The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)
Movie rating: 10/10
The Vatican City newspaper L’Osservatore Romano has called Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew the best film on Christ ever made. After watching the film I’m inclined to agree. By making a direct adaptation of one of the gospels — every line of dialogue here is taken directly from Matthew’s account of the life of Jesus — and shooting it in the naturalistic style of Italian neorealism, Pasolini achieves something both straightforward and artfully transcendent. The director’s choice to directly adapt the gospel also means he gives greater focus than any other film about Jesus to something too often overlooked: the actual message of Christ as described by the gospel authors.
It’s surely noteworthy that the greatest film about Jesus Christ was directed by a Marxist. Pasolini, who also wrote the screenplay, was openly gay and known for his outspoken political views. A fervent Christian in his early years, he later became an avowed atheist. His decision to make a reverential film about the life of Jesus was particularly noteworthy in that it followed a jail sentence Pasolini served after he was accused of blasphemy and obscenity for his depiction of Jesus in the 1963 short film La ricotta. During a visit to the town of Assisi, he was confined to his hotel room due to traffic from a papal visit and passed the time by reading the four gospels all the way through. The possibility of adapting one immediately overshadowed all the other ideas Pasolini had for his next film. The director says he chose to adapt the gospel of Matthew because “John was too mystical, Mark too vulgar, and Luke too sentimental.”
The historicity of Jesus, the gospels, and the origins of Christianity are outside the scope of this review, which is limited to discussion of Pasolini’s film as a direct adaptation of Matthew’s gospel. In his intentions for the film, Pasolini said he wanted to re-consecrate and “re-mythologize” the story of Jesus’ life:
I did not want to reconstruct the life of Christ as it really was. I wanted to make the history of Christ plus 2,000 years of Christian storytelling about the life of Christ, since it is the 2,000 years of Christian history that have mythologized this biography, one that as such would have been virtually insignificant otherwise. My film is the life of Christ after 2,000 years of stories on the life of Christ. That is what I had in mind.
With these aims in mind, The Gospel According to St. Matthew in its approach and subject matter is an interesting study in the unity of opposites. Its style is neorealist, defined by Wikipedia as a postwar Italian film movement “characterized by stories set amongst the poor and the working class. They are filmed on location, primarily with non-professional actors” and tend to focus on “conditions of everyday life, including poverty, oppression, injustice, and desperation.”
Using this style to depict the life of Christ is a stroke of brilliance on Pasolini’s part. On the one hand, gospel stories would seem to be the exact opposite of neorealism. These are stories involving God, miracles, and a central figure who is the furthest thing from ordinary: the son of God, the Messiah. In this film we see Jesus walk on water, heal lepers and the lame, and feed the multitude. Paradoxically, however, Italian neorealism is perfect to depict the Christ whose followers came from the most oppressed and downtrodden layers of society. One of the things that made early Christianity so revolutionary was its belief in God incarnated not as an all-powerful earthly ruler, but as a man from a humble background who associated with the poor and sick, with sex workers, with those on the lowest rungs of the social ladder.
That’s made equally clear by the fiery preaching of Jesus in the film, since Pasolini’s script is taken directly from the gospel text. We hear the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus telling his wealthy followers to give their possessions to the poor. “And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24) Besides the rich, he rails against the clerical establishment: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” While most films about Christ allude to these radical messages, by putting them within the context of everything else Jesus says, Pasolini gives us greater appreciation and insight for how they inform Christian theology and the social gospel.
The neorealist approach of casting non-professional actors underscores the popular appeal of Christ to the marginalized and outcast. Figures like Jesus (Enrique Irazoqui, dubbed by Enrico Maria Salerno), Mary (Margherita Caruso), Joseph (Marcello Morante, dubbed by Gianni Bonagura), and John the Baptist (Mario Socrate, dubbed by Pino Locchi) feel less like idealized archetypes here and more like ordinary people. (Pasolini’s mother Susanna plays the older Mary, though I think it might have worked better if they had simply applied old-age makeup on Caruso.)
Enrique Irazoqui, an economics student from Spain and communist activist, was only 19 when he played the role of Jesus. He had few screen appearances afterwards and all his lines were dubbed, yet somehow it all works. Irazoqui has a reassuring serenity as Christ, but is also convincing when he attacks the hypocrisy of the Pharisees (helped by Salerno’s outraged line readings), and in his fear and despair when he prays in Gethsemane before his arrest and trial. In his appearance, with shorter hair and a thinner beard than we usually associate with depictions of Christ, Irazoqui seems less idealized than a lot of actors who have portrayed Jesus. Leonard Maltin praised the cast’s expressiveness despite being non-professionals, and I agree. The moment when Peter (Settimio Di Porto) breaks into tears after denying Jesus, or when Judas Iscariot (Otello Sestili) experiences remorse for his betrayal are both well played.
Another interesting choice in this film is its eclectic music, drawn from religious compositions from around the world. The score includes works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Jewish ceremonial declarations, a Congolose setting of the Latin Mass; gospel singer and U.S. civil rights activist Odetta (“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”), and legendary bluesman Blind Willie Johnson (“Dark Was the Night, Cold was the Ground”). The incorporation of music from different places and time periods complements other anachronistic elements, such as costuming: Roman soldiers are dressed in medieval armour similar to their depiction in Renaissance paintings, while Christ appears similar to his depiction in Eastern Orthodox icons. The fact that the dialogue is all in Italian is technically anachronistic, as in any film about Jesus where the characters speak modern vernacular languages. But this mixing and matching fits Pasolini’s intention to create a film that portrays the life of Christ as filtered through “2,000 years of stories on the life of Christ.”
Last year I rewatched Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ on Good Friday. Despite its many controversial aspects — most obviously its overwhelming fixation on violence and torture — I still respected “the work of a director who is willing to go all-out in presenting a literal view of his faith.” In this I was influenced by Roger Ebert, who gave The Passion of the Christ a 4/4 rating and called it “not a sermon or a homily, but a visualization of the central event in the Christian religion. Take it or leave it.” After watching The Gospel According to St. Matthew, I have to say that this film is far superior to Passion of the Christ. Part of that is because it visualizes Jesus’ entire life and ministry as well as his trial and execution. That ministry includes many lengthy sermons and homilies presented in full.
With Gibson’s film, you get the impression that Jesus’ teachings are almost beside the point. What matters is that this is the son of God who died for humanity’s sins. I think this reflects a larger problem with right-wing evangelicals, traditionalists, and reactionaries who consider themselves Christian. They are happy to ignore Jesus’ message because it represents the exact opposite of what they stand for, which is the defence of hierarchy, inequality, and privilege. I recall an Anglican Journal interview I did with Cheri DiNovo, United Church minister and former NDP MPP, who described the relationship between her faith and views on politics and social justice in the following terms:
I’d say that it’s pretty clear that Jesus was a communist. By communist, I don’t mean a Stalinist. I mean someone who believed, as Marx said, from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. That was clearly how Jesus lived, how all the early disciples lived, how the early church got going before empire played a role. Following Jesus is simply following that. That’s pretty clear to me.
DiNovo went on to say, in response to those who might be shocked by her drawing a connection between Christianity and socialism:
There’s a Christian right and there’s a Christian left. And as I would say, the Christian right is neither right nor Christian. I truly believe that. I think if you actually read Scripture and see what’s going on in the life of Jesus and the life of the disciples, you’re looking at a person that walked in this world as a communist in the true sense, as a socialist, and I think we’re called to follow that.
Wasn’t it Jesus that said a rich person didn’t have a very good chance of getting into heaven — better chance of a camel getting through the eye of a needle — and overturned the moneychangers’ tables? Bottom line is, this is not a religion founded on capitalism. This has nothing to do with capitalism. It’s a religion that runs counter to capitalist ethics and should. So I don’t see that there’s a discrepancy.
I see that empire has used Christianity, has used the gospel in ways that are, I think, heretical and blasphemous and destructive, colonialist and imperialist. But that isn’t what’s in the gospel and that’s not what Christ was about, and that is not Christianity.
I’ve watched numerous films about Christ: Jesus Christ Superstar, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Passion of the Christ. But none has gotten closer to the radical message that inspired early Christians than The Gospel According to St. Matthew. I’d say L’Osservatore Romano got it right on this one.
