An Alternative ‘Roman Spectacle’: Fragmentation,Invocations of Theatre,and Audience Engagement Strategy in Kalem’s 1907 Ben-Hur

Abstract

This article addresses the dual function of early twentieth-century film adaptations as both ‘fragmented’ narrative derivations of nineteenth-century literary and theatrical sources, and as complete, alternative narratives in themselves. This idea will be explored in a case study of the Kalem Company’s 1907 film adaptation of Lew Wallace’s historical novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880), read against the simultaneously circulating Klaw and Erlanger melodrama Ben-Hur (1899–1920). The thematic structure of the Kalem film as pure spectacle resisted the Christian moral initiative central to Wallace’s novel and the Klaw and Erlanger drama, inviting audiences to experience new patterns of emotional engagement with the story. Yet, compositional aspects of the Kalem film (chiefly in staging and acting style) appear to be clear invocations of theatre, demonstrating a fragmentation of expressive techniques in their adaptation from stage to screen, from one story version to another, and from one century to another.