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Context Film / BenHur1907

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1[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1907benhur.png]]
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3''Ben-Hur'' is a thirteen minutes-long silent film from 1907. It is the first ever screen adaptation of [[Literature/BenHur the Lew Wallace novel]] of the same name and features William S. Hart, who would later become a major star of cowboy movies, as Messala.
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5See also the [[Film/BenHur1925 1925]], [[Film/BenHur1959 1959]] and [[Film/BenHur2016 2016]] versions of the story.
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7!!This film has the examples of:
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9* {{Demythification}}: The film omits all that Jesus stuff, which might be slightly missing the point, seeing how the novel was subtitled "''A Tale of the Christ''."
10* TheMockbuster: This was an unauthorized adaptation that provoked a successful lawsuit by the book's copyright holders. Silent film blogger Fritzi Kramer [[http://moviessilently.com/2016/03/29/silent-movie-myth-the-first-ben-hur-film-was-made-in-1907-and-all-subsequent-versions-are-remakes/ makes the case]] that, as a low-budget production meant to ride on the coattails of a more famous property (in this case, the book and its authorized stage adaptations), it should be regarded as an early example of mockbuster.
11* PragmaticAdaptation: The film runs for only thirteen minutes. How do you cram ''Ben-Hur'' into only thirteen minutes? Well, you omit the backstory with Ben-Hur and Messala entirely, you cover with a single title card the whole section with Ben-Hur as a galley slave who is eventually adopted by Arrius, you omit Ben-Hur's romance with Esther, and you end the movie with the chariot race.
12* TimeSkip: The film skips over the whole time in which Ben-Hur is in a SlaveGalley, presumably because it would be too expensive to film. Instead, we get intertitles just mentioning that it happened.
13* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Ben-Hur's mother and sister are still arrested, but their fates afterwards are never mentioned.

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