The Gospel According to St. Matthew (film)

Last updated

The Gospel According to Matthew
Pasolini Gospel Poster.jpg
Original Italian release poster
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Screenplay byPier Paolo Pasolini
Based on Gospel of Matthew
Produced by Alfredo Bini
Starring
    • Enrique Irazoqui
    • Margherita Caruso
    • Susanna Pasolini
    • Marcello Morante
    • Mario Socrate
    • Settimio Di Porto
Cinematography Tonino Delli Colli
Edited by Nino Baragli
Music by Luis Enríquez Bacalov
Production
companies
Arco Film
Lux Compagnie Cinématographique
Distributed by Titanus Distribuzione (Italy)
Lux Compagnie Cinématographique (France)
Release dates
  • 4 September 1964 (1964-09-04)(Venice)
  • 2 October 1964 (1964-10-02)(Italy)
Running time
137 minutes [1]
CountriesItaly
France [2]
LanguageItalian

The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Italian : Il vangelo secondo Matteo) is a 1964 epic biblical drama film, written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It is a cinematic rendition of the story of Jesus according to the Gospel of Matthew, from the Nativity through the Resurrection.

Contents

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." [3] He reportedly chose Matthew's Gospel over the others because he felt "John was too mystical, Mark too vulgar, and Luke too sentimental." [4]

The Gospel According to St. Matthew premiered on 4 September 1964 at the 25th Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and three Nastro d'Argento Awards, including Best Director. It was nominated for three Oscars—Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design and Best Score. In 2015, the Vatican City newspaper L'Osservatore Romano called it the best film on Christ ever made. [5] The film is considered a classic of world cinema and the neorealist genre.

Plot

In Galilee during the Roman Empire, Jesus of Nazareth travels around the country with his disciples, healing the blind, raising the dead, exorcising demons and proclaiming the arrival of the Kingdom of God and the salvation of Israel. He claims to be the Son of God and so, therefore, the prophesied Messiah of Israel, which brings him into direct confrontation with the Jewish temple leaders. He is arrested, handed over to the Romans and charged with sedition against the Roman state, of which he is declared innocent by the Roman governor of Judea, but is, nevertheless, crucified at the behest of the Temple leaders. He rises from the dead after three days.

Cast

Production

Background and pre-production

In 1963, the figure of Christ appeared in Pier Paolo Pasolini's short film La ricotta , included in the omnibus film RoGoPaG , which led to controversy and a jail sentence for the allegedly blasphemous and obscene content in the film. [6] According to Barth David Schwartz's book Pasolini Requiem (1992), the impetus for the film took place in 1962. Pasolini had accepted Pope John XXIII's invitation for a new dialogue with non-Catholic artists, and subsequently visited the town of Assisi to attend a seminar at a Franciscan monastery there. The papal visit caused traffic jams in the town, leaving Pasolini confined to his hotel room; there, he came across a copy of the New Testament. Pasolini read all four Gospels straight through, and he claimed that adapting a film from one of them "threw in the shade all the other ideas for work I had in my head." [7] Unlike previous cinematic depictions of Jesus' life, Pasolini's film does not embellish the biblical account with any literary or dramatic inventions, nor does it present an amalgam of the four Gospels (subsequent films which would adhere as closely as possible to one Gospel account are 1979's Jesus , based on the Gospel of Luke, and 2003's The Gospel of John ). Pasolini stated that he decided to "remake the Gospel by analogy" and the film's sparse dialogue all comes directly from the Bible. [8]

Given Pasolini's well-known reputation as an atheist, a homosexual, and a Marxist, the reverential nature of the film came as a surprise, especially after the controversy of La ricotta. At a press conference in 1966, Pasolini was asked why he, an unbeliever, had made a film which dealt with religious themes; his response was, "If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief." [9] Therefore, he sets his criticism against a backdrop of sheer religious concern for the role assumed by the Church, the organization, for centuries. [10]

On the idea of analogy, Pasolini emphasized his intention of not reproducing exactly a historic, casual Christ, but projecting the present-day society of southern Italy onto that figure, a Christ after 2,000 years of narrative build-up. As he explained,

Along with this method of reconstruction by analogy, we find the idea of myth and epics [...] so when narrating the history of Christ, I did not reconstruct Christ such as he actually was. If I had reconstructed Christ's history as it actually was, I would not have made a religious film, since I am not a believer. I do not think Christ was God's son. I would have made a positivist or Marxist reconstruction if any, so at the best of cases, a life of one of the five or six thousands saints preaching at that moment in Palestine. However, I did not want to do that, I am not interested in profanations: that is just a fashion I loathe, it is petit bourgeois. I want to consecrate things again, because that is possible, I want to re-mythologize them. I did not want to reconstruct the life of Christ as it really was, I wanted to make the history of Christ plus two thousand years of Christian storytelling about the life of Christ, since it is the two thousands 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 two thousands years of stories on the life of Christ. That is what I had in mind. [11]

The film was dedicated to John XXIII. [12] The announcement at the opening credits reads that it is "dedicato alla cara, lieta, familiare memoria di Giovanni XXIII" ("dedicated to the dear, joyous, familiar memory of Pope John XXIII"). Pasolini was particularly critical with the new Pope Paul VI (1963), at a moment when he was drafting a storyboard for a follow-up to the film, this time on Paul the Apostle. The project due for 1966–1967 never took off, but it was advanced. [13]

