Ben-Hur -- 1925

The silent adaptation of the book both this and the 1959 classic are based on runs rather long for a silent movie: 143 minutes. It was included with the 4 disc '59 version, so how could I resist. But I watched the whole thing and understood it perfectly. Some might say this is in part due to my having watched the mammoth 1959 version first, but in reality, there are quite a few significant differences between the silent version and the award winner.

The plot involves a guy who lived at the same time as Christ and during a moment in his life when he was at his lowest, he had a chance encounter with Jesus that gave him renewed strength to survive his circumstances and return home from his captivity. Once home, he strives to locate his mother and sister who were also captured in the accident the Romans arrested him for and then take revenge on his old friend and captor for the assumed death of his mother and sister in the form of a chariot race.

I had a pretty fair understanding of the characters in this one, and knew who was who as it trundled along. The characters Ben-Hur encountered were simply passing people in his life who were given very little screen time; basically enough to know who they are while they're on screen and then completely forgotten. An interesting note though is that Mary got herself a halo here and Jesus is arms only. The rest of him is obscured.

The story moved pretty quickly for the most part despite its length and a lot of stuff happened that served to move it. Trouble is that the chariot race happened qite a distance from the end, so once that climactic scene was over, we had to practically suffer through the rest of the film to resolve the mother-sister issue. Added to this was something not in the 1959 film (I've never read the book) and that was Ben-Hur gathering two legions of men to spring Jesus. It was an enormous plot device to throw in after the race and enormous plot pieces are actually a big part of this film.

Anything that was larger than life or required large numbers of extras got a lot of time in here. So the opening scene where Jerusalem is introduced was over-long. The nativity scenes were over-long. There was a battle between boats that went so far as to name some of the pirates, and this boat battle just wouldn't end. In the '59 version, the boat battle was maybe five minutes long, if that, and most of that was below decks. In this one, most of the time is on deck and has the hack n slash stuff.

And speaking of hack n slash, if this movie were rated today, it would be rated R. How 'bout that? The fight scenes were very violent. No blood, but some of the imagery was gruesome. In addition, it did have some topless women, which gets a movie an automatic R for nudity. This one predated the motion picture rules that first came about in 1927 and were more solidifed in 1933.

For a silent film, this isn't bad. It's understandable, the intertitles aren't too much, and it's interesting. Some sequences run a tad long, but it's not too bad.