Ben-Hur has had mixed fortunes in the cinema. From the beginning the story of a Jewish prince’s conflict with the Roman Empire caught the popular imagination when first published as a novel by Lew Wallace under the title Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ in 1880, and it was first filmed as a silent short in 1907.

But its second screen adaptation for a 1925 silent film almost created a disaster epic around itself. During shooting in Italy its producers, Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg both fell ill; the former had to have all his teeth removed, the latter had a heart attack. Director and writers were replaced, as well as the scriptwriter and the lead actor; the production was shifted from Italy back to Los Angeles, with a budget already running to $4 million. Some 214 days were spent shooting. It lost money, “but probably only about half a million”, according to film historian David Thomson – so in Hollywood terms it was regarded as a great salvage job.