Filming and style

Pasolini employed many of the techniques of Italian neorealism in the making of his film. Most of the actors he hired were non-professionals. Enrique Irazoqui (Jesus) was a 19-year-old economics student from Spain and a communist activist, while the rest of the cast were mainly locals from Barile, Matera, and Massafra, where the film was shot (Pasolini visited the Holy Land but found the locations unsuitable and "commercialized"). [14] His location scouting in the Holy Land is documented in the adjoining feature-length documentary Location Hunting in Palestine , released a year later. Pasolini cast his own mother, Susanna, as the elderly mother of Jesus. The cast also included noted intellectuals such as writers Enzo Siciliano, Alfonso Gatto, and Natalia Ginzburg, poet Rodolfo Wilcock, and philosopher Giorgio Agamben. In addition to the original biblical source, Pasolini used references to "2,000 years of Christian painting and sculptures" throughout the film. The look of the characters is also eclectic and, in some cases, anachronistic, resembling artistic depictions of different eras (the costumes of the Roman soldiers and the Pharisees, for example, are influenced by Renaissance art, whereas Jesus' appearance has been likened to that in Byzantine art as well as the work of Expressionist artist Georges Rouault). [8]

Pasolini described his experience filming The Gospel According to Matthew as very different from his previous films. He stated that while his shooting style on his previous film Accattone was "reverential," when his shooting style was applied to a biblical source it "came out rhetorical. ... And then when I was shooting the baptism scene near Viterbo I threw over all my technical preconceptions. I started using the zoom, I used new camera movements, new frames which were not reverential, but almost documentary [combining] an almost classical severity with the moments that are almost Godardian, for example in the two trials of Christ shot like 'cinema verite.' ... The Point is that ... I, a non-believer, was telling the story through the eyes of a believer. The mixture at the narrative level produced the mixture stylistically." [8]

Music

The score of the film, arranged by Luis Enríquez Bacalov, is eclectic; ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach (e.g. Mass in B Minor and St Matthew Passion ) to Odetta ("Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child"), to Blind Willie Johnson ("Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground"), to the Jewish ceremonial declaration "Kol Nidre" and the "Gloria" from the Congolese Missa Luba. Pasolini stated that all of the film's music was of a sacred or religious nature from all parts of the world and multiple cultures or belief systems. [8] Bacalov also composed several original musical tracks.

Reception

Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro and Pier Paolo Pasolini together in Venice at the premiere of the movie in 1964. Aldo Moro, Pier Paolo Pasolini - Venezia 1964.jpg
Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro and Pier Paolo Pasolini together in Venice at the premiere of the movie in 1964.

The film received mostly positive reviews from critics, including several Christian critics. Philip French called it "a noble film," and Alexander Walker said that "it grips the historical and psychological imagination like no other religious film I have seen. And for all its apparent simplicity, it is visually rich and contains strange, disturbing hints and undertones about Christ and his mission." [15]

Some Marxist film critics, however, wrote unfavorable reviews. Oswald Stack criticized the film's "abject concessions to reactionary ideology." In response to criticism from the left, Pasolini admitted that, in his opinion, "there are some horrible moments I am ashamed of. ... The Miracle of the loaves and the fishes and Christ walking on water are disgusting pietism." He also stated that the film was "a reaction against the conformity of Marxism. The mystery of life and death and of suffering – and particularly of religion ... is something that Marxists do not want to consider. But these are and have always been questions of great importance for human beings." [15]

The Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky liked the film. [16]

The Gospel According to Matthew was ranked number 10 (in 2010) and number 7 (in 2011) in the Arts and Faith website's Top 100 Films, [17] also is in the Vatican's list of 45 great films and Roger Ebert's Great Movies list. [18] [19]

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 92%, based on 36 reviews, and an average rating of 8.6 out of 10, with the critics consensus saying "The Gospel According to St. Matthew forgoes the pageantry of biblical epics in favor of a naturalistic retelling of the Christ story, achieving a respectful if not reverent interpretation with political verve." [20]

Awards

At the 25th Venice International Film Festival, The Gospel According to Matthew was screened in competition for the Golden Lion, and won the OCIC Award and the Silver Lion. At the film's premiere, a crowd gathered to boo Pasolini but cheered him after the film was over. The film later won the Grand Prize at the International Catholic Film Office. [15]

The film was nominated for the UN Award at the 21st British Academy Film Awards. [21]

The Gospel According to Matthew was released in the United States in 1966 and was nominated for three Academy Awards: Art Direction (Luigi Scaccianoce), Costume Design (Danilo Donati), and Score. [22]

Alternate versions

The 2007 Region 1 DVD release from Legend Films features a colourised, English-dubbed version of the film, in addition to the original, black-and-white Italian-language version. (The English-dubbed version is significantly shorter than the original, with a running time of 91 minutes – roughly 40 minutes shorter than the standard version.)

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gospel of Matthew</span> Book of the New Testament

The Gospel of Matthew is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells how Israel's messiah (Christ), Jesus, comes to his people but is rejected by them and how, after his resurrection, he sends the disciples to the gentiles instead. Matthew wishes to emphasize that the Jewish tradition should not be lost in a church that was increasingly becoming gentile. The gospel reflects the struggles and conflicts between the evangelist's community and the other Jews, particularly with its sharp criticism of the scribes and Pharisees with the position that through their rejection of Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven has been taken away from them and given instead to the church.

The Gospel According to St. Matthew may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pier Paolo Pasolini</span> Italian writer, filmmaker, poet, and intellectual (1922–1975)

Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist and a political figure. He is known for directing The Gospel According to St. Matthew, the films from Trilogy of Life and Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caiaphas</span> Jewish high priest (c. 14 BC – c. 46 AD)

Joseph ben Caiaphas was the High Priest of Israel during