Filming
Marton and Canutt filmed the entire chariot sequence with stunt doubles in long shot, edited the footage together, and showed the footage to Zimbalist, Wyler, and Heston to show them what the race should look like and to indicate where close-up shots with Heston and Boyd should go. Seven thousand extras were hired to cheer in the stands. Economic conditions in Italy were poor at the time, and as shooting for the chariot scene wound down only 1,500 extras were needed on any given day. On June 6, more than 3,000 people seeking work were turned away. The crowd rioted, throwing stones and assaulting the set's gates until police arrived and dispersed them. Dynamite charges were used to show the chariot wheels and axles splintering from the effects of Messala's barbed-wheel attacks. Three lifelike dummies were placed at key points in the race to give the appearance of men being run over by chariots.
The cameras used during the chariot race also presented problems. The 70mm lenses had a minimum focal length of 50 feet (15 m), and the camera was mounted on a small Italian-made car so the camera crew could keep in front of the chariots. But the horses accelerated down the 1,500-foot (460 m) straightaway much faster than the car could, and the long focal length left Martin and Canutt with too little time to get their shots. The production company purchased a more powerful American car, but the horses still proved too fast. Even with a head start, the larger American car could give the filmmakers only a few more seconds of shot time. Since the horses had to be running at top speed for the best visual impact, Marton chose to film the chariot race with a smaller lens with a much shorter minimum focal length. He also decided that the car should stay only a few feet ahead of the horses. This was highly dangerous, for if the car did not make its turns or slowed down, a deadly crash with the horses could occur. The changes, however, solved the problems the camera crew was encountering. As filming progressed, vast amounts of footage were shot for this sequence. The ratio of footage shot to footage used was 263:1, one of the highest ratios ever for a film.
John Dunning and Ralph E. Winters edited the footage of the chariot sequence. According to Dunning, Winters edited most of the chariot race but the two men discussed it at length with some input from Wyler. The two editors decided that, once the race was under way, one of the charioteers should be killed immediately to demonstrate to the audience that the race was a deadly one. Inserts of the barbs on the hub of Messala's chariot were inserted repeatedly throughout the sequence to make it obvious that his chariot was highly dangerous. As footage was shot, it was roughly edited by Ralph Winters. If the footage was poor, the stunts didn't come off on camera well, or coverage was lacking, then more footage would be shot. At the end of three months, Dunning says, Winters had so much footage on hand that he asked Dunning to come to Rome to help him edit together the final sequence.
One of the most notable moments in the race came from a near-fatal accident. Joe Canutt, Yakima Canutt's son, did Heston's more dangerous stunts during the sequence. When Judah Ben-Hur's chariot jumps over the wreckage of a chariot in its path, Ben-Hur is almost thrown out of his chariot. He hangs on and climbs back aboard to continue the race. While the jump was planned (the horses were trained to leap over the wreckage, and a telephone pole had been half-buried in the earth to force the chariot to jump into the air), stunt man Joe Canutt was tossed into the air by accident; he incurred a minor chin injury. Marton wanted to keep the shot, but Zimbalist felt the footage was unusable. Marton conceived the idea of showing that Ben-Hur was able to land on and cling to the front of his chariot, then scramble back into the quadriga while the horses kept going. The long shot of Canutt's accident was cut together with a close-up of Heston climbing back aboard constitutes one of the race's most memorable moments. Boyd did all but two of his own stunts. For the sequence where Messala is dragged beneath a chariot's horses and trampled to death, Boyd wore steel armor under his costume and acted out the close-up shot and the shot of him on his back, attempting to climb up into the horses' harness to escape injury. A dummy was used to obtain the trampling shot in this sequence.
In all, the chariot scene took five weeks (spread over three months) to film at a total cost of $1 million and required more than 200 miles (320 km) of racing to complete. Two of the $100,000 70mm lenses were destroyed during the filming of the close-up shots. Once the "pageantry" and victory parade sequences of the race were finished, Wyler did not visit the chariot race set again. Marton asked the editors to put together a rough cut of the film, with temporary sound effects, and then asked Zimbalist to screen it for Wyler to get Wyler's approval for the sequence. Zimbalist said no. Wyler was tired, and might not fully appreciate the rough cut and demand that the whole race be refilmed. But Zimbalist changed his mind and showed the rough cut to Wyler several days later. According to Zimbalist, Wyler said "it's one of the greatest cinematic achievements" he'd ever seen. Wyler did not see the final cut of the chariot race until the press screening of Ben-Hur.
Read more about this topic: Ben-Hur (1959 film), Chariot Race Sequence