In telling you that ╥Ben Hur,╙ which goes to the Piccadilly to-day for a run of four weeks, is a film poor in thought, acting, and direction I am quite aware that, for the sake of a critical scruple, I am wasting your time and mine. You will have to see ╥Ben Hur,╙ just as I have, to write about it. The thing has become too big for us ╤ we are irresistibly drawn to try our own judgments on a film that has towered above so many conversations, lined-up queues for so many London theatres, occupied so much space in the British and American press. The important fact about ╥Ben Hur╙ is, not that it is such a poor film, but that, being so poor, it has achieved such a fabulous reputation. Few picture-goers can be incurious enough not to want to see for themselves how it was done.
My own opinion of it is that the producers succeeded, not through any knowledge of the nature of a film, but through an implicit knowledge of the nature of the public. ╥Ben Hur╙ is not a film ╤ it is not a formal unit of any kind. It is the cunning assemblage on a screen of all
the subjects that provoke the most pleasant emotions in the watcher ╤ the great shop-window display of passion and sentiment.
When you have paid your money to see ╥Ben Hur╙ you will find yourself able to sample, one after another, the kinema╒s most popular lines in emotional wares. Under that fine drawing title, which catches you by all the happy associations of your young reading days, you will find love and danger, jealousy, tenderness, mobility, excitement, comfortable religion, and nebulous patriotism spread out, ticketed and priced in dollars before your eyes. Some one of the samples will surely take your fancy ╤ the fire of Ramon Navarro╒s Ben Hur, the modesty of May MacAvoy╒s Esther, the scope and eagerness of the early scenes in Bethlehem, the tumult of the chariot races, the measure of the galley╒s movement, the horror of the valley of lepers, the sheer weight and volume of crowds. Each article is a striking example of its kind. Together they dazzle you from the dark setting of the screen surround; the first as good as the last, the last as the first, without sequence, connection, or formal hierarchy.
When ╥Ben Hur╙ was first shown in England, at the Tivoli, the manager and press agent, knowing very well the importance to a film of the mental attitude created by its original run, were careful to emphasise the shop-window aspect. They never presented ╥Ben Hur╙ as a unity. Outside the theatre were big programme-sheets, giving to the minute the time of every spectacular incident in the film, as if each were a separate item in the theatre╒s bill of fare. Checking the time-sheet with our watches, we could pick and choose whether we should go in for the sea fight or the quadriga race, the processions of triumph through the streets of Jerusalem, the mutiny in the galleys, the quarrel with the Roman Messala, or the miraculous healing of the mother and sister of Ben Hur. We could turn over the goods and make our own selections. Thus suggestion of freedom in this idea was completely and ridiculously compelling.
By cunning exhibition methods designed to show up the commercial high-lights of the film, by a skilful inducement of society to lead the way into the shop window to look at the goods ╤ for who can resist buying entertainment elbow to elbow with a real princess? ╤╥Ben Hur╙ has had the benefit of its innate showman╒s qualities at the Tivoli, where it broke all records, and more recently at a score of theatres in the outer London area. Otherwise intelligent men and women talk about it in hushed voices. I have been asked whether I was not proud to have the honour of reviewing it. Certain acquaintances of mine are rumoured to have seen it forty-nine times. And I do not doubt that its four weeks in Manchester and its booking at good, bad, and indifferent picture-houses all over the country will only confirm the conclusions of its London run ╤ that ╥Ben Hur,╙ with its excellent window display, invites the public to participate in what is probably the best and biggest sale that the movies have ever made.
