Restoration
Current prints of the 1925 version are from the Turner-supervised restoration. The restoration includes the color tints and Technicolor sections, set to resemble the original theatrical release. There is an addition of a newly recorded stereo orchestral soundtrack by Carl Davis with the London Philharmonic Orchestra which was originally recorded for a Thames Television screening of the movie.
It can be found on DVD, complete with the Technicolor segments, in the four-disc collector's edition of the 1959 version starring Charlton Heston. As well as in the 2011 "Fiftieth Anniversary Edition" Blu-ray Collector's Edition three-disc box set.
This remains one of the few films at Rotten Tomatoes to maintain a 100% freshness rating.
Read more about this topic: Ben-Hur (1925 film)
Famous quotes containing the word restoration:
“In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”
—Irving Kristol (b. 1920)
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“The King [Charles II] after the Restoration accused the poet, Edmund Waller, of having made finer verses in praise of Oliver Cromwell than of himself; to which he agreed, saying, that Fiction was the soul of Poetry.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)