The story of Jesus Christ, considered by Catholic’s as the greatest story ever told, has received countless film renderings form large Hollywood epics to animated cartoons. In 1964, with his third major film, the poet, director and Marxist, Pier Paolo Pasolini, directed a film based on the Gospel of Matthew from the New Testament.
The background on why he chose to make this film, is recalled by a time when Pasolini was stuck in a City being visited by the Pope. Unable to move out of his hotel room, all he had to read was a copy of the New testament. He read each Gospel many times and in so doing decided he wanted to film a rendition of the Mathew interpretation, which he deemed the most realistic and tame.
Pasolini decided to incorporate Italian New-Realism into the movie and used mostly non-Actors in his large cast. He chose them by their looks and physical features as he wanted to show the Holy Land in the image that appeared in his imagination. He chose a Spanish economics student, Enrique Irazoqui to play Jesus, which was fitting, since Enrique himself was half Jewish. Appropriate for the portrayal of the Jewish Jesus. Enrique was very gentle physically and had a humble way about him. Since he was not an actor, I am sure that he portrayed Jesus as himself. What can’t be taken away was his powerful persona, with his dark bushy eyebrows and piercing glare, that resulted in a very convincing performance.
Pasolini decided to forego the use of a script and used the actual passages from the Gospel for all the dialogue in his movie. Since the Gospel is poetic in its style with a goal of preaching to the faithful, the film left me with a distinct Politically left feel to the sacred story. All the more amazing when taken in context to the fact that the Catholic church believes this movie to be the best cinematic version of the story of Jesus ever made. This is amazing, considering the church is very conservative and right wing. In Pasolini’s movie, Jesus speaks about social justice and the abhorrence of the rich and powerful and he does so through the actual words taken from the Gospel.
The movie was filmed on location in the desert landscapes of Southern Italy and made use of centuries old and sometime ancient buildings that exist in that area still today. These landscapes look very much like a Roman era desert world, that emphasized the neo-realistic almost documentary style of the movie.
The film’s great achievement is that it succeeds in bringing to life the New Testament and making it relevant to the modern world.
Unlike some other director’s such as Mel Gibson, Pasolini was not interested in villainizing the Jews, but since he decided to keep the original text and story intact, there is still retained, for those who want to see this, the idea that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus, rather than the Romans. Anti-Semitism has many of its root causes emerge from this notion, which for me as a Jew, left me a little bit taken aback by the movie. I do not believe however that Pasolini meant any harm to Jews or anyone and he succeeds with his commendable film in emphasizing the humanity of Jesus, and this powerful story that changed the world. That is the beauty of this movie.
1001 Movies before you die 