MovieChat Forums > Ben-Hur (1959) Discussion > Heston's oscar win - You must be kidding...

Heston's oscar win - You must be kidding me.

posted 8 years ago by iadorepink
32 replies | jump to latest

Heston winning was simply pathetic, Very poor choice, Nearly every nominee was better, James Stewart is easily best for Anatomy of a Murder, Similar to his performance in Mr, Smith goes to Washington.

They gave Heston the award to make history, The first film ever to win 11 academy awards, Laurence Harvey gave a terrific performance in Room at the top, And don't forget about Lemmon's performance Very stupid choice choosing Heston over 3 completely superior performances. At least Heston was better than Muni.

[–] liscarkat (18410) 6 years ago

Heston was a great actor, and deserved his Academy Award. Whether or not you agree with his politics is irrelevant to his acting ability. Actually, you probably don't know anything about his politics, but you think you do.

[–] huwdj (4566) 5 years ago

The American Academy Awards are often quite political and this particular one very much of its time. Quite a few Oscars look a bit silly a few years later.

[–] overseas7 (4260) 5 years ago

A very good movie with a very good performance of Mr. Heston

[–] Interlepos (1807) 5 years ago

If anybody ever deserved to win an academy award for best actor, especially for a film of this type, then it would be Charlton Heston.

Had he not won he would have been one of the most underrated actors. He deserved the recognition.

[–] Otter (24464) 5 years ago

To give Heston his due, he wasn't trying to be realistic, he was trying to be iconic - and he succeeded!

That's actually a much harder job than just being realistic. Most decent actors can play realism, but very, very few can do iconic bombast of this kind. The lead of one of these huge epic films has got to play things HUGE and be charismatic as all hell to hold the audience's attention, and he's got to be completely sincere about something that's basically ridiculous - and convince the audience to take it all seriously, too. I mean, Burt Lancaster is by any measure a better actor than Heston, but he turned down this role because he was an atheist, and couldn't be bring the level of irony-free sincerity the role required to the screen.

And IMHO that explains why Heston's career faltered when the era of epic films came to an end. He really couldn't do much below the level of epic bombast.

[–] jdforyou1983 (1470) 4 years ago

Heston gave a phenomenon performance

[–] Joogle83 (4473) 4 years ago

Heston Is GOAT sorry you cant accept that Also Judah Ben-Hur was an early Bi-Sexual hero

[–] trevorh321 (5495) 4 years ago

I agree with you 0%! Heston is magnificent as Judah Ben-Hur. Ever since I can recall, Heston has been criticized for his acting. It took me a while but it's because he was such a strong proponent of the Second Amendment. Liberals cannot stand him because of that and ignore he was one of the first major actors to openly march in support of civil rights legislation with Martin Luther King.