Ben Hur, 1925: When Christian Movies Were Just … Movies

Last updated on: September 2, 2015 at 7:55 am by Paul Asay

Ben Hur, 1925: When Christian Movies Were Just … Movies 2015-09-02T07:55:10-06:00 Paul Asay

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A few days ago, a reporter interviewed me about the Christian movie industry—whether there should be a Christian movie genre at all and whether Christian movies will ever go mainstream. I told her, essentially, yes and no.

Yes, there should be a Christian movie genre because that’s what the market demands: There are certain Christians who love Christian movies, and a few who won’t see anything but. The fact that War Room—a movie explicitly about prayer—finished second this weekend at the box office to Straight Outta Compton—is proof that explicitly Christian movies have a place in the market.

But no, such movies won’t ever have wide crossover appeal. Because really, if you’re not a Christian, would you really want to spend your Friday night watching a movie about prayer? It’s a hard sell even for me.

But this wasn’t always so.

I’ve been watching Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Not the famous 1959 version starring Charlton Heston ….

… but the 1925 silent movie with Ramón Novarro as Judah Ben-Hur and Francis X. Bushman as Messala.

Silent movies are, admittedly, an acquired taste. But they were made at a time when Hollywood was awash in roaring ‘20s money and movies were big. Really big. Ben-Hur, with its cast of 150,000, was about the biggest. It took three years and $3.9 million to create, making it the most expensive movie of the silent film era. Second-unit director B. Reeves Eason used 200,000 feet of film (that’s about 37 miles) to record the chariot scene alone. “The eye of man has never seen its equal!” the trailer declares. This was a special-effects bonanza, the Star Wars: Episode VII of its day.

But as you can tell from the full title, Ben-Hur was also a deeply Christian story. Scenes featuring Jesus were filmed in rudimentary color, and its makers advertised it with lines like “The Picture every Christian Ought to See!”, which feels like it was pulled right from the marketing strategy of any number of today’s faith-based flicks.

Ben-Hur, made at a time when there was no such thing as a “Christian” movie genre, blended deep faith with a blockbuster mentality. The result was a cinematic tour de force, and one of the few films that has a 100 percent “freshness” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. (The Academy Award-winning1959 remake, by comparison, has an 88 percent “freshness” rating.)

Will we ever see a Christian movie be so influential and have such broad acclaim? Maybe. But, by definition, I doubt we’ll be calling it a Christian movie.

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