guilty without trial , convicted, and sent from Messala to Tire on the galleys .
On the march to the galleys on Tire, accompanied by Roman soldiers, Judah and other prisoners have to cross a desert . During a rest in Nazareth , everyone is allowed to drink; only Judah is denied the water. An unknown carpenter - Jesus - gives him water to drink. The officer in charge of the slave train wants to stop this at first, but stops when he comes face to face with the stranger.
After three apparently terrible years on the galleys, Judah, who is chained to his rowing bench, meets the naval commander, the new consul Quintus Arrius. Not long ago he lost his son, the ancestor of his lineage . He covers up his grief with an emphatically tough demeanor and a pessimistic fatalism . Arrius is therefore impressed by the unshakable life energy and rebellion that he recognizes in Ben Hur. The commander calls Judah, who as a galley convict is addressed only with "41", the number of his rowing place, to his cabin and offers him to start a new life as a gladiator in the arena. Judah, who realizes the mental anguish of Arrius, refuses and is sent back below deck to his helm. When the anticipated sea battle with Macedonian pirates is imminent, Arrius lets Judah loose in an act of mercy. In the battle the galley is sunk. In this situation, Judah tries to free as many fellow prisoners as possible and also saves the commander who has fallen into the water from drowning. Judah pulls Arrius onto a piece of wreckage and chains Arrius to it when he tries to kill himself. Even when Judah realizes that it will be a Roman ship that will save her - and hence his slave service is likely to continue - he surrenders to that fate. After the two castaways have been taken on board by the Trireme , Arrius learns that the battle for Rome has been victorious. He gratefully lets his savior Judah take the first sip from the cup of water he has been given.
Arrius is honored with a triumphal procession . He receives the general staff from the hand of Emperor Tiberius . At the endorsement of the triumphant, the emperor obtained information about Judah. Tiberius had already indirectly cast doubts about the guilt of the convict. Therefore he gives the slaves Judah to the fleet commander. Arrius is now supposed to decide the fate of his ward himself. Judah becomes a successful and well-known charioteer in the Circus Maximus with Arrius . The new sport idol is settling in with the Roman elite - worried that she will never see her mother and sister again. Months later, Arrius adopts Judah, for whom he has developed fatherly feelings. On the occasion of a glamorous festival, he announces that Judah is now the bearer of his name and heir to his fortune. In front of the guests present, Arrius hands over his "signet ring" to Judah, who receives it, visibly moved. In a short speech, Judah vows to wear the ring with honor and with great gratitude. At this festival, Arrius and Judah learn that an acquaintance of the fleet commander, Pontius Pilatus , who owns a racing stable himself, has been appointed governor in Judea. Pilate, who actually wanted to go to Alexandria , has no good in his new office. However, through his acquaintance with Pilate, Arrius sees an opportunity to correct the injustice that befell Judah. But his adopted son is worried that he will be late if he stayed in Rome longer. Arrius therefore wistfully lets him set off for Jerusalem.
On his way home, Judah meets Balthasar from Alexandria , an old man who is looking for the Savior from Nazareth and wants to be there when he begins his work. He tells of how he once followed a star to Bethlehem and saw a newborn child there, in which he believed God lived. Balthasar's host is the Arab Sheikh Ilderim, a true “horse lover” who trains his horses for chariot races. Ilderim, who also calls his horses (Lipizzaners) his "children", gave them the names of stars. The sheikh is impressed with Judah's ability to handle horses and tries to convince him to take part as a charioteer in a race in the Circus of Jerusalem. He is supposed to defeat the local favorite, the Tribune Messala (Master of the East). Sheikh Ilderim immediately notices that Judah probably still has a bill with him. However, Judah initially refuses. Determined to kill Messala, he moves on.
From Esther, who joyfully welcomes him to Jerusalem, he learns that the Hur family's fortune has been confiscated and that Esther is hiding with her father. Judah appears in a Roman toga at a surprised messala and asks to find out what has become of mother Miriam and sister Tirzah. In order to emphasize his demand, Judah presses the image of the signet ring, which he had received from Quintus Arrius, into a wax tablet and throws it on the table in front of Messala with the request not to disappoint him. On behalf of Messala, they are looking for the two in prison. When they are found in their underground dungeon , it turns out that both have leprosy , which is why they are immediately removed from the dungeon. They want to go to the valley of the lepers, but before that they go to Esther and ask her not to tell Judah anything about her existence or her illness, he should keep them in memory as they used to be. In tears, Esther promises not to tell Judah anything about their encounter.
