Ben Hur and the History of “Analog” Editing’s Technology - Text 2
Although experiments in editing had taken place in various “trick films” before, as Scott Higgins has noted, on the whole, “filmmakers before 1906 treated the continuous shot as an autonomous unit in which all action occurs within a given space from a single viewpoint.”[1] Coming at the moment editing begins to emerge as a self-conscious narrative and formal strategy, Ben Hur consists of several scenes edited together: the story is told in a series of tableaux, representing the events leading up to the film’s spectacular climax, the chariot race. Each shot, though, is still a single “autonomous unit,” within which the action is framed from a fixed perspective, a “single viewpoint,” not varied by any more complex editing.
The chariot race itself is shot from such a fixed position, with the spectators at the center of the frame, past whom the chariots speed at regular intervals. The camera does not move, and there is no attempt to provide any other perspective on the race. There are, however, several cuts in the scene, which function as ellipses to compress the actual time of the race. But no attempt is made to break the action up in a more complex manner.
In 1925, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, directed by Fred Niblo, was released by MGM. One of the most elaborate and expensive productions of the era, with its almost two and a half hours, it is epic in scope – and it contains the first version of the chariot race constructed visually and dramatically through quite complex editing. Released a year after the introduction of the Moviola, it is an example of what could be achieved with this new system, which allowed considerably more control over of the editing process:
Magnifying the image and running it smoothly at a constant rate using an electric motor and a shutter, the Moviola gave editors newfound accuracy. It quickly became standard equipment, helping cutters more effectively meet Hollywood’s standards of elegance and fluidity.[2]
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is an exemplary instance of such “elegance and fluidity.” The chariot race, especially, is an extraordinarily complex scene, offering several alternating perspectives as well as long synoptic views and close-ups of the dramatic action and dynamic and effective moving-camera shots.
