Ben-Hur (1925 film)
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Ben-Hur
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1997.
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Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is a 1925 American silent epic adventure-drama film directed by Fred Niblo and written by June Mathis based on the 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by General Lew Wallace. Starring Ramon Novarro as the title character, the film is the first feature-length adaptation of the novel and second overall, following the 1907 silent short film.
Why It Rocks
- At the time of its release, it was hailed as one of the biggest, most expensive and complicated productions ever to come out of the American film industry. Even today, it's still noteworthy for being the most expensive film of the silent era with a budget of nearly $4 million.
- Talented acting from the majority of the cast.
- Ramon Novarro was engaged to play the title role in the film after it had already been in production for months. A relatively new star with a particular aptitude for costume roles, his greatest talent was his ability to bring light, boyish charisma to a role while also avoiding being swallowed up by epic sets and scenery. He does mug on occasion but he also has some moments of fine acting. For example, his character, the titular Judah Ben-Hur is enslaved on a Roman galley but manages to save the commander’s life during a pirate attack. After the ship battle, Novarro and the commander are rescued by another Roman galley. As he is climbing up the side of the ship, Novarro sees a galley slave staring back at him through the oar hole. He freezes. In spite of all he has done for the commander, could he be thrown back into slavery? His whole body shakes as he continues his climb. Novarro and director Fred Niblo manage to convey complicated emotions without a single word or title card; it’s the sort of scene that demonstrates the power of silent film acting.
- As the main antagonist, former matinee idol Francis X. Bushman is all bluster and swagger and he overacts outrageously. However, this works for his character, who is blustery and swaggering and given to overreacting. Bushman is broad but not bad and he certainly looks the part.
- Another noteworthy performance to mention is Claire McDowell, who plays Judah’s mother. With her patrician features, McDowell was often cast as mothers and authority figures. Her scenes near the end of the film are particularly good. Now a leper, she cannot touch the sleeping figure of her son without the risk of infecting him. She has not seen him in years but she must content herself with kissing his shadow. In the hands of a lesser actress, this scene could be maudlin at best and laughable at worst. McDowell gives it the dignity it deserves.
- In terms of design and set work, Cedric Gibbons and A. Arnold Gillespie under the direction of Andrew McDonald created epic sets through a combination of actual size and clever trickery. Their weapons of choice were hanging miniatures and matte paintings that combined seamlessly with genuinely large structures. The strong design vision extended to the costumes and props and the result can best be described as a medieval egg tempera icon come to life. The enhanced sets do not overwhelm the characters because they are all part of an organic whole.
- For $300,000 to construct a Circus Maximus set was constructed that could seat thousands of extras. It became the backdrop of one of silent film's most thrilling sequences, a chariot race staged with extraordinary attention to detail. Filmed with forty cameras, including units equipped with close-up lenses and mounted on trucks, the sheer size of the sequence, with twelve four-horse teams racing seven laps around the course, became a physical reality for moviegoers.
- Rightly or wrongly, Thalberg saw the film in the same terms that he saw King Vidor’s The Big Parade: as a potential blockbuster whose box-office prospects would improve with the injection of spectacle. The money spent on the chariot sequence would elevate the film above its competition, as would the insertion of Technicolor sequences (nine of these survive). Along with the naval battle, these are the elements of the film that remain vivid, even memorable, today.
- The editing for the film is top-notch as well. A massive pile of exposed film, over a million feet, had been accumulating for months during the Italian and Hollywood shoots and Lloyd Nosler and his editing team were tasked with attacking that pile and turning it into a coherent and enjoyable film. Basil Wrangell had been hired in Italy as an interpreter and his status as the longest-standing member of the crew made him ideal to help catalog the mass of film. Wrangell recalled that he spent most of 1925 working until midnight every day and only receiving two Sundays off during that time. That million-foot mountain had to be whittled down to a mere 12,000 feet for the finished film.
- In spite of all this, the efforts of the editing team really paid off, if the final result is anything to go off of. The famous chariot race contains excitement, suspense, some very fine stunt work and direction but the brisk cuts help create a snappy pace. The other renowned set piece of the film is just as impressive: Roman ships are set upon by pirates and a great battle ensues. The ship-to-ship combat looks harrowing and dangerous on the screen because it was just that: real ships, real smoke, real splinters. Clever cutting brings order to the chaos and the result is one of the very best naval battles in motion picture history. The aggressive editing saves Ben-Hur from the chief dangers an epic can face: a leaden pace and a tendency to meander over the beautiful sets.
- Another distinguishing aspect of the film is its guarded presentation of spirituality. Although subtitled A Tale of the Christ, this character is seen only from the distance, or as a disembodied hand and arm. The theology presented in the film had been filtered through several sources: Wallace’s self-guided research, Mathis’s avant-garde concept of masculinity, Thalberg’s preoccupation with mass markets, and Mayer’s obsession with family life.
- That such a seamless story could emerge from so many hands is another surprising element of the film. Ben-Hur is more a studio artifact than the work of any one creative vision. If the film lacks the idiosyncrasies of Ingram’s Four Horsemen, it manages to adapt his innovative camerawork for its own ends, just as it took Mathis’s vision of Valentino as screen hero and applied it to Novarro (whose subsequent career was negligible). Thalberg understood that the strengths of film were different from those of theater and literature. He knew how film could expand time, as in a five-minute scene after the chariot race in which Ben-Hur’s mother hovers over her sleeping son, wondering whether to wake him. The choices made in the staging and editing of this film were used as a guidebook by the filmmakers who followed.
- The production justified for a time Thalberg’s approach to moviemaking, and opened up the possibility of religious projects for other studios, such as Paramount's The King of Kings (1927) and Noah’s Ark (1928) from Warner Brothers. The film also helped establish MGM as one of the major players in the industry.
Bad Qualities
- In dramatic terms, the film's not that advanced.
- A fair amount of the characters are depicted in black-and-white terms, and acting consists of board, histrionic gestures.
- Immense sets were presented as geometric blocks, the equivalent of matte paintings, rather than physical space to explore.
- A number of anachronistic touches, especially in the opening scenes.