When Judah returns disturbed from visiting Messala, Esther claims to have seen his mother and sister dead in dungeon. Judah does not want to believe that and then gets even more angry at Messala. Now Judah remembers the conversation with Sheikh Ilderim, who told him that there were no rules in the arena and that many men would also die in the chariot races.
Judah enters the race with Ilderim's horses, which he sees as an opportunity to take revenge on Messala. Messala drives a “Greek” car with razor-sharp milling cutters mounted on the outside of the wheel hubs. In this way he provokes accidents and brings several teams to fall by driving close to the competing car and destroying its spokes with the milling machine. Judah barely escapes such attacks. When, in the penultimate lap, the wheels of both cars wedged into each other during a new attack, Messala fell himself, fell under the hooves of the following teams and was seriously injured. Judah wins the race. Lying dying, Messala gives Judah the hint that his mother and sister are not dead - he should look for them in the valley of the lepers. When Judah is looking for them there, he meets Esther, who is bringing them food. With difficulty she can prevent Judah from revealing herself to Miriam and Tirzah.
Judah continues to be animated with vengeance; Esther, on the other hand, follows the words of peace preached by a Nazarene named Jesus and implores Judah to let his hatred rest. When she is back in the valley of the lepers and Judah appears surprisingly, they decide to take Miriam and Tirzah to the young Nazarene. In town, however, they are dismayed to learn that he will be tried. On the now following Way of the Cross, Judah recognizes Jesus as the man who once gave him water to drink in Nazareth. When Jesus falls to the ground under his cross, Judah wants to give him water to drink, but is pushed away by a Roman soldier.
Judah witnesses Jesus' crucifixion. Balthasar interprets the event not as the end, but as the beginning. While Jesus is dying a great storm is approaching; Miriam and Tirzah are cured of their leprosy. At home, the visibly moved Judah Esther reports on the Nazarene's last request on the cross: forgiveness for his tormentors who do not know what they are doing. In addition, he literally affirms that he felt the words of Jesus "taking the sword out of his hand" and that from now on he would forego vengeance. In the "final shot" Judah meets his mother and sister, both cured from the terrible and incurable disease of leprosy. With tears in her eyes, Judah embraces his regained family and begins a new future with them.
Historical accuracy
If one compares the representation of Judea and the Roman Empire in Ben Hur with scientific knowledge about this time, one can determine many historical errors, although the lending company emphasized when it appeared, a realistic picture of the time of Jesus Christ (approx. 7 BC to 30 AD). Chr.) To draw. As Marcus Junkelmann describes in his work Hollywood's Dream of Rome (see under literature ), the novel as well as the production of the film in terms of overall design and implementation mostly lagged far behind the archaeological and historical facts already known at the time. In chariot races in particular, there are deficiencies in the depiction of an ancient circus and in the clothes of the charioteers, which were avoided in the first monumental film adaptation of this material, in Fred Niblos Ben Hur from 1925. Sergio Leone was Wyler's first assistant while filming. He reports that after completing the costumes and sets, the director invited a scientific advisor to check everything from an authentic point of view. At the end of the tour, Wyler asked her: "What should I do to make it even more real?" The expert shook her head and said: "You'd have to burn everything!"
In addition to these historical inaccuracies that can be found in Wyler's cinematic implementation, it is also the literary freedoms of the novel itself that reveal the lack of historical authenticity . The galley sequence is an example. In ancient times , the galley penalty was unknown, Roman warships were rowed by well-trained and paid marines. Rowing a large galley smoothly takes a great deal of skill and training, and with the professionalism of the Roman army, nothing was left to chance. Inexperienced rowing crews made up of slaves, whose strength and stamina would have been limited by physical punishment and insufficient food, and who might have mutinied about the hopelessness of their situation , would not have made sense.
A historical impossibility, which also goes back to the novel by Wallace, is the participation of two members of the Roman upper class in a public race. As a member of the Jewish-Hellenistic upper class, it would have been possible for Ben Hur to race, but not as the adopted son of a Roman consul, especially since - according to Roman - he is said to have already driven in the Circus Maximus under his eyes. In the race against Messala, a pure fantasy product is used, a "Greek" car, the rotating saw blades of which are supposed to destroy the spokes of the opposing car. The width of the wagon is significantly smaller than the four horses that pull it; the wheels cannot touch each other.
