A Jewish prince seeks to find his family and revenge himself upon his childhood friend who had him wrongly imprisoned.
Film critic Kevin Brownlow has called the chariot race sequence as creative and influential a piece of cinema as the famous Odessa Steps sequence in Sergei Eisenstein's "The Battleship Potemkin", which introduced modern concepts of film editing and montage to cinema. This scene has been much imitated. It was re-created virtually shot for shot in the 1959 remake, copied in the 1998 animated film "The Prince of Egypt", and more recently imitated in the pod race scene in the 1999 film "Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace" which was made almost 75 years later.
Strangely, the 1959 version is generally considered the definitive version, or more often people do not even realize an earlier version exists. But I dare say this is actually the superior version. With a good score, this is exciting and adventurous -- sword fights, the chariot race, and an interesting approach to Judeo-Roman history.
And, even more startling, if it is true that all those future stars appeared in the film as uncredited extras, this may be the most star-studded film of the 1920s.
Film critic Kevin Brownlow has called the chariot race sequence as creative and influential a piece of cinema as the famous Odessa Steps sequence in Sergei Eisenstein's "The Battleship Potemkin", which introduced modern concepts of film editing and montage to cinema. This scene has been much imitated. It was re-created virtually shot for shot in the 1959 remake, copied in the 1998 animated film "The Prince of Egypt", and more recently imitated in the pod race scene in the 1999 film "Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace" which was made almost 75 years later.
Strangely, the 1959 version is generally considered the definitive version, or more often people do not even realize an earlier version exists. But I dare say this is actually the superior version. With a good score, this is exciting and adventurous -- sword fights, the chariot race, and an interesting approach to Judeo-Roman history.
And, even more startling, if it is true that all those future stars appeared in the film as uncredited extras, this may be the most star-studded film of the 1920s.