Ben-Hur

Since I was so impressed the the 1959 version of this film, I figured there was no way I could watch this 1925 version and not be let down by it. Not only is this original adaptation very good, but it stands very strongly next to the heralded remake. In some regards, I enjoyed this adaptation better than the remake. Romon Navarro makes an excellent title character. The highlight of this film for me is early on when the star of Bethlehem is formed. Eye-popping visuals especially considering the time they were produced. It blows away any CGI we have today.

The version I saw of this was the newly scored version by Carl Davis, who continues to impress me with his scores for silent films including those he has written for "Greed", "Safety Last", "The Crowd", "Intolerance", "The Phantom of the Opera", and "The Wind".

Subtitled "A Tale of the Christ", this mixture of piety & adventure was MGM's grandest silent picture. The story tells how a Hebrew prince defies his Roman masters by beating them at their own game, literally, while becoming increasingly aware that the young Carpenter he met in Nazareth is the very Son of God and how that knowledge changes his life.

Years in the making, with filming in Italy & California, and changes of script and leading man, BEN HUR could have been a disaster. Instead, it was a complete triumph, with the naval battle and chariot race scenes holding their own among the best ever filmed. This film should not be compared with the Heston remake; it stands completely on its own merits.

For decades, the only known prints of this film were 90 minutes long, in black & white. By great good fortune, in the 1980's an uncut version, over 2 hours and with the original tints and Technicolor scenes was discovered in Czechoslovakia. This is what we are able to enjoy today.

Ramon Novarro got the plum male role of the entire silent period . He was a very fine actor and is excellent as Ben Hur. Sadly, the rest of his film career, in which he was typecast in every sort of ethnic role, from Chinese to Polynesian to Arab to Navajo, is virtually forgotten today.

The 1925 version of Ben-Hur is an outstanding example of silent film making at it's best. With the proverbial cast of thousands, it compares favorably with it's more expensive and lavish 1959 remake. Had the Academy Awards been given out at this time, Ben-Hur would undoubtedly have won it's share.

The video version that I saw was restored to it's original splendor complete with tints and two color technicolor sequences, They are quite spectacular and hold up quite well today. The birth of Christ sequence is most memorable.

The flagship sequences, the sea battle and the chariot race, are expertly staged and remain the most exciting parts of the picture. They are as good as those in the 1959 version.

The casting is, for the most part, excellent. Ramon Navarro as Judah and Francis X. Bushman as Messala stand out. The only problem is the casting of May McEvoy as Esther. With her blond hair, blue eyes and riglets, she looks more like a Mary Pickford want to be than a Jewish slave girl.

Despite all of it's well documented production problems, Ben-Hur still is one of the best movies of all time, silent or sound.

Of all motion picture genres, the ancient world epic is the only one in which the silents were usually superior to their talking counterparts. With the emotional distance of a bygone age, the pompous dialogue, not to mention the focus on the spectacular, here, if ever there was one, is a type of story best told purely in images.

The 1925 Ben-Hur is probably the finest of all the 1920s epics. A lot of this is down to its (uncredited) producer, "boy-wonder" Irving Thalberg. Although there is very little consistency in the genres or kinds of story in Thalberg's productions, his hallmark seems to be that he was willing to push the boat out creatively. He never just plumped for the most commercial option, yet never lost sight of what was entertaining. Hence his pictures were almost always hits, but they were never mere instant-appeal audience-fodder. He refused to compromise on quality in any department, and in Ben-Hur the editing of Lloyd Nosler and the cinematography in particular deserve honourable mentions. Thalberg had taken over the project half-way through shooting, and it's exemplary of his belief in quality over easy profits that he recast virtually ever actor, changed the crew and scrapped the old footage, sending the budget skyrocketing but ending up with a finer finished product.

Among the replacement crew was director Fred Niblo. While there are a few other directors associated with this production, they shouldn't really be counted as most of their footage was ditched when Niblo was brought on board. And he is really perfectly suited to this material. His sense of movement and rhythm, especially in crowd scenes, is exceptional. A great example is in the leper cave, when Miriam and Tirzah exit away from camera, screen left, a leper crawls towards the water from screen right, echoing their movement. Niblo was also one of the best action directors of his era, as evidenced in the highly imaginative sequence of images in the sea battle. For the chariot race the emphasis is on speed, partly because Thalberg offered a $100 prize to the winner, but also because the camera rarely takes the position of a spectator, almost constantly moving with the chariots. The excitement is heightened because the camera cars occasionally move faster when behind a chariot or slower when in front of chariot, to give the effect of dollying in on the action.

