Directed by Fred Niblo, and co-written by Bess Meredyth and Carey Wilson, among others, this outstanding film is actually a remake that was later remade, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1959. Though primarily a B&W film, this silent features several 2- strip Technicolor scenes (e.g. those with Jesus Christ, including his birth and the Last Supper) which help to make this a must-see classic. It was added to the National Film Registry in 1997.Ramon Novarro plays the title role of Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy Jew and boyhood friend of the powerful Roman, Messala (played by Francis X. Bushman). When an accident leads to the title character'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 (Frank Currier), who allows him to remain unchained, unlike the other slaves powering the mighty vessel. 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 many times over.Of course, this eventually leads to a climactic showdown with Messala in a visually spectacular, incredibly exciting chariot race, perhaps only surpassed by the later filmed version of this story.May McAvoy plays Esther, the daughter of the Hur family's former servant Simonides (Nigel De Brulier). Though she was instructed to hide the fact of their existence from Ben-Hur earlier, she eventually leads him to his sister Tirzah (Kathleen Key) and mother (Claire McDowell) who, when they were finally released from prison, discovered they were lepers.Betty Bronson plays Mary, the mother of Christ; Winter Hall plays Joseph. Mitchell Lewis plays Sheik Ilderim, who supplies Ben-Hur with the horses he needs to race Messala.Clarence Brown, who would go on to earn seven Best Director Oscar nominations appeared uncredited as an extra in the chariot race scene, as did actors/actresses Marion Davies, Douglas Fairbanks, John Gilbert, Lillian Gish, Harold Lloyd, and Mary Pickford, and Chinese Theater owner Sid Grauman, among others. Myrna Loy also appears, uncredited, as a Hedonist!

It is somewhat comical to see and hear people defending the 1959 version of this film (without difficulty) against the derisory 2016 film simply because the silent version is immeasurably better than either.The only reason that i can see for so many commentaries here to fail to see this is simply because of the absurd prejudice that remains in people's minds concerning silent films. Some fellow says that the film is too long for most people to endure "without dialog" and this would be a crass remark to take except that the really awful thing is that it is true although the logic of such a prejudice for yak-yak entirely eludes me. It is long but there are several silent films (and some of the best) that are longer. The magnificent 1924 Greed, the superb 1927 Napoléon?But, if you are one of those benighted souls who simply cannot believe that a silent film version of a film can be better than a sound version (even when made by a great director), please watch the 1926 and 1952 versions of What Price Glory? Walsh's 1926 version is superb; John Ford's version is gruesomely bad. Many other "silent" versions are better than their sound equivalents but this one is a glaring and incontrovertible example.To be fair, I do understand that modern audiences have difficulty in watching silent films because they tend to lack the capacity for concentration that is required. Don't just "endure" this film for two hours. Watch it two or three times (it is well worth the effort) and you will be surprised how much more you begin to notice and appreciate and also begin to understand that a failure to enjoy silent films to the full is not a fault in the films but a fault in the viewers who have lost the capacity to view a film as a film deserves to be viewed.In the case of the two Ben-Hurs that count (I will not try and defend the 1907 Olcott version), Wyler's 1959 film is a very shallow piece of work, completely typical of the fifties US epic, glossy, pompous, ahistorical and overly romantic. This 1926 version is quite different. The 1959 version is in truth remembered for nothing but the chariot-race (very largely copied from the 1926 film) but the 1926 film is a dark vision of colonial domination, racial prejudice and tyrannical power (just as fascist movements were taking root throughout Europe). None of this is there in the 1959 film, despite Wyler's being an expatriate German.Heston's portrayal of Hur is about as un-Jewish as one can imagine (rather as though Schwarzenegger, had he been a little younger, had been chosen to play the part in 2018).The strong religious them is not to all tastes (it is not very much to mine) but this is a faithful and intelligent reflection of the novel and extremely well done. Like it or leave it, this is what the novel wanted to say and something which the 1959 film totally fails to reflect satisfactorily. In fact the entire political subtext of the story, eminently clear in this version, is largely incomprehensible in the Wyler film.Ben-Hur is certainly also about spectacle. It had already been so for more than twenty years on the stage before ever this film was made. But there too it seems to me this films achieves more and better than the 1959 version. The spectacle in this film remains breath-taking and is far from restricted to the chariot-race or the magnificent sea-battle.As for the 2016 version, 90 years on, one draws a veil.........By the way, for those zombies who compile these cast-lists, there are no such people as Miss Remington and Miss Underwood (or at least there are or rather were thousands of them. Remington and Underwood were famous makes of typewriter and this is just a little joke that appears in the documentary film 1925 Studio Tour.

