Charlton Heston made The Big Ones...

by Brian Eggert
04/06/2008

Hollywood film icon Charlton Heston died Saturday, April 5th from undisclosed causes. He was 84-years-old. Battling Alzheimer’s since 2002, when he made the official announcement, the actor had since remained out of the public eye, despite his past political activism. But I would rather not discuss Heston’s politics, which were, at times, controversial. And it would be impossible for me to sum up his more than fifty-year career on the screen in a few meager paragraphs. Instead, allow me to give a brief overview of his filmic work, addressing his highest impacts on the history of cinema…

After two years of television roles, in 1952 Heston’s big break came with Best Picture Academy Award winner The Greatest Show on Earth, where he played a circus manager. This film introduced him to epic director Cecil B. DeMille, for whom Heston would again star in perhaps his best known role as Moses in the sweeping epic The Ten Commandments four years later. Indeed, if Heston were pinned down by any genre, it was the epic—be it religious, historical, Western, or science fiction, Heston’s films were almost always big.

But before making another such Hollywood blockbuster, he went to work for Orson Welles in 1957, playing a Mexican law man fighting corrupt American police in the gritty film noir Touch of Evil. Heston’s most radical performance given the racially awkward casting, the film broke ground, depicting Heston’s character married to a white Janet Leigh. Power disputes at Universal Studios left the film’s release in shambles, as studio execs edited and released the film in a form against Welles’ wishes. Only in 1998, following intentions as written in a 1958 memo from Welles to the studio, did Universal reedit the film to the filmmaker’s specifications—all thanks to Heston, who had kept Welles’ 58-page memo for the thirty interim years, assisting in restoring one of cinema’s most profound treasures to a more whole state.

Heston followed Touch of Evil with two more epics, The Big Country in 1958 and Ben-Hur in 1959, both directed by William Wyler. The latter earned Heston the coveted Best Actor Oscar, as well as a place high up within the annals of film history; the chariot race alone may be twenty of the most significant minutes ever put to film. And his penchant for grandiosity didn’t end there: El Cid, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Major Dundee, The Agony and the Ecstasy, Khartoum, Julius Caesar, and so on, all made the silver screen seem much larger through the worlds they depicted. How can I underline the importance of these films, other than to ask who else in cinema history has a register of that many massive classics on their filmography?

In the mid-to-late part of his career, Heston contributed a great deal to the genre of science fiction, helping to popularize the genre with movies like The Omega Man and Soylent Green. But my personal favorite Heston sci-fi movie will always be Planet of the Apes, where he plays an astronaut who lands on a mysterious planet where Ape-men are the superior species over humans. So many quotable, iconic lines uttered or screamed-out by Heston originate from this film, virtually an episode of The Twilight Zone, except with big-budget production value. Starring in one of my all-time favorite science fiction films, Heston has a special place in my heart.    

Granted there were flops in between the aforementioned greats, but what Hollywood legend doesn’t have those? On and offscreen, Heston was a passionate man; whether or not you agree with where he stood in his public life is pointless, because he shot straight and didn’t pull punches. Today, when every celebrity seems to be putting on airs to maintain their favorable perception in the media, Heston’s honesty was refreshing.

Witnessing this incredibly powerful actor, a viewer can lose themselves in his intensity—those twisted expressions and near-contortionist exertions of the body. Even in his lesser roles, Heston's presence would impress. I recommend you revisit, or indeed take the time to discover some of the films mentioned above. He was one of the all-time greats, and he will be missed.

 

Brian Eggert
Deep Focus Review