Ben Hur (1907)

Directed by

Frank Oakes Rose, Sidney Olcott

Genre

drama film, action film, silent film

Country

United States

Runtime

12 min

Rating

4.4 of 10 from 25 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Ben Hur is a very early silent film from 1907. It adapts the story of a Jewish prince in ancient Rome who is forced into slavery and later seeks revenge in a chariot race.

historicalsilentdramaticold-fashionedbriefstagedsimpleaction

What happens

Ben Hur is a 1907 American silent drama film set in ancient Rome, the first screen adaptation of Lew Wallace's popular 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Co-directed by Sidney Olcott and Frank Oakes Rose, this "photoplay" was produced by the Kalem Company of New York City, and its scenes, including the climactic chariot race, were filmed in the city's borough of Brooklyn. While this film is significant for being the first motion-picture adaptation of Wallace's novel, its production also served as a landmark case of copyright infringement by an early American film studio. In 1908 Kalem was successfully sued for representing parts of Wallace's book on screen without obtaining permission from the author's estate. Copies of the film, which survive, are now in the public domain and are readily available for free viewing online in the collections of various digital archives and on streaming services. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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