Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ has renewed the controversy surrounding the portrayal of Jesus in films.
To read a biblical and theological analysis of the film by Fr Peter Malone MSC, president of SIGNIS, the World Catholic Association for Communication, click here.
To read a review of The Passion of the Christ click here,
to read about its impact on Jewish-Christian relations at the grassroots,
click here.
(Read about Cecil B. deMille's classic King of Kings here.)
This controversy has been with us from the beginning. Since the advent
of the cinema there have been at least 25 major portrayals of Jesus on
the silver screen.
The Salvation Army made Soldiers of the Cross in 1901. In 1909 they made Heroes of the Cross. Tragically in 1913, when the cinema was denounced as an agent of the devil, the film unit of the Salvation Army was closed down, and their films destroyed.
The famous Pathé Company of France made the life of Christ by the reel from 1905-1910. These were the most popular films of their day. Sid Oldcock directed From the Manger to the Cross in 1912 and the great American director D. W. Griffiths shot various New Testament scenes in Intolerance of 1916. Cecil B. DeMille knew an epic story when he read one, and so he made Kings of Kings in 1927.
By the 1930s the censors in Britain and America decreed that it was disrespectful to see Jesus in the cinema, so he became an extra in Barabbas (1935). The French had no such problem and so Jesus is centre stage in Golgotha (1935).
The embargo on the Jesus story was still in place in the 1950s, but he makes special guest appearances in Henry Koster’s The Robe (1953), William Wyler’s Ben Hur (1959) and Frank Borbage’s The Big Fisherman (1959).
It was not until Nicholas Ray’s remake of King of Kings (1961) that the Jesus story hit the big screen again in its own right. In 1965 Hollywood made the most expensive film then ever made with George Stevens’‚ The Greatest Story Ever Told. It bombed at the box office and so the days of the Jesus-epic were over.
An Italian Marxist, Pier Paulo Pasolini made one of the more important Jesus-films in 1964, The Gospel According to St Matthew. That opened the floodgates for filmmakers to think very differently about the gospel story.
Godspell appeared in 1973 and Jesus Christ Superstar was released in the same year. Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth came along in 1976, Dennis Potter’s Son of Man in 1978 and Peter Sykes’ Jesus in 1979.
One of the most controversial films set in the time of Jesus has him as a supporting character: Terry Jones’ Life of Brian was released in 1979. Equally controversial, but for very different reasons, was Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. And just when people might have been scared off the Jesus genre, the French-Canadian Denys Arcand had a smash box office and critical hit with Jesus of Montreal in 1989.
Interestingly the 1990s did not see one major film about Jesus on the big screen. He moved to the small screen and especially to video.
The founder of the Christian church is usually portrayed in film as white, middle class and handsome. His Jewish faith has never been centre stage, and except for Pasolini his ethnicity has not counted for much either.
It seems everything in the Jesus-film genre has been done … except we are still waiting for a filmmaker who takes each of the gospel texts seriously enough not to conflate them into one story, allowing each of the inspired portraits of Jesus to be seen in their respective richness and detail.
It would be good to have a Jesus film that also shows the context in which the story of Jesus was written, and the way we believe the Holy Spirit works in and through the writers experience in forming the text, and our experience in hearing it and living it out.
And while recent filmmakers like the Jesus they find in the gospels, it is usually clear that they don’t like the Christian church very much. It would be nice if—just once—a director could see that if it weren’t for the tradition of the Christian church they wouldn’t have a gospel from which to be inspired.
So even before the release of The Passion of the Christ, I am still waiting to get a fresh and modern quartet of films entitled: Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.
If The Matrix, Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings can do it, why not the greatest story ever told?
Fr Richard Leonard SJ is the director of the Australian Catholic Film Office.
Some say that King of Kings was the best film made by legendrary film-maker Cecil B. DeMille. It opened in New York to huge audiences in 1927—just prior to the advent of the ‘talkies’—and was the first film ever shown at Man’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.
DeMille was careful to approach the production of the film with reverence. Members of the religions were present to give advice during the filming process, and representatives of the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist and Moslem faiths were present on the first day of shooting to offer prayers.
When
in costume, H. B. Warner, who played Jesus, spoke to no-one but the director.
He ate on location alone, and was transported to and from the set veiled
and in a closed car. He was also forbidden to be seen in public during
production.
DeMille wanted to show the masculine side of Christ, the man who ‘had a body hard enough to withstand 40 days of fasting and long journeys on foot and nights of sleepless prayer … there could well have been a note of admiration in the voice of Pilate when he said of him: Behold the Man!’
This did not mean that the compassionate, spiritual side of Jesus was ignored, and DeMille went to great lengths to cast an actor who could play Jesus with ‘… tenderness, authority yet restraint, compassion tempered with strength, a touch of gentle humour, enjoyment of small and simple things, a divine love of his brethren and enemies alike …’
DeMille donated the proceeds of the film to charity.
These measures did not exempt DeMille from the controversy that surrounds the ‘Jesus’ film, and it was banned in many American cities.
This information is taken from ‘DeMille: The man and his pictures’ by Gabe Essoe and Raymond Lee.
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