BEN-HUR (1925 FILM)

'''Ben Hur''' was a 1925 silent film directed by Fred Niblo. It was a blockbuster hit for newly merged Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. This was the second film based on the novel ''Ben-Hur'' by Lew Wallace.

Contents

Plot

Cast

Background

Reissue

Restoration

Footnotes

External links

Plot

Judah Ben-Hur is a wealthy Jew and boyhood friend of the powerful Roman, Messala. When an accident leads to Ben-Hur's arrest, Messala makes sure he and his family are jailed and separated.
Ben-Hur is sent to work in the galley of a Roman warship. Along the way he unknowingly encounters Christ, the carpenter's son who offers him water. Once aboard ship, his attitude of defiance and strength impresses a Roman Admiral, Quintus Arrius, who allows him to remain unchained. This actually works to the Admiral's favor because when his ship is attacked and sunk by pirates, Ben-Hur saves him from drowning.
Arrius then treats Ben-Hur as a son and over the years, the young man grows strong and becomes a victorious chariot racer. This eventually leads to a climactic showdown with Messala in a chariot race.
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Cast

★ Ramon Novarro as Judah Ben-Hur

★ Francis X. Bushman as Messala

★ May McAvoy as Esther

★ Betty Bronson as Mary

★ Claire McDowell as Princess of Hur

★ Kathleen Key as Tirzah

★ Carmel Myers as Iras

★ Nigel De Brulier as Simonides

★ Mitchell Lewis as Sheik Ilderim

★ Leo White as Sanballat

★ Frank Currier as Quintus Arrius

★ Charles Belcher as Balthazar

★ Dale Fuller as Amrah

★ Winter Hall as Joseph

Background

Costing between 4 and 6 million dollars, ''Ben-Hur'' is the most expensive silent film ever made.
''Ben-Hur'' was a big success as a novel, and also as a stage play. Stage productions had been running for twenty-five years. In 1922, two years after the play's last tour, the Goldwyn company purchased the film rights to ''Ben-Hur''. The play's producer, Abraham Erlanger, put a heavy price on the screen rights. Erlanger was persuaded to accept a generous profit participation deal and total approval over every detail of the production.
Shooting began in Italy in 1923, starting two years of difficulties, accidents, and eventually a move back to Hollywood. Additional recastings (including Ramon Navarro as Ben-Hur) and a change of director helped skyrocket the production's budget. The studio's publicity department was shameless, advertising the film with lines like: "The Picture Every Christian Ought to See!" Although audiences flocked to ''Ben-Hur'' after its premiere in 1925 and the picture grossed nine million dollars, its huge expenses and the deal with Erlanger made it a loser for MGM. MGM was unable to regain its $4,000,000 investment.^[2][3]
A total of 60,960 m (200,000 feet) of film was shot for the chariot race scene which was eventually edited down to 229 m (750 feet). This scene has been much imitated. It was re-created virtually shot for shot in the ''1959 remake'', and more recently imitated in the "pod race scene" in '' which was made almost 75 years later. Some scenes in the film were in two-color Technicolor. One of the assistant directors for this sequence was a very young William Wyler, who would encounter ''Ben-Hur'' again 33 years later to direct the 1959 remake.

Reissue

A 1931 reissue added music, by the original composers William Axt and David Mendoza, and sound effects. As the decades passed, the original Technicolor segments were replaced by black-and-white dubs. These scenes were considered lost until the 1980s when Turner Entertainment (who by then had acquired the rights to the film) found the crucial sequences in a Czech film archive.

Restoration

Current prints of the 1925 version are from the Turner-supervised restoration. The restoration includes the color tints and Technicolor sections, set to resemble the original theatrical release. There is an addition of a newly recorded stereo orchestral soundtrack by Carl Davis with the London Philharmonic Orchestra which was originally recorded for a Thames Television screening of the movie.
''Ben-Hur'' has been selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry.
It can be found on DVD, complete with the Technicolor segments, in the four-disc collector's edition of the 1959 version starring Charlton Heston.

Footnotes

1. Plot Summary for Ben Hur
2. The Making and Release of Ben-Hur
3. Commentary on Ben-Hur

External links

★

★ Getting It Right the Second Time — an comparative analysis of the novel, the 1925 film, and the 1959 film, at BrightLightsFilm.com

★ A detailed article about the background of the movie