The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1966)

 

In retrospect, it’s tough to imagine more unlikely director for The Gospel According to St. Matthew (originally known as Il vangelo secondo Matteo and originally released in 1964), a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the Book of Matthew, than Pier Paolo Pasolini. It’s not that he isn’t a great director – he is – but he was also a self-identified atheist. And, yet, he and his crew have created a beautiful film that hews closely to the original words of the Bible. Well, to be fair, the subtitles are almost verbatim from the King James Version of the Bible, and I can’t vouch for the Italian that the performers speak. The film follows the story of Christ from his birth to his resurrection. He’s played here by a beautiful young Spaniard, Enrique Irazoqui, who portrays Jesus as a sort of angry young man with an unfortunate unibrow. By the way, is it a requirement that actors who play Jesus be beautiful? I’ve tried to think of a single cinematic Jesus who was homely or even just average-looking, but to no avail. Give that Pasolini was also public about his being gay, the many close-ups of Irazoqui highlight the young man’s features as he addresses the disciples and speaks what will later be known as the Gospels. Jesus gets confronted and questioned a lot in this movie, and he’s always ready with an answer even if not everyone else, including his disciples, fully understands the meanings and implications of what he says. All of the performers in the movie are non-professionals, and they have some great faces, some lovely, some less so, some with lots of what used to be called “character.” They get close-ups too, so that we can see their reactions to Jesus’s words. The film has a very pared-down style; it doesn’t go for the hyperbole of many (Hollywood) Biblical dramas. Even Jesus’s walk on water is presented very matter-of-factly. The exceptions are the so-called Massacre of the Innocents on the orders of King Herod, who tried to ensure the death of Jesus as a baby, and the crucifixion of Christ. Both of those sequences are difficult to watch. The Gospel According to St. Matthew is gorgeously shot in black-and-white among ruins that evoke the period. It also features some very eclectic and not period-appropriate music, ranging from expected classical pieces to songs by Odetta and Blind Willie Johnson. One of the things that most impressed me about the film was its use of silence. Many times, we are treated to visuals without any dialogue, and they are stunning in their impact. As unexpected a choice for director as Pasolini might have been, he certainly understood the power of cinema to create the right mood for a film like this one.

Oscar Nominations: Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Black-and-White Costume Design, and Best Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment