In the early fifties the media revival of religion as a bulwark against Communism by the likes of TV's Billy Graham and the screen's own Cecil B. De Mille, coupled with the entirely secular but equally desperate desire of movie-makers to lure their flocks away from the Tube, translated into a rash of widescreen Biblical epics. Ben-Hur, coming late in the decade and directed by a master, William Wyler, was an attempt to turn away from the cheap formulas featuring Victor Mature and his various Robes, toward serious filmmaking (the film garnered 12 Oscars and much critical acclaim). Charlton Heston as Judah Ben-Hur is the man in the gray flannel toga and as $15 million epics go, Ben-Hur is an intimate one: there is hardly a scene in which his existential crisis is not foregrounded. The film is quite openly "about" the loyalty of old friends (once "our only sanity") made impossible in an age of ideologies. Here, Jesus is a new idea which the Romans intend to fight with a tired old one, coercion. (The Romans in the land of Judah are a little bit like someone's bad dream of "Amerika".) But no matter who wins the ideological battle, Ben-Hur the Jew has one choice: row (with the flow) or die.