The Bells is a 1926 American silent crime film directed by James Young and starring Lionel Barrymore and Boris Karloff. It was based on an 1867 French stage play called Le Juif Polonais (The Polish Jew) by Erckmann-Chatrian. The play was translated to English in 1871 by Leopold Lewis at which time it was retitled The Bells. The English version of the play was performed in the U.S. in the 19th century by Sir Henry Irving. Le Juif Polonais was also adapted into an opera of the same name in three acts by Camille Erlanger, composed to a libretto by Henri Cain.The play was adapted into a number of film adaptations; an Australian film in 1911 directed by W. J. Lincoln, a 1913 American film directed by Oscar Apfel, a 1918 American film The Bells (1918 film) directed by Ernest C. Warde, a 1925 British-Belgian film (aka Le juif polonais) directed by Harry Southwell, the 1926 Hollywood film starring Lionel Barrymore and Boris Karloff, and a British film in 1931 which starred Donald Caltrop as Mathias. Harry Southwell remade the film again later in Australia as The Burgomeister (1935).Footage from The Bells (1926) was re-used in two short films: The Mesmerist, and Light Is Calling by Bill Morrison.