After a Jewish prince is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend in 1st-century Jerusalem, he regains his freedom and comes back for revenge.
"No! I warn you! Rome is an affront to God! Rome is strangling my people and my country, the whole Earth! But not forever. I tell you the day Rome falls there will be a shout of freedom such as the world has never heard before!"
This pure epic of a movie manages to get left off a lot of the greatest movie lists. I have always been curious as many of the performances were simply beyond compare; the sets were of the grandest order, and simply the scale of this movie may never have been matched. I think people get caught up in the 'story of the Christ' part of it and can't let go of this when issuing judgment about the film's pure quality.
I am not overtly religious and yet I love the stories told in this movie. The birth of christianity in in the background and a constant fall back, however, the story centers on the lifelong friendship/hatred of the two main characters, brilliantly played by Heston and Boyd.
The chariot race, rightly, has its place in cinematic history and so should the death scene that follows it.
Clearly my favorite movie of all time!