Ben-Hur (1926, silent film)

Directed by Fred Niblo

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It is Holy Week, and since we’ve already featured my four favorite films — well, three films and a television series, Jesus of Nazareth (here) — on the death and resurrection of Jesus, I thought, “What shall I do now?” We’ve written about Barabbas (here), based on Par Lagerkvist’s novel of that name; it was central to his winning the Nobel Prize. I’ve taught that novel to college students. So also with the work of Henryk Sienkiewicz, another Nobel winner, for Quo Vadis? (here) — a splendid and powerful novel for teaching. And then there is Ben-Hur (here), which I’ve not had the chance to teach, though back in 1987, I was in the hometown of the author, General Lew Wallace, where I saw the General Lew Wallace Hotel. That was in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and I was applying for a job as an assistant professor at Wabash College. I almost got that job, too — the vote deadlocked over four days, till somebody finally said that they ought to go with the other fellow, because he had a good deal more experience than I had. I like Wabash College, but I’m glad it worked out the way it did, because, for one thing, I doubt otherwise that I’d be writing Word and Song right now!

Here we are, then, back with Ben-Hur again, but this time it’s not William Wyler’s 1959 masterpiece. Instead, we’re recommending the brilliant silent film from 1926, which Wyler worked on as a young assistant. The first film stays closer to Wallace’s novel, though, like the later film, it ends with the Passion, the miraculous healing of his mother and sister from their leprosy, the conversion of Judah Ben-Hur to a life of peace and forgiveness, not warfare and revenge. The novel goes beyond where the film ends to follow Judah’s life as a Christian, into the reign of Nero, using his considerable wealth to support the Christians of Antioch, and to build an underground church in Rome. I think that the screen writers of both films were wary of anticlimax, and certainly the 1959 film with its score by Miklos Rozsa is stupendous in its rallying into the major key as water from the storm on Calvary comes flowing down in relentless streams of cleansing and life.

Ben Mankiewicz of Turner Classic Movies has said that the 1926 film was, in its medium, as great as the 1959 was. You can judge for yourselves, of course. The silent film could not, of course, convey subtlety of ideas by means of dialogue. The words given in the captions had to be concise and suggestive, like a portrait by Rembrandt or Titian, with only the face illuminated, and little else in the painting to speak to us, except perhaps the hands and the posture. So too the actors in the silent films had to rely upon the eyes, the set of the mouth, a gesture with the hands, and posture: see for example Francis X. Bushman as Messala, standing in front of his old friend Judah Ben-Hur, in a pose that makes him appear as if he were himself an imperial statue. Or see Ramon Novarro, as Judah, led off in chains to the galleys, so racked with thirst and so filthy, you forget that he is the star of the film; all that’s left is poor frail man. Then there’s the color palette of the film. If you pinned me down, I’d say it was in black and white, but that’s not exactly so. It’s in tinted and sometimes painted black and white, at times with sepia, or with a gray violet, or, especially in scenes where Jesus is present (but never seen), with the kinds of colors that studio photographers once used, in making photographs that were real portraits and not just snapshots. The color too “speaks,” all the more powerfully because you cannot take it for granted.

General Wallace once got himself into a long conversation with the notorious agnostic Robert Ingersoll, who in those days made quite a name for himself with what I find to be rather shallow arguments and easy sentimentalism. Wallace had at that time no real religious faith. After his conversation with Ingersoll, he decided to investigate the matter himself, which for him did not mean research into philosophy and theology, but rather into history, and he ended up, because he took the questions far more seriously than Ingersoll did, a Christian believer, though he did not join any church. He sensed, I believe correctly, that it would be wrong to turn Jesus into a character in his novel. In the book, the only thing that Jesus does that is not in the gospels is to give a cup of water to the parching and half-dead Judah, led in chains. Wallace also limited what Jesus is reported to have said to what we find in the Gospels. By the way, that same chasteness with regard to not representing and not characterizing Jesus is to be found in the superb novel by Riccardo Bacchelli, which I’ve translated as The Gaze of Jesus (link to my translation here); and I believe that Bacchelli is the greatest Italian novelist of the last century.

Think, then, as you watch the film, that Jesus is implicitly present. The Christian viewer is assumed to know what none of the characters in the film knows. We know that pagan Rome is actually tottering; its body is strong but its soul is sick. We know that Truth has entered the world in the flesh, and that Truth will change the world. We know that strength is made perfect in weakness, that the humble shall be exalted, that the meek shall inherit the earth; that, as Dante says, all of existence is brought into being and governed by “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcasts on a wide variety of topics. Paid subscribers receive audio-enhanced posts, on-demand access to our full archive, and may contribute comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a subscriber. We thank you for reading Word and Song!

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