Trivia
- When the 1959 film version came out, MGM Fred Niblos thought the 1925 Ben Hur film was still competitive. Therefore an attempt was made to locate and destroy all available copies of the old strip.
- The monumental film project was initiated in 1953 and was supposed to renovate the MGM film studio , which was on the verge of ruin, and it succeeded. Wyler relied on massive personnel and material costs for the film, which ultimately cost 16.2 million dollars: There were 365 speaking roles, 50,000 extras, over a million props and 40,000 tons of Mediterranean sand were required. The preparation time alone was five years, the shooting time two years. The film was shot using the MGM Camera 65 process.
- Producer Sam Zimbalist died of a heart attack before filming was finished.
- The later cult director Sergio Leone was in charge of the second camera team under the pseudonym Bob Robertson.
- After many horses had perished in the silent film of 1925 while filming the racing scene, the remake was made to ensure that no accidents could occur that would have brought animal welfare and the public onto the scene.
- Director Wyler had more than 40 script versions prepared and in the end drove to the Cinecitta studios near Rome to start shooting without the script removed.
- In the separation sequence of Messala and Ben Hur, the script contains an obvious allusion to the communist hunt of the McCarthy era and the pressure to denounce at that time. Messala asks Ben Hur to hand over the names of those who oppose Rome, which would be equated here with Washington: “Yes, Judah - what's your name? ... the emperor is watching us (at this moment he looks to the east) ... the emperor is watching us, he sees what we are doing, I only need to serve him (looking west) ... Judah, be sensible, Judah, look to Rome. "
- In 1959, the professional association of American screenwriters ensured that its former chairman Karl Tunberg was named in the opening and closing credits of the film as the only screenwriter, although the final version did not come mainly from Tunberg, but from four other authors: Christopher Fry , Gore Vidal , Maxwell Anderson and SN Behrman . Tunberg was subsequently nominated as the only member of the team for the Oscar for the best adapted screenplay. Wyler was so angry that he intervened in Hollywood with the jurors against the awarding of the Oscars to Tunberg. The film finally got eleven Oscars with twelve nominations, only in the category Best Adapted Screenplay it stayed with the nomination.
- Charlton Heston was not the first choice for the title role. Before him, Rock Hudson , Burt Lancaster , Paul Newman , Marlon Brando, and Cesare Danova had been considered. Heston, on the other hand, was originally intended for the role of Messala.
- Even Leslie Nielsen was for the role of Messala in conversation. Corresponding test recordings were published on the DVD, as were scenes in which Cesare Danova gave the Ben Hur. Nielsen did not get the role because he failed to show the necessary dark facial expressions.
- The then completely unknown Giuliano Gemma was seen in an extra role as a bathing Roman.
- William Wyler once remarked how ironic it was that the most important Christian novel should be made into a film by him as a Jew.
- The four white horses in front of Ben Hurs' car were real Lipizzaners , imported from Lipica in what was then Yugoslavia .
- Six out of nine teams started suffered a total loss in the chariot race, and yet four reached the finish.
- Co-author Gore Vidal later claimed in the documentary The Celluloid Closet (1995) that he had convinced director William Wyler to incorporate a homosexual component between Messala and Ben Hur: Messala's hatred of Ben Hur was to be understood as the reaction of a spurned lover. Messala actor Stephen Boyd had been inaugurated, but Ben Hur actor Charlton Heston, who was already considered conservative at the time, was left in the dark. Nonetheless, the film's director, William Wyler, disagrees with this claim; he did not remember discussing Boyd's role with Gore Vidal, and he had rejected Vidal's script and used Fry's version instead.
- Burt Lancaster turned down the role of Judah Ben-Hur because, as an atheist, he didn't like "the intrusive moral of the story" and didn't want to "promote" Christianity.
- The Swiss actress Liselotte Pulver was originally intended to play the role of Esther . However, since she was bound by contract, she could not accept the offer. So the role finally went to the hitherto unknown theater actress Haya Harareet , who was the only member of the cast actually from Israel, the original location of the story.
