Everything about Ben-hur 1925 Film totally explained
Cast
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 Novarro 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.
When filming the chariot scene, the drivers were careful and slow, which disappointed Meyer. To make it more exciting, he offered a prize of $100 (about $1000+ today) to the winner, and the resulting heated competition led to the horrendous crash that remains in the movie. That and another fatal accident lead to changes in rules of filming and film safety.
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-strip
Technicolor. One of the assistant directors for this sequence was a very young
William Wyler, who would 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.
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.
Trivia
This remains one of the films at Rotten Tomatoes to maintain a 100% freshness rating.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ben-hur 1925 Film'.
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