American Cinematographer - March 1988 - 110

The Last

Page

The Chariot Race Is On

Again!

ment in
sent to

widely separated

scenes.

This

was

YCM, which transferred the color to

safety negative and color corrected it to
match the original print. The original black
and white negative was sent to the Techni¬
color laboratory in London, where, by use of
color filters, the tinted material was printed
onto color print film in the original colors.
The
the

source

for the correct colors

came

from

original cutting continuity, a scene by
scene description of the edited film tabu¬
lated to the exact number of frames.
This restoration is part of an

ongoing relationship between TEC and
Thames that has resulted in new, restored

prints of some other silent classics, including
The Big Parade, Greed, The Wind and Flesh
and the Devil. Fine restorations such as
these prove astonishing to persons who
have seen them only in multi-generation

prints projected, usually, at incorrect speeds.
Some sound films are also being given new
life by the same people, such as The Private
ie

Ben-Hur

crew

The

in

only cineatographer who
Yt wearing a cap
ime.

first

cameraman

irl Struss.

was the most expensive movie in
history when MGM released it in 1925. The
drama of Jerusalem in the period of Roman
occupation cost about $4 million, a figure
not equalled until five years later when
Howard Hughes produced Hell's Angels. It
was a magnificent picture, directed by Fred
Niblo and photographed by Rene Guissart,
ASC, Karl Struss, ASC, Percy Hilburn, ASC,
and Clyde DeVinna, ASC. (There were other
directors and cinematographers involved at
various stages of the trouble-plagued pro¬
duction, but that's a different story). Produc¬

tion costs threatened to sink the studio, but
the finished product brought great prestige
to the young company.

Although Ben-Hur has long been
screenings from various film
archives, the circulating prints were only a
pale shadow of what audiences saw 63
years ago. The original release prints were
tinted and toned throughout, with special
sequences photographed in Technicolor. It
was accompanied by a symphonic score by
Dr. William Axt and David Mendoza (sym¬
phonic in the big city first runs, at least, but
available for

arranged for small orchestra, organ and
piano for the smaller theaters). This music
was

recorded

picture
108

Thanks to Turner Entertainment

Ben-Hur

was

American

on an optical track when the
reissued in 1931.

Cinematographer

Co., which

now owns

the MGM library, this

fine

picture can now be seen in its original
splendor. Kevin Brownlow and David Gill,
England's gifts to film scholarship, and Rich¬
ard May, of Turner Entertainment and for¬
merly of MGM, supervised restoration and
production of the new prints. They did a
magnificent job, as did YCM Laboratories in
Burbank, where Pete Commandini

was

in

charge of putting everything on modern
color safety stock, including the music track
from the 1931 edition.
The restoration came about
when Ben-Hur was selected by Thames
Television in London as the MGM picture to
be premiered by them at the London Film
Festival on November 24,1987, and to be
shown subsequently on TV. It has since had
its American premiere on January 13 as a

Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Easter Parade
and Baintree County.
Ben-Hur was being filmed in

Italy, but there were insuperable location
problems including bad weather and cum¬
bersome full-scale period ships used in the
battle resulted in several deaths. Pro¬
duction was moved to MGM's Culver City
lot. The celebrated chariot race was filmed
sea

on a

huge outdoor set at what is

now

the

intersection of Venice and La Cienega Bou¬
levards. Ingenious hanging miniatures,
which included a stadium full of moving
mechanical patrons, completed the impres¬
sive reconstruction of an ancient Roman
arena. Ramon Navarro as Judah Ben-Hur
and Francis X. Bushman as Messala were
the starring antagonists of the truly hair-

raising

race.

Incidentally,

one scene

that baf¬

later at the United States Film Festival at
Sundance Institute in Park City, Utah.
An original print of the Techni¬

fled audiences of the day showed Claire
MacDowall and Kathleen Key being
cleansed of leprosy by Christ as he struggled
toward Calvary. Karl Struss, utilizing the
then-new panchromatic film, did it with
colored makeups and a graduated green-to-

color footage
was
found in the
Czechoslovakian Film Archive. It totals about

red filter. He used the same principle in 1931
in the transformation scenes of Dr. Jekyll

10 minutes, but it seems like more in the
128-minute feature because of its deploy¬

and Mr.

part of the Los Angeles County Art
Museum's
tume

"Hollywood and History: Cos¬
Design in Film" exhibit, and a week

March 1988

Hyde.

A
American Cinematographer - March 1988

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