Бен-Гур: Первая экранизация романа Лью Уоллеса (1907)

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.

With an original total running time of just 15 minutes, Kalem's "Roman Spectacle" only highlights some of the principal events described in the novel, although notably excluding Judah Ben Hur's encounters with Jesus Christ or his presence at Christ's crucifixion. The film company in its advertising in 1907 describes the release being composed of "Sixteen Magnificent Scenes" with intertitles introducing screen presentations such as "Jerusalem Rebels Against Roman Mis rule", "The Family of Hur", "Ben Hur in Chains to the Galleys", and "Ben Hur and Messala—The Challenge".

Actor William S. Hart, who would later become the silent era's foremost star of "cowboy pictures", allegedly reprised his role as Messala in Kalem's production, having already played the part on stage in the highly successful Broadway production of Ben Hur, which ran for 194 performances between late November 1899 and May 1900. His participation in this film, however, remains unverified from period records and is therefore suspect as fact. It appears that Hart's well documented work in the earlier Broadway adaptation of Wallace's novel became erroneously linked to the 1907 short. If Hart were indeed cast in the film, it is surprising that Kalem in its advertising did not widely promote the presence of an established Broadway actor in the motion picture, especially a veteran of a Ben Hur production in the "legitimate" theatre. With regard to the identity of the actor who performed in the film's title role, misinformation and confusion also persist in modern sources. Many of those sources cite a professional film actor, "Herman Rottger", as Ben Hur in Kalem’s production. Actually, only one verified cast member in the 1907 production, one who possessed a nearly identical name—"Herman Rottjer"—was an employee with Pain's Fireworks Company. That entertainment company on summer nights since 1879 had staged for audiences at a "massive outdoor stadium and lake at Manhattan Beach" spectacular pyrotechnic displays to simulate famous battles, revolutions, historic fires, and natural disasters such as the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD and its destruction of the Roman town of Pompeii. In the early 1900s, Pain's live pyrodramas included elaborate sets of Roman architecture and staged chariot races. In Kalem’s large advertisement for Ben Hur in the December 7, 1907 issue of the trade journal The Moving Picture World, the studio credits Rottjer as the "Chief Chariotier" in the film. Contrary to information given in other sources, Rottjer did not die in 1917.

Although Kalem initially planned to use props and "standing scenery" from Pain's, the studio acquired most of its production needs elsewhere and opted, perhaps due to budget and scheduling constraints, to film the project's chariot race and other scenes at the Sheepshead Bay Race Track, which was located close to Manhattan Beach. The track by October 1907 was closed for the season and was immediately available for Kalem to use.

While Rottjer was credited as the film's "Chief Chariotier" and likely drove Ben Hur's chariot in the staged race at Sheepshead, the other charioteers were off duty soldiers of Brooklyn's "3rd Battery" of the National Guard. Members of that local military unit were well known for their expertise in horsemanship. As a testament to their equine abilities, soldiers of Brooklyn's Third Battery in August 1908 would later set a world record for "military endurance" by riding 50 miles from Nanuet, New York to Brooklyn in just six hours, much of the time traveling at night and over mountain roads. Pain's Fireworks Company provided the chariots driven by Rottjer and the guardsmen, along with some other props and related gear. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on February 16, 1908, the city's Gazette Times reported on the presentation of Ben Hur at a new local theater, a showing enhanced by actors on site who performed sound effects and spoke dialog generally synchronized with the footage projected on screen:At the new Savoy theater in South Highland avenue, near Center avenue, which was opened yesterday afternoon and last night in an auspicious manner, the same bill that pleased yesterday's large crowds and will be continued until the middle of next week. This repertoire includes a splendid production of "Ben Hur" by means of the motion picture camera, and with all the sound and speech accompaniments necessary for perfect realism. The Moving Picture World in February 1908 also updated its readers on audience reactions to Kalem's release. "'Ben Hur'", reported the trade journal, "drew such crowds to a theater in Atlanta, Ga., that the police had to aid in clearing the aisles and lobby." Later in the month the film industry publication added, "A Western newspaper in commenting on a local show refers to 'Ben Hur' as 'a wonderfully realistic and pleasing presentation of Lew Wallace's famous story and a triumph of the kinetoscopic art.'"

In addition to being the first screen adaptation of Lew Wallace's novel, the production is noteworthy in film history as well for establishing precedent in copyright law in the United States. The motion picture was released nearly three years after Wallace's death, but it was produced by Kalem without the permission of the author's estate. Former Kalem screenwriter Gauntier remarked in her previously cited 1928 autobiography that in the early silent era it was a common practice for studios to ignore copyrights and dismiss any proprietary rights of original authors or creators of intellectual properties. The case was initially decided against Kalem, the primary defendant, in May 1908. Three and a half years later, on appeal to the United States Supreme Court, justices in the case Kalem Co. v. Harper Bros. issued their final ruling against the film company. That ruling on November 13, 1911 established the precedent that all motion picture production companies must first secure the film rights of any previously published work still under copyright before commissioning a screenplay based on that work. Earlier, in 1908, perhaps seeking to capitalize on the growing publicity of its case against Kalem and the release of the film, Harper & Brothers published the lavishly designed illustrated book The Chariot Race from Ben Hur by Lew Wallace, which highlights only that event from the novel. Complementing the book's text are color illustrations by Ukrainian artist Sigismond Ivanowski.

Kalem's losses in copyright litigation and the related court injunctions limiting and then preventing presentations of the company's short, the film "for the most part disappeared". For many years, even the Library of Congress did not possess a full copy of the 1907 release, but that federal institution, the Museum of Modern Art, and other repositories later located and acquired prints. Now in the public domain, additional full and partial copies of Kalem's Ben Hur are available for public viewing on online streaming services such as YouTube. Before court ordered injunctions and the final copyright infringement rulings against Kalem were effectively enforced, copies of Ben Hur circulated in Europe as well as the United States. Various distributors at the time offered to sell both standard "plain stock" copies as well as hand colored prints of the 1000 foot reel, which consists of approximately 16,000 individual frames. One American film supply catalog in 1908 offered black and white prints of Ben Hur for $120 ($120.0 in 1908 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years USD today). Color versions produced in France, painted by hand in Paris, sold for an additional $150, costing $270 per copy ($270.0 in 1908 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years today) or 15 cents more per foot in 1908. No copies or fragments of the hand tinted version of the film are currently known to exist.