Niblo was also capable of coaxing tenderness and poignancy out of the smaller scenes. He recognises that the lavish sets and masses of extras can't be a continuous backdrop, and has the sense to stage the most important interactions in front of plain backgrounds, focusing us entirely on the actors. He brings an emotional depth to many sequences – something almost impossible to achieve in this kind of picture –by holding performers in uninterrupted takes and simply allowing them to emote with subtle gestures and facial expressions. The scene in which Miriam and Tirzah find Judah asleep in the Hur palace is by far the most moving I have seen in any ancient-world epic, sound or silent. Luckily Thalberg was smart enough to keep those long takes in the picture, rather than having every second of footage not essential to the story cropped or broken up with superficial title cards. It may seem unusual to see these extended emotional sequences in a picture that doesn't spend much time on characterisation or verbal interaction, but it is a perfect use of silent cinema form nonetheless.

This Ben-Hur retains the subtitle of Lew Wallace's novel – "A Tale of the Christ", and the religious angle is more integral to the story here than in the 1959 version. In 1959 Jesus was only ever shown from behind, and this is sometimes hailed as a stroke of genius. However his appearance in 1925 is even more tentative, just a hand emerging from offscreen. Of course it is very much like Niblo to use close-ups of hands to define characters, just as it very much like William Wyler (director in 1959) to film actors from behind, but I believe both portrayals owe something to the 19th century stage production, in which the actor playing Jesus kept his back to the audience. In each case this was apparently done out of a religious sense of respect, but I feel the "hands-only" Jesus of 1925 is the most effective because it shows the Christ figure purely as a presence, continuously felt but always just out of sight.

Probably the only respect in which the 1959 Ben-Hur is superior to the 1925 version is in its characterisation. The later film is one of the few genuine character-driven epics, with a screenplay that delves into the depths of each relationship, going to lengths to show the different facets of each figure. By comparison the characters in 1925 are simplistic to the point of being crude. Francis X. Bushman's Messala is such an out-and-out villain it's hard for us to accept he was ever likable, whereas we can totally believe that Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd were childhood friends. It's true that for the most part, the 1920s were still an age of one-dimensional pantomime figures, but the silent epics never tried to be deep or realistic, and any epic that tries to be will ultimately fail, even in the sound era. Instead these pictures thrive on their mood, their grace and their captivating imagery, and the realisation of this by Thalberg and Niblo make the silent Ben-Hur one of the best.

Before my generation's "Ben Hur" there was my grandmother's "Ben Hur: a Tale of the Christ," a 1925 silent film directed by Fred Niblo and starring Ramon Novarro as Judah, Ben Hur, Francis X. Bushman (a favorite of my grandmother's) as Messala, and May McAvoy as Esther. The extras became more famous than many of the leads: Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Douglas Fairbanks, Marion Davies, Clarence Brown, Sidney Franklin, and others.

"Ben Hur" is famous for being the "Cleopatra" of its day - an expensive mess that MGM finally got control of by bringing everyone home from Italy and filming in Hollywood.

Putting aside the expense and the loss of both human and animal life, it's a spectacular film, all the more sensational for having been done in 1925. The emphasis here is on the spectacle and not the characters, making the 1959 version more superior in that regard.

There is no in-depth look at the friendship between Messala and Ben-Hur in the earlier film; it's hard to believe, from Bushman's portrayal, that the two were ever friends (also the actors were 16 years apart in age). What the earlier film has that the 1959 lacks is the religious aspect - Mary and Joseph seeking shelter, the birth of the Christ, and the three Wise Men. The religious scenes were filmed in two-strip Technicolor. Most of the film is black and white, with a few sections sepia-toned.

Ramon Novarro, who would come to such a sad end, was 26 years old at the time of the film. He makes a passionate Ben-Hur, with Bushman (who worked until the day he died in 1966) a one-dimensional Messala. Of course, some of the acting seems amateurish by today's standards, and the heavy makeup on Novarro later in the film and on Bushman throughout is off-putting, but these things don't detract from the film.

As lepers, Ben-Hur's mother and sister looked like their skin glowed in the dark, a very interesting effect. Jesus is shown only as a lit hand in many scenes, and his face is revealed.

The chariot race is mind-boggling, as is the destruction near the end of the movie. Yet the best parts of the film for me were the simple, poignant scenes of Ben-Hur's mother and sister, all done beautifully.

In these days of CGI and so much available to film technicians, "Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ" is a must-see for how much the early filmmakers were able to accomplish. Truly one of the great epics.