Author: Vivian J. Willinger
Published: 12/03/2024
Vivian “is a long-time Arizonan who has never stopped feeling like a native New Yorker. My time in the Peace Corps was more educational than my graduate degrees. As for hobbies, I am only passionate about films and reading books”. She acquired her love of movies from her mother who named her after Vivian Leigh after seeing “Gone With the Wind”.
She was inspired to write her review of this classic movie following a visit to the Scottsdale Public Library where she borrowed a DVD of the film.
I recently watched the 1925 silent movie, Ben-Hur. It is long (almost two-and-one half hours) and old-fashioned (almost 100 years old). And yet ….
The opening credits offer some delectable surprises. The film’s story and continuity were the work of two women: June Mathis and Bess Meredith. Hollywood had not yet turned screenwriting into a patriarchy. The film was adapted from a stage play based on Lew Wallace’s novel and produced, in part, by Florenz Ziegfeld, Mr. Broadway Follies!
Surprises within the film itself include the occasional use of two-color Technicolor and some color tinted black-and-white footage. A newly recorded symphonic score accompanies the restored version of the film, reminding us that orchestras and organs provided musical accompaniment during the film’s first run. No silent movie was ever truly silent.
Subtitled “A Tale of the Christ,” the film celebrates Jesus Christ without ever showing his face. Not during the miracles. Not during the calvary or crucifixion. Not during the Last Supper - shown in a recreation of DaVinci’s painting that is so stunning, we forget the meal was actually a Passover seder.
The film might better be called “The Plucky Jew and the Nasty Romans.” Ramon Novarro (all youthful ardor and athleticism) is the Jewish Ben-Hur pitted against the evil Roman empire.
Francis X. Bushman (all beaky profile and beefy build) is his Roman frenemy, Messala.
Novarro was a huge star of the silent era but after talkies came in, his career petered out. Garbo made mincemeat out of him in the 1932 Mata Hari. He wound up as a poor old queen beaten to death in his house by some young gay hustlers. Bushman also vanished into obscurity, only to resurface as one of the old “waxworks” in Billy Wilder’s mordant Sunset Boulevard in 1950.
Still, the two actors have lasting glory from Ben-Hur even if their acting is a compendium of silent era cliches: exclamatory gestures, popping eyes, exaggerated expressions, and sentimental excess. Only Claire McDowell, cast as Ben-Hur’s leprosy-stricken mother, shows realism and subtlety in her acting and in so doing, engenders an almost operatic intensity of emotion.
The film accepts slavery (the house of Hur has its own slaves) except when it does not (a Jew under the Roman yoke). It is infatuated with royalty: the Hurs are princes and princesses; the Lord (JC) is reverenced as a King; the masses call for a King to save them. Women are either seductive whores (Messala’s vampy mistress, Iras) or pure Madonna types (Mary, the actual one; Esther, the junior Madonna/good girl love interest).
But all this is quibbling. The film still lives and works as a grand spectacle.
The camera rarely moves but the frame is filled to overflowing with deep detail. The blazing star of Bethlehem lights up the night sky, leaving shepherds and the three wise men awe-struck. It is a splendid special effect. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of extras and animals in the crowd scenes. No CGI here; those are real people and asses in the frame. There are bare-breasted girls strewing flowers in the triumphal procession of a Roman governor entering Jerusalem, even a butt-naked man in the bowels of a Roman galley. No Production Code puritanism here. There are enslaved oarsmen lit up by the gleam of their chains and their sweat-stained bodies. No hesitation in transmuting human misery into painterly images. There are Roman and pirate ships ramming into each other, bodies tossed up in the air or down into the sea, men drowning or sword-hacked to death, blood and mayhem everywhere. No pulling back or looking away; it is all very visual and visceral.
Never mind that there are plot holes big enough to drive through: why does a Roman-hating hero become a hero to Roman masses mad for charioteering? Do not cavil - it is necessary for the film’s grand set piece, the chariot race. Ben-Hur and Messala race off into a field of 12 chariots, each with four horses, going seven laps around a spina (a thin 2000-foot track with hairpin turns at each end), holding their reins in one hand and a whip in the other hand.
Luckily for us, Ben-Hur’s horses are the only white ones in the race, so we always know where he is in the racing tumult. Chariots collide and split asunder. Upended wheels roll around but go nowhere. Horses run at full speed, only to crash down in furious, fatal pileups. Messala desperately and despicably lashes Ben-Hur with his whip. The onlooking, betting crowd grows more and more frenzied.
The sequence is a mix of long shots, closeups, and camera moves going laterally as well as coming forward, right at us. At times, the actors and the horses are so close together in the frame we almost believe Novarro and Bushman are themselves in the race. The editing is very dynamic: sometimes, cutting quickly and jaggedly; sometimes, lingering and staying with the action. Altogether, it is a tour de force, leaving us breathless and exhilarated. In fact, after all the excitement of the chariot race, Ben-Hur’s victory seems a bit of an “Oh, yeah” add-on. The spectacle in this Ben-Hur is so thrilling, vivid, alive – so spectacular - it transcends time. Forget the 1959 and 2016 remakes. The 1925 version of Ben-Hur is the one to treasure.