Voice actor
The voice actors of the German version:
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Awards
- Oscars
Ben Hur won an Oscar in eleven categories in 1960 (with twelve nominations) and shares the record for the most Oscar wins with the films Titanic and The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King . The latter two, however, each received an Oscar, which had not yet been awarded in 1960: at that time neither the best sound editing nor the best make-up were awarded.
The film won in the following categories:
- Best Film : Sam Zimbalist (posthumous)
- Best Director : William Wyler
- Best Actor : Charlton Heston
- Best Supporting Actor : Hugh Griffith
- Best editing : John D. Dunning and Ralph E. Winters
- Best Cinematography : Robert L. Surtees
- Best Production Design : Edward C. Carfagno, William A. Horning (posthumous) and Hugh Hunt
- Best costume design : Elizabeth Haffenden
- Best score : Miklós Rózsa
- Best Sound : Franklin Milton, MGM Studio Sound Department
- Best visual effects : A. Arnold Gillespie, Robert MacDonald, and Milo Lory
He was nominated in the Best Adapted Screenplay category (Karl Tunberg).
- Golden Globe Award
Ben-Hur received five Golden Globe nominations in 1960 . He won in the categories of Best Film (Drama), Best Supporting Actor (Stephen Boyd), Best Director and Second Unit Director Andrew Marton received a special award for his staging of the chariot race. Charlton Heston was nominated for Best Leading Role, but did not receive the award.
The film also won:
- British Film Academy Award for best film
- David di Donatello for the best production
- The film won the Special Award at the Laurel Award. In addition, Heston was awarded 2nd place in the category of Best Actor in a Drama. Third place in this category went to Stephen Boyd. Third place in the Best Supporting Actor category went to Hugh Griffith.
- Andrew Marton and Yakima Canutt won an award on the coveted National Board of Review for the exceptionally good chariot racing scene. Hugh Griffith also received the Best Supporting Actor Award.
- It also won the Best Picture category at the NYFCC Awards.
- Many more prizes and nominations
- Later awards
- In 1995, Ben Hur was included in the Vatican 's film list, which comprises a total of 45 films that are particularly recommended from the perspective of the Holy See.
- In 2004 the film was included in the National Film Registry .
- In the list of the best films of all time compiled by the American Film Institute , it reached number 73 in 1998 and number 100 in 2007.
- In the list of the most inspiring films of all time, the film ranks 56th.
- The film music by Miklós Rózsa was voted number 21 in the list of the 25 greatest film scores from 100 years.
- In the American Film Institute's latest list from 2008, the film was voted number 2 in the category of the best 10 screen epics of all time.
Reviews
| source | rating |
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| Rotten tomatoes | |
| critic |
 
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| IMDb |
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“In the atmosphere of a technically unleashed spectacle, which leaves everything that has been filmed in superlatives [...], the secrets of faith and the attachment to the heart cannot be carried into it, even if formal effort and admirable skill are at work [...] This is what becomes In the best-selling novel by the American author Lew Wallace, still modest as a religious emotional movement, increased to an oversized effect in the bestselling film project: Religious mood (Bethlehem), shock realism (Stations of the Cross and Golgotha) and miraculous magic (leprosy healing) externalize the religious motifs of the plot and play them into a decorative religious void [...] Charlton Heston equips this freedom drama of an oppressed minority against greed for power, racial and religious prejudice with tension and sympathy. The fact that as a victor he becomes the conquered of someone more powerful, who converts his heart to forgiveness, of course only takes place in the outer field of his struggle; the film does not capture the reflection of the truth. "
"The worst thing is, of course, that what is really religious, be it Christian or Jewish, gets stuck in pastoral phrases."
“[...] three and a half hour remake, which exceeded everything that had been filmed up to then in terms of colossal effort. […] An admired highlight (as in the silent film): the quadrigar race in the circus. [...] "
"A blood-soaked epic from the Holy Land with sea battles, crowd scenes and the most famous chariot race in film history."
More film versions
The fabric had found its way onto celluloid twice before, once in 1907 under the direction of Sidney Olcott , the other time in 1925 under the direction of Fred Niblo . William Wyler worked as an assistant director in the 1925 film. In 2003, a cartoon version of the material was created. In 2010, a 240-minute mini-series was shot with Joseph Morgan in the lead role. Another film adaptation was released in 2016 .
literature
- Lewis Wallace : Ben-Hur. A story from the time of Christ (original title: Ben-Hur ). Complete edition. Translation based on several contemporary translations. dtv, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-20503-2 .
