Starring Ramon Novarro, Francis X. Bushman and May McAvoy
Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
It is the time of Christ. Literally. We see the future messiah's birth in the opening scenes. The inn, the star, the wise men, the shepherds: all here. The film doesn't linger there. It rockets years into the future where...
The Romans are oppressing the Jews. Even under the iron fist of their rulers, the Jews have a hierarchical social structure and the House of Hur is right at the top. The Hur family has a palatial estate and live well. Still, the matriarch of the clan is getting nervous about their finances so she dispatches their servant Simonides to hide their fortune in Antioch.
The Hurs are visited by Messala, a Roman soldier who was the childhood friend of Judah, Ben-Hur, the son in the House of Hur. Messala greets Judah, his mother and his sister warmly, but soon they are arguing about the state of affairs in Jerusalem. Messala storms out.
Soon the new local dignitary is paraded through the city. Judah, watching from his balcony,accidentally knocks a tile off. It falls killing a Roman. Messala storms into the Hur's home and accuses Judah of throwing the tile. All of the Hur's are arrested.
The women are shuttled off to a secret prison underground. As for Judah, he is sentenced to life rowing in the galleys of a ship. There, he is more the firebrand than ever, driven by his desire for vengeance against Messala. Will Ben-Hur escape and take his revenge? On a chariot perhaps? And how will Judah's life intersect with Jesus? And I thought Chuck Heston was in this?
The obvious place to begin a review is with a comparison with a comparison with the 1959 version of Ben-Hur starring Heston. It's been a long time since I saw the more well-known version, but all the storybeats are here: the initial arrest, the attack on the seas, the chariot race. Jesus is here as well, though as with the 1959 version, he's a presence, existing just off camera. We see a hand here and there, but that's it.
My memory of the specific moments of 1959 is hazy, so I won't try to compare the merits of the two (I'll get there in 34 years). But I liked this movie. A lot. In fact, I think my lack of much memory or feeling about the Heston one really helped me appreciate this version.
The characters are well-realized and acted. Roman Novarro's Ben-Hur is in almost every frame of the film and he carries off the complex emotions of the character perfectly. Ben-Hur has to be both driven by revenge, but keep the inherent goodness that will propel him to save Arrius on the boat. There are moments of over-the-top acting, but, particularly in these epics, that's not uncommon.
Ben-Hur is an epic with some impressive sets and locations. The chariot race here is exactly as it should be. It is just perfect. The lack of sound doesn't diminish the feel of every whip, the grunt of every horse and the sheer brutality of a three-chariot-pileup. Fred Niblo's camera gets right into the action and the actors sell what's at stake. The whole movie has been building to this and it doesn't disappoint. In fact, it soars. The race is one of my favorite silent movie moments. Ever.
The other big set piece is a naval battle between the Romans and a pirate fleet and it works less well. There are simply too many people on these boats to follow any of the action coherently. Moment to moment, I had no idea who was attack whom.
There's a love interest introduced late in the movie, but you never really feel like there's a connection between Ben-Hur and Esther. That aspect of the film feels more like the writers are checking off the romance check box than anything else.
The portrayal of Jesus in the film is amongst my favorite on celluloid. My preference is for the more human portrayals of the messiah (think Willem DaFoe in The Last Temptation of Christ). It's hard the resist a holier-than-thou portrayal of someone who is most definitely holier-than-thou, so I love the decision to keep Christ off-screen and simply see and feel how he is seen by others.
Oh, and by the way: color! Whole sections of the movie are in color! I was not expecting that at all. At first I thought it was scenes with Christ, but then there is a colorized scene with only Ben-Hur halfway through the film, so I am unsure why the stylistic choice was made. It's that oversaturated technicolor you used to see on Turner Classic restorations, but it is still gorgeous.
Ben-Hur is highly recommended. It's well-acted, has a great story and an epic feel.
****1/2 out of *****
NOTE: It cost MGM $3.9 million to make Ben-Hur and the film made $9 million, the third highest gross for a silent film. Despite that, MGM lost money because of the deals they had to make to bring the book and play to the screen.
On the color, I had to look it up, but apparently the color was included in the original and was not some restoration house's work. Again, just awesome.
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