Bible movies: the few I really, truly like

A pre-Easter gratis post

When it comes to Bible movies, I am hard to please. There are some I don’t mind watching when those with me wish to view them again: for example, 2005’s The Nativity Story (which only an unrepentant Grinch could hate), or 1993’s made-for-television film, Abraham, with Richard Harris in the titular role, and its sequels, all based on the stories of Old Testament figures — perhaps, the last made-for-television biblical movies worth anyone’s time or patience.

I am especially unenthusiastic about “Jesus movies.” Ignoring the tangential ones — Jesus Christ Superstar (I can't say I even like the music all that much anymore, although I really “dug it” in my teens) or the lamentable Godspell or the even more lamentable The Last Temptation of Christ (I’ve always found reading the lachrymose Kazantzakis close to unendurable anyway, and I had read the novel long before Scorsese’s cinematic version was made, but the latter was — and I would never have thought it possible beforehand — even more excruciating than slogging through that emotionally overcharged book) — as I say, ignoring the tangential ones, the rest mostly vary from so-so to atrocious. I will confess, with no hesitation, that I’ve tried to appreciate favorably Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and can’t. I’ve viewed it three times, wishing I could find something in it to alter my initial poor opinion, but both viewings after the first only intensified my dislike. Yes, the crucifixion was indescribably brutal and bloody — which is probably one reason none of the Gospels describe it in any detail. But there should be some reserve when presenting it in all its hideousness. Reserve, however, has never been Gibson’s tendency. At any rate, it’s not my wish in this post to list Jesus movies and take potshots at them (although, I’ve sometimes remarked that The Greatest Story Ever Told would have been better titled The Most Boring Jesus Movie Ever Made).

With that out of my system, I do have three favorite films about Christ, all of them classics. None of them is perfect in historical detail (two of them, by a long shot), and one could nitpick at them for all the currently fashionable reasons. But I like them very much, each for a different set of reasons (and one of them, for reasons strictly personal in nature).

The first I like for the personal impact it had on me as a boy. In the early 1960s, at Easter time, one of the television stations aired annually the 1927 silent version of The King of Kings. Directed by Cecil B. DeMille, it has all the salutary and non-salutary features one would expect from the old boy. But I love it, with all its rather Victorian staging (laced with a bit of decadence), because it moved my five-year-old self deeply once upon a time. The role of Jesus, incidentally, was taken by H. B. Warner. You will, perhaps, know him as “Mr. Gower” in It’s a Wonderful Life — he was the old pharmacist who very nearly sends the wrong (and lethal) prescription to an old lady and slaps poor, young George Bailey on his bad ear.

The YouTube intro describes the film this way:

The King of Kings is the Greatest Story Ever Told as only Cecil B. DeMille could tell it. In 1927, working with one of the biggest budgets in Hollywood history, DeMille spun the life and Passion of Christ into a silent-era blockbuster. Featuring text drawn directly from the Bible, a cast of thousands, and the great showman’s singular cinematic bag of tricks, The King of Kings is at once spectacular and deeply reverent—part Gospel, part Technicolor epic.

Featuring the opening and resurrection scenes in two-color Technicolor, the film is the second in DeMille's Biblical trilogy, preceded by The Ten Commandments (1923) and followed by The Sign of the Cross (1932).

My next recommendation is Pier Paulo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964). The less said about Pasolini the better, and as for the rest of his oeuvre, I would hesitate to encourage anybody, except the most mentally self-flagellatory cinephile, to bother with it. That said, his St. Matthew stands out as a lean, stripped-down telling of the Gospel, with a fiery Jesus at its center. Wikipedia says of it:

In the neorealist tradition, the film utilizes a cast of non-professional actors, and is filmed entirely on-location throughout Southern Italy. The dialogue is taken directly from the Gospel of Matthew, as Pasolini felt that "images could never reach the poetic heights of the text." He reportedly chose Matthew's Gospel over the others because he felt "John was too mystical, Mark too vulgar, and Luke too sentimental."

Whatever one makes of that, its very grittiness — almost the extreme opposite of DeMille’s style — holds one’s attention.

Lastly, the one film about Jesus that I regard as unexcelled and deserving of its status as a genuine masterpiece of cinema is Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth (1977). It is a beautiful and sublime film — haunting, reverent, scripted masterfully, with every scene as exquisite as a medieval or Renaissance work of art. In treating his subject, Zeffirelli elevates the soul. For that reason alone, it is — in my opinion — the epitome of all cinematic treatments of biblical literature, bar none. The cast, I should add, includes a wide range of great actors. (Someone once quipped, incidentally, that Zeffirelli was so good a director that he was able to get a good performance out of James Farentino, who has the role of Peter.) I don’t need to say more about this well-known and well-loved film, except to add that if you haven’t watched it in a long time, do so this year.

As an addendum, I will mention one other “Bible movie” for which I have some real affection. It’s also a strikingly good movie, as one might expect from such a master of the medium as John Huston. I refer to The Bible: In the Beginning (1966), which recounts the first twenty-two chapters of Genesis. The use of the King James Version throughout endows it with a somewhat Shakespearean quality (and I tend not to want less from a biblical film). Frankly, there has never been a better portrayal of Noah than that of John Huston himself, and George C. Scott as Abraham has forever been stamped on my imagination whenever I read Genesis. One can watch it at the Internet Archive, which describes it like this:

The Bible: In the Beginning... is a 1966 American-Italian religious epic film produced by Dino De Laurentiis and directed by John Huston. It recounts the first 22 chapters of the biblical Book of Genesis, covering the stories from Adam and Eve to the binding of Isaac. Released by 20th Century Fox, the film was photographed by Giuseppe Rotunno in Dimension 150 (color by DeLuxe Color), a variant of the 70mm Todd-AO format. It stars Michael Parks as Adam, Ulla Bergryd as Eve, Richard Harris as Cain, John Huston as Noah, Stephen Boyd as Nimrod, George C. Scott as Abraham, Ava Gardner as Sarah, and Peter O'Toole as the Three Angels.

In 1967, the film's score by Toshiro Mayuzumi was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score. The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures included the film in its "Top Ten Films" list of 1966. De Laurentiis and Huston won David di Donatello Awards for Best Producer and Best Foreign Director, respectively.

The film consists of five main sections: The Creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah's Ark, and the story of Abraham. There are also a pair of shorter sections, one recounting the building of the Tower of Babel, and the other the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The sections vary greatly in tone. The story of Abraham is somber and reverential, while that of Noah repeatedly focuses on his love of all animals—herbivorous and carnivorous or omnivorous. Cats (including lions) drink milk, with Noah's relationship with the animals being depicted harmoniously. It was originally conceived as the first in a series of films retelling the entire Old Testament, but these sequels were never made.

One can view the film by clicking on this very sentence.