- Marcus Junkelmann : Hollywood's dream of Rome: “Gladiator” and the tradition of monumental films . Zabern, Mainz 2004, ISBN 3-8053-2905-9 .
- Hans-Jürgen Kubiak: The Oscar Films. The best films from 1927/28 to 2004. The best non-English language films from 1947 to 2004. The best animated films from 2001 to 2004 . Schüren, Marburg 2005, ISBN 3-89472-386-6 .
- Roger Hickman: Miklós Rózsa's Ben-Hur: A Film Score Guide . Scarecrow Press, Lanham / Toronto / Plymouth 2011, ISBN 978-0-8108-8100-6 .
- Ralph Erkelenz: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Score . The Miklós Rózsa Society, 2010.
- Krešimir Matijević : Not just a chariot race! On the reception of Roman history in the "Ben-Hur" film adaptations and the novel by Lew Wallace. In: Rainer Wiegels (ed.): Winding paths. Modern ways to antiquity. (= Osnabrück research on antiquity and the reception of antiquity. Volume 16). Marie Leidorf, Rahden 2011, ISBN 978-3-89646-737-9 , pp. 217-238.
- Hans J. Wulff, Patrick Niemeier: Ben Hur. In: Fabienne Liptay, Matthias Bauer (Ed.): Film genres: historical and costume films. (= Reclams Universal Library. No. 19064). Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-019064-7 , pp. 158-164.
Web links
- Ben Hur in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- “Superlative on sandals” report on einestages.de
- Further sound carriers with the film music at Soundtrack Collector
- Ben Hur (1959) German-language film review on moviemaster.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Runtime information on the English Blu-ray edition
- ↑ Marcus Junkelmann: Hollywood's Dream of Rome. 2004, p. 259 ff.
- ^ Bourget Jean-Loup: L'histoire au Cinéma. Le passé retrouvé. Gallimard, 1992, p. 153.
- ↑ Marcus Junkelmann: Hollywood's Dream of Rome. 2004, p. 40.
- ↑ Marcus Junkelmann: Hollywood's Dream of Rome. 2004, p. 262.
- ↑ Marcus Junkelmann: Hollywood's Dream of Rome. 2004, p. 266.
- ↑ Kevin Brownlow: The Parade's Gone By. London 1968, p. 411.
- ^ Lexicon of international film (CD-ROM edition), Systhema, Munich 1997.
- ↑ Marcus Junkelmann: Hollywood's Dream of Rome. 2004, p. 267.
- ↑ Marcus Junkelmann: Hollywood's Dream of Rome. 2004, p. 323.
- ↑ Yakima Canutt : The autobiography of Yakima Canutt. London 1980, p. 13.
- ↑ Marcus Junkelmann: Hollywood's Dream of Rome. 2004, p. 146.
- ^ Daniel Eagan: America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry , p. 559, quotation: “… did not remember any conversation about this part of the script or Boyd's acting with Gore Vidal, and that he discarded Vidal's draft in favor of Fry's ”.
- ↑ imdb.com: Ben Hur: Trivia
- ↑ Liselotte powder in ... if you still laugh . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-548-22918-2 , p. 122.
- ↑ Ben Hur. In: synchronkartei.de. German synchronous index , accessed on August 10, 2015 .
- ↑ a b rottentomatoes.com at Rotten Tomatoes , accessed on January 10, 2014.
- ↑ Ben Hur in the Internet Movie Database , accessed October 31, 2015.
- ↑ Quoted from Ronald M. Hahn , Volker Jansen , Norbert Stresau : Lexikon des Fantasy-Films. 650 films from 1900 to 1986 . Heyne, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-453-02273-4 , pp. 51-52.
- ↑ quoted from Ronald M. Hahn , Volker Jansen , Norbert Stresau : Lexikon des Fantasy-Films. 650 films from 1900 to 1986 . Heyne, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-453-02273-4 , p. 51.
- ^ Lexicon of International Films (CD-ROM edition), Systhema, Munich 1997. See also Ben Hur. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 7, 2017 .
- ^ Lexicon "Films on TV" (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 80 (Rating: 2½ stars = above average)