Christ at 24fps (Or: Everything I Know About the Gospels I Learned From Andrew Lloyd Webber)

In a recent game of cinephilic confessions, I admitted to an odd obsession with Jesus movies. I say odd because I'm not a Christian, nor do I buy into the whole son of what's-his-name thing. I realized, after a time, that the obsession began after seeing my first two JC films in 1973 — two musicals that took great liberties with the source material. I grew up in an unrelentingly secular household — with a Jewish mother and a Protestant father who figured it would be best to avoid the subject of religion altogether. Neither baptized nor bar mitzvahed, it was only for weddings and funerals that I entered a house of worship, and my knowledge of Christian morals was limited to what I learned on Davey and Goliath (which, as a child, seemed nothing more than a show about a boy and his talking dog). Needless to say, my soul is no doubt doomed to remain trapped wherever it is godless heathens wind up — assuming of course that the Judeo-Christian endgame goes as planned. It was repeated viewings of The Incredible Shrinking Man (on a 16mm print we had at home) that got me started on the big-ticket existential questions, and there's no doubt that Jack Arnold's film had an influence on my decision to become a card-carrying Buddhist in my late teens. But that another story. Arriving in 1973 at the tail end of the hippie and flower power movement, both Norman Jewison's Jesus Christ Superstar and David Greene's Godspell seem determined to reclaim Christ as the OG of the counterculture set, and both take a rather unconventional approach to the story of his final days. Set entirely to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's rock opera (which does indeed rock), Jesus Christ Superstar is premised on artificiality — as the film opens, a group of hippies are stepping off a bus somewhere in the middle of an Israeli desert. Anachronistic costumes and props are unloaded as this group of (perhaps) actors steps into their designated roles. Roman guards wear lilac wife-beaters and carry machine guns, rabbis wear tall black hats and bejeweled chest plates fastened with leather straps, while Pilate and Herod dress like glam rockers. (Only Jesus wears the traditional white robe.) The group soon disperses, and in gorgeous Todd-AO (the last film shot in this format), heads off to perform their rockin' passion play. Yet after the crucifixion (oops...spoilers!), all of the actors re-board the bus, with the exception of Jesus (Ted Neely) who remains hanging on the cross. Was it a case of thespian megalomania, or did life just simply imitate art? Either way, the film had quite an impact on the eight year-old Filmbrain, who had no idea Mary Magdalene wasn't in fact a Hawaiian beauty, or that King Herod didn't throw bagels at Jesus. (The casting of Carl Anderson as Judas was enough to outrage both Jewish and Black organizations, albeit for very different reasons.) But regardless of any inaccuracies or creative casting choices, Jesus Christ Superstar seemed incredibly cool, and the 2-LP soundtrack was at the top of my playlist for months. My impression of the film hasn't changed all that much over the years, and I've come to appreciate it's take on Christ as populist rebel who worries the powers that be. He's a media superstar at the "top of the poll" that has "no army, no fighting, no slogans", and who would have been even bigger if it wasn't for the fact that "Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication." There are moments of self-reflexivity throughout, but none better than the crowd member who tells Jesus that he'll "escape in the final reel." Ted Neely (who has a great set of pipes) makes for the perfect rebel-Christ, and though he's pissed off throughout most of the film (as if realizing the futility of his struggle), he's still incredibly cool. At the opposite end of cool lies Godspell, Stephen Schwartz's sunshine-pop take on the gospel of St. Matthew. In David Greene's filmed version of the Off-Broadway musical, a goofier, less intense group of hippies convene at Central Park's Bethesda Fountain and begin following a guy in a mock-Superman T-shirt (Victor Garber, looking like a proto-Mork). His disciples come across as a group of third-year clown and mime school dropouts, and the entire film finds them performing little skits, while singing and dancing all over a seemingly vacant New York City (including the roof of the then-unfinished World Trade Center.) Yet even though Godspell obfuscates the gospel and focuses more on the peace, love, and harmony aspects of Jesus' teachings, it still has a vague "Up With People!" feel to it. Still, the songs are infectious (try getting Day By Day out of your head) and Greene succeeds in filming New York City without once ever seeing another living soul (an impressive task).

These images of Christ as temperamental rock star, or foppish song and dance man lasted for years, but were eventually shattered when I came across the larger-than-life epics that set out to truly bring the gospels to the big screen. Films like DeMille's The King of Kings, and George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told. Suddenly the issues got more complex, and the story a bit nastier, but my fascination never waned. Both DeMille and Stevens are guilty of grandiosity, but both films can be tremendously entertaining if you don't get caught up in their zeal. The endless roster of cameo performances in The Greatest Story Ever Told makes it all worthwhile — from Charlton Heston's John the Baptist, to Shelley Winters as a blind woman healed, to John Wayne as the Roman centurion who, with just a single line, gives one of the worst deliveries in all of cinema's history — "Truly, this man was the son of ghaaad." As the years went by, the number of new and interesting Jesus movies declined tremendously. Of course there was the near-masterpiece that is The Last Temptation of Christ, but recent films do little more than play into the hands of a fundamentalist Christian right that is hell-bent on controlling not only this country, but a good chunk of the rest of the planet as well. Mel Gibson's atrocious Jesus-Snuff-Porno was the final straw for me. Fortunately there is DVD and the Internet, where one can track down such long forgotten gems as The Gospel Road (Johnny and June Carter Cash sing us the gospels), and I Saw Jesus Die, a Danish film that is perhaps the only entry in the Jesus-porno genre. Don't ask. Rather than compile a list of the best and worst, I'd love to hear from all of you — what are some of your favorite Jeezy Creezy movies?