Early Film Scavenger Hunt P.1

 

Why do you like this early silent film? What is so interesting about it? What are two common things you noticed about the movie you saw while searching for your video on YouTube?

    I like this early silent film because it's set in ancient Rome, depicting a story with a culturally relevant climax. Some things that were interesting about the film was the creative set design, the action, and the context surrounding it. As it was an American movie set in ancient Rome, the filmmakers had to be creative about the set design and shooting locations. Thus, they went in a more traditional stage play-esque direction, using painted walls and platforms for the set, in combination with actual locations. The most action packed scene was the chariot race and I was surprised about how many horses they had. Thinking back, it is likely that horses were more commonplace thus easier to get access to for filmmaking that they would be now, but it still came to a shock to me. Something interesting regarding the context is that this film had led to a pivotal case in copyright infringement. This film had been based on Lew Wallace's novel, Ben-Hur, without acquiring any rights to use it. Wallace had then sued the Kallem Company for depicting parts of his book on screen without permission and won. Two common things that I noticed about the movie while searching for the video on YouTube were the poor image quality and the eccentric overacting. This film, especially has poor image quality; however, due to early technology and degradation over time, many of the films of this era have very poor image quality. I believe, partly to combat the poor quality, the actors had to overact so that we can see what they're trying to express. They likely also do this to make up for the lack of dialogue and the lack of text besides the ones that introduce the scene so that the audience has some semblance of an idea of what's going on.