. . . the world's greatest war hero, and the world's richest person, as well. Sort of like Michael Jordan, Colin Powell, and Oprah all rolled into one. A prince of Israel and the adopted son of a top Roman military leader, Judah was the only individual in a position to save Jesus from Crucifixion. Judah had a thousand Galilean fishermen and another thousand desert tribesmen armed to the teeth in top fighting form, strategically positioned between downtown Jerusalem and Golgotha. Jesus almost missed Judah in the crowd, as He lumbered beneath the Cross and Resurrected dead babies on His way out of town. But Judah finally got His attention, and tried to draw up a plan of attack which would not only spare Jesus, but spite the Romans for giving Judah's mom and sister--Princess Hur and Tirzah--bad cases of leprosy. Quickly sizing up the situation, Jesus waved His hand and healed the Hur women, giving Judah the peace of mind to marry his youthful crush and slave girl Esther, living happily ever after (since the earthquake caused by Jesus' Death killed only bad people). This is the MGM version of the Holy Bible.

When MGM released Ben-Hur in 1925 the studio was only a year old. This and The Big Parade insured the lasting success of this union of many small studios that became the Tiffany studio of Hollywood. The success however was a mighty close run thing.The Goldwyn part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had the property and brought it to the studio when the merger took place. Sam Goldwyn himself had no connection with the studio that bore his name when the conglomeration was formed.But I'd hate to think he was the guy who made the deal on the original property. According to the Films Of MGM book, Goldwyn Studios wanted the film rights so bad that they bought the novel and the play the novel was made from with an agreement to give 50% of the profits to the original owners which was the Klaw/Erlanger theatrical producers and Florenz Ziegfeld who probably bought the stage rights from them.Why would they make such a deal? Well next to the Bible and later for a while Gone With The Wind, Ben-Hur was the largest selling book in the history of the English language. Even 50% profit they envisioned at Goldwyn would bring lots of cash.But the usual problem of cost productions swelled the budget, the film was shot partially in Italy and later brought back to Hollywood when the bean counters saw the numbers going through the roof. When it finally did hit the big screen, it never quite made back what the cost was. It took The Big Parade to put MGM in the black that year and keep it there for a while.With some deviations the plot of Ben-Hur runs pretty close to that of the more familiar sound version where Charlton Heston won his Academy Award for Best Actor. Ramon Novarro and Francis X. Bushman play Ben-Hur and Messala the Jewish aristocrat and the Roman Tribune, childhood friends and adult enemies. The character of Hur house steward Simonides is radically different. Instead of loyal Sam Jaffe, we have Nigel DeBrulier who instead of hiding the Hur fortune, lives pretty good off it. Honestly, he thinks Ben-Hur died in the galleys and he is trying to provide for daughter Esther played by May McAvoy.There is one character who does not appear in the sound version, Egyptian siren Carmel Myers. She's Messala's girl friend and a sly little minx. He sends her off to vamp the new mysterious chariot driver who says he's going to take Messala down in the chariot races and find out who he is. Carmel is quite the temptress to say the least.For 1925 the spectacle is indeed awesome, the chariot race is every bit as thrilling as the one that Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd did in the 1959 version. The sea battle isn't quite up to what the 1959 version was, but special effects are always improving. A computer graphics chariot race would indeed be something.Besides the stars of the film, Ben-Hur served as some kind of training ground and a place to be in. Take a look at the credits and you'll see such folks as John and Lionel Barrymore, Douglas Fairbanks and many other silent screen leads listed as uncredited extras in the crowd scenes. Also such up and coming folks like Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, and Myrna Loy are all just unknown extras and somewhere in Ben-Hur. The basic themes of General Lew Wallace's novel are kept intact and if the box office didn't quite pull MGM out of the hole, it certainly gave the studio its first real prestige picture.