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?

Comments

[GCarter]

How can a cinephile such as yourself not mention Ray's King of Kings? One of the best movies about Jesus ever!

[Filmbrain]

Ah yes...Jeffrey Hunter. Personally, I think Rip Torn steals the show as Judas. This is indeed one of the better entries -- sort of Ray's Rebel With a Cause.

[AndyHorbal]

I'll get no points for originality, but I truly love the austerity and the "Neorealism" of Pasolini's The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. I think that it's easy to forget that the "greatest story ever told" is a legitimately complex, fascinating story (whether it's the story of a man or of the son of God) that doesn't need much by way of adornment.

Another one of my favorites is Denys Arcand's Jesus of Montreal. Arcand doesn't belabor the connection between Daniel and Jesus which, again, draws attention to the... "story-ness" of the Passion. Whether you believe the story is "true" or not, I think that it's useful to reflect on why it's told the way it is.

[Filmbrain]

Two excellent choices.

I can remember the first time I saw The Gospel According to Saint Matthew -- I must have been around 18, and I knew nothing about the film, let alone Pasolini. I was blown away when Odetta's version of Motherless Child shows up on the soundtrack. What a gorgeous, heartfelt film that is.

[Brian Darr]

TO my embarrassment I actually haven't seen any of the titles mentioned except for the Scorsese film. Which leaves me to cite L'Age D'Or as my own oh-so-blasphemous favorite.

[girish]

Since Brian has confessed, I can too.
I haven't even seen any of the above save the Bunuel that Brian mentioned (although I like Pasolini's films a lot).
For my favorite, and to define the genre loosely: probably a toss-up between Monty Python's Life Of Brian and Bunuel's The Milky Way.

And I hope Filmbrain will excuse my dredging up this further bit of evidence of his affection for the Jesus genre: his maiden blog post! :-)

[Filmbrain]

Oh dear....I was so much younger then. . .

[David]

Does Au Hasard Balthazar count?

[Filmbrain]

Absolutely! The greatest of the four-legged Christ figures.

[cinetrix]

Pasolini's Il vangelo secondo Matteo and Hartley's The Book of Life.

[cinetrix]

Just realized the link above is to my post from March 2, 2004, same day as your first. How weird is that?

[mkh]

I have a soft spot in my head for Greaser's Palace. I hope I can be forgiven.

[Duncan]

Um, um, erm, that's "disperses", not "disburses," unless they're handing out money.

I was going to mention Pasolini's Gospel According to St. Matthew too, though I haven't yet watched it all the way through. But others, I see, already did.

Scorsese's Last Temptation is just plain awful. Much of that is the source material, I suppose (Kazantzakis' novel), but the movie itself is bloated, self-indulgent, incoherent, and way, way too reverential for me. How about that permed Harvey Keitel as Judas? I still remember him, 15 years after the only time I saw the movie. The only good thing about it was Peter Gabriel's soundtrack music, which I promptly went out and bought.

My favorite Christ movie is a short film I saw in 1968 or so, at a small Catholic college near the small Indiana town where I grew up. I don't remember the title, it might have simply been "The Clown." It's set in a circus, and a clown is the Christ figure. At this remove I can't remember what led up to the Clown's martyrdom, but it doesn't really matter since in almost all retellings of the story, starting with the gospels, Jesus has to die because he's so *good*, and everybody else is so *bad.* Also, it was God's plan from before the Creation, foretold in the prophets, etc. etc. But I was haunted by the clown version. Maybe because, as an alienated, leftwing-wannabe, bookworm teenage gayboy, I felt alone in a hostile uncomprehending crowd too. (I suspect something like that is a big factor in the psychological power of the Passion story for many people.)

Incidentally, to move outside film for a moment, Terrence McNally's 'gay Jesus' play Corpus Christi doesn't work for me either, for the same reasons. Though come to think of it, it does bring out the alienated high-school kid aspect.

Like you, Filmbrain, I (thankfully) grew up without religious upbringing. Lapsed Catholic mother, lapsed Protestant atheist father. I can't remember when I began pursuing the questions that tend to be delegated to religion (ethics, the meaning of life, and so on), but it must have been in high school, because by the time I started college I was interested enough in philosophy to take a course in it. I agree that those questions are important, but I don't think that religion deals with them any better than secular philosophy. Often much worse, because of the authoritarian streak in religion, as opposed to philosophy, where at least in principle "Why?" questions need to be addressed. "Because God fucking says so!", the standard religious answer, doesn't cut it.

My big problem with the revisionist Christ movies is that they don't have much thought behind them. I don't want movies to preach, necessarily, but serious filmmakers should have done some thinking about their subjects; it should be implicit in the result. These movies have cipher-Jesuses. They're not sure why he's a good guy, but he must be, because he's, like, Jesus! But if you look at the gospels, they present Jesus as a wandering revivalist, end-of-the-world, hellfire-and-brimstone faith healer. More like Pat Robertson than Willem Dafoe. The "historical" Jesus is lost to us, beyond the historical likelihood that he was crucified in Palestine around 30 or 33 CE. Attempts to reconstruct him beyond that founder on the need to make him a Good Guy. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, but faith healers are almost always conscious hustlers. I don't see Jesus as a positive figure, so these movies, which ignore his less attractive side, and don't flesh out his goodness, don't work for me.

[phyrephox]

I haven't seen many, but I do like the turn Peter O'Toole's character takes in THE RULING CLASS (Medak, 1972).

[Filmbrain]

Cinetrix -
Whoa! I remember that post! You'll recall I was reading you heavily at the time -- one of the main inspirations for starting this blog.

MKH -
I'm a huge Downey fan, and Greaser's Palace is one of his best. "If you can feel, you'll heal." Shame the DVD is out of print. More people need to see this film.

Duncan -
I'd love to hire you as an editor. Christ knows I need one!

As for the revisionist films, doesn't Last Temptation exactly meet the criteria you ask for? Isn't this Scorsese, a Catholic, dealing with the issue of Jesus the man vs. the one of myth? He's confused, angry, scared -- in other words, human.

Both JC Superstar and Godspell focus less on the hocus-pocus than they do the all-too-human side of JC. Many of Christ's teachings are similar to those of the Buddha, and that's not a bad thing.

As for the gospels, have you read any of those that didn't make the final cut in the bible, including the woman-hating Gospel of Thomas?

Personally, I buy into the whole theory that Jesus was the spokesman for the cult of John the Baptist, and that the crucifixion was (in the words of L.D. Meagher) "a publicity stunt gone awry."

[David Lowery]

I want to throw in a second nod to Hartley's Book Of Life. PJ Harvey playing Mary Magdalene - how much better can you get?

On that note (and in answer to that question), one of the greatest missed opportities in Christological film history occurred when Vincent Gallo dropped out of Ferrara's Mary.

[Jordan Hoffman]

If it is Jesus movies you dig - the best of them all, if the truth must be told, is Ultrachrist!.

[Steve C.]

My Jesus-movie education is lacking, so I'm gonna hafta side with Scorsese and Last Temptation. Unless, of course, you want to count Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter...

And wait... does that last paragraph mean you've actually SEEN I Saw Jesus Die? If so, I'm insane with jealousy. *sound of teeth gnashing*

[Filmbrain]

Yes, I've made it all the way through I Saw Jesus Die, but it wasn't easy. A miserable looking Jesus is forced to watch some of the most unappealing individuals to ever appear in a porn film have all sorts of kinky sex. There's a message in there, or so I've been told, but I certainly didn't spot it.

[la_depressionada]

although not strictly speaking a jesus movie, i have a soft spot for hail mary, but that is probably because i associate it with my live-fast parisian days.

i pretty much love last temptation, particularly the LES accents of the apostles. reminds me a little of tony curtis in spartacus --

For whom did you practice this wondrous talent?

For duh children of my master...
whom I awlso tauwght duh classics.