Christ on the silver screen

BROADCAST NEWS b■ Deborah Thoma,,
JESUS Christ Movie Star (Channel 4, Monday) was an Easter special looking at the way the film industry has treated the challenge of putting the life of Christ onto the silver screen.
The programme was basically a good-natured and undemanding shift through the archives. from Victorian mimed gospel stories, through great Hollywood epics like The Greatest Story Ever Told, to the latest Jesus films, The Last Temptation of Christ and Jesus of Montreal (shown, incidentally on the same channel the next day).
The clips suggested that the films say more about their own era than they do about the period they purport to depict Cecil B de Mille's King of Kings in 1927, with its belly-dancing Mary Magdalene and chariots pulled by zebras, being a case in point. Described as "spectacular, sentimental, absurd", it was the quintessence of the Hollywood style of the time, but not especially revealing about first century Palestine.
It was not until the 1970s, with Norman Jewison's Jesus Christ Superstar, that Christ first became an intentionally contemporary figure in this case, a 1970s hippy complete with Afro hairdo. The makers of this film anticipated a certain amount of controversy about their approach, but in fact Jesus Christ Superstar went down marvellously well, even becoming a staple of church youth club outings.
Commercial success is far from guaranteed with movies about Christ. When, in 1965, leading director George Stevens made The Greatest Story Ever Told, he chose unknown Swedish actor Max von Sydow as Christ, but packed the rest of the cast with big box office stars. This was an uneven success artistically who can forget John Wayne's delivery of the line "Truly this man was the son of God"? and a failure in financial terms, Stevens' first ever. Hollywood has never banked on Christ since.
Not that massive investment means a thing. Pasolini's low budget The Gospel According to
St Matthew, roughly contemporary with the Steve's epic, created a much greater impitct by dint of its simplicity
and passion. Pasolini's Christ was a radical resistance hero. again played by an unknown, in this case a Spanish student who had never acted before and who at first considered that his time would be better spent resisting fascism.
For his trouble, young Enrique • Irazoqui was pursued by Franco's secret police and conscripted into the army as punishment for filming "marxist blasphemy".
Jesus Christ Movie Star was full of excellent titbits like these.. We also learnt that the star of the 1912 film From the Manger to the Cross rejoiced in the name of Henderson Bland, and that when, : in 1977, Franco Zeffirelli's made Jesus of Nazareth, Robert Powell:, got the part of Christ because he tested so well as Judas!
Where the programme was .! weaker was on analysis. Neither .: the cinematic nor the theological angles got much of a lookin. Professor of theology Harvey Cox and film critic Sheila Johnston were on hand, but they didn't get enough time to develop any sustained lines of thought. Instead the commentary favoured straightforward narration. Less interesting than it might have been, but then again. much more of an easy-to-watch Bank Holiday treat.
The Week Ahead Sunday Apri1,26 11.00 Morning Worship, ITV. Opened just two years ago, St Luke's Church in Orton, Peterborough is the focal point of the young and growing Catholic community in the area. This morning's mass is celebrated by Fr Gary Dowsey.
12.00 Visions, ITV. Topical magazine programme covering religious events at home and abroad.
18.00 The Sunday Sequence, Radio 3. Mass by William Allbright, recorded in Trinity Cathedral,Trenton, USA