Observations on the passing of Charlton Heston, movie star.

By Alison Willmore on 04/07/2008

"Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing 'Ben-Hur' and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other heroic figures in movie epics of the '50s and '60s, has died. He was 84."
       —AP

"Few films thrilled me -- or scared me -- as much as 'Soylent Green,' in which his character realizes that the stuff keeping the human race alive is made from other human beings: 'Soylent Green is people!' By then, he had played Moses and saved an entire people from destruction. Things didn't look good in 'Soylent Green,' but somehow, I thought, surely Charlton Heston could save us."
       —Manohla Dargis at the New York Times

"[T]here was something non-threatening, asexual even, to Heston's beefcakeiness: While he may have clutched Sophia Loren, Senta Berger, Janet Leigh and other babes of the era to his not-inconsiderable bosom, it never got really icky. Indeed, he seemed most comfortable expressing his sensual side by slashing away at Moorish invaders or urging his horses to ever-greater exertions on the race track."
       —James Adams at the Globe and Mail

"Where [Burt] Lancaster and [Kurt] Douglas were kinetic, bursting with restlessness, Heston was essentially static -- not so much statuesque as a statue in some audio-animatronic hall of Heroes. He stood and he spoke. That's why screenwriters loved him as much as movie audiences did. He was a hero to them all."
       —Richard Corliss at Time

"Heston succeeded at playing these courageous, imposing, appalled, beleaguered, almost classically handsome men (too much forehead, too many teeth) by overplaying them. This manly man's secret weapon was his histrionics -- it was camp. Even at his most ridiculous, Heston was hard to resist."
       —Wesley Morris at the Boston Globe

"Charlton Heston's defining performance, at least for members of my generation (whether most of us realize it or not), probably came in Wayne's World 2. He played a bit part, listed in the credits as 'Good Actor,' brought on in a gimmick to replace a man giving Wayne directions at a gas station whom Wayne complains isn't a good actor. Heston delivers the man's lines again, but does so with such pathos, such richness, that Wayne's mugging and crying in front of the camera almost seems genuine -- and Heston's Golden Hollywood baritone overacting fits the role perfectly."
       —Alex Remington at the Huffington Post

"The subject of the single most notorious pronouncement in the history of film criticism -- Michel Mourlet's proclamation that 'Charlton Heston is an axiom of the cinema' -- Heston made himself easy to dismiss in his later years with his own notorious pronouncements -- 'I'll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands' -- on behalf of the NRA. Yet I never loved him more than when he got up and walked out on a duplicitous, condescending Michael Moore in 'Bowling for Columbine.'"
       —Dave Kehr at DaveKehr.com

"It's funny--a few years back, one could really surprise people by pulling out that Michel Mourlet bit about Heston being an 'axiom of cinema;' now, thanks to the internet, almost everyone knows it. What we ought to acknowledge on his passing today is that Mourlet's pronouncement, dismissed as almost pathological hyperbole at the time and for some time after, was accurate."
       —Glenn Kenny at Premiere

[Photo: Heston in "Ben-Hur," MGM, 1959]

+ Charlton Heston Dead at 84 (AP)
+ The Man Who Touched Evil and Saved the World (NY Times)
+ Charlton Heston: a hero for his time (Globe and Mail)
+ Appreciation: Charlton Heston (Time)
+ Charlton Heston 1924-2008 (Boston Globe)
+ Rest in Peace, Charlton Heston (Huffington Post)
+ Charlton Heston 1924-2008 (DaveKehr.com)
+ Charlton Heston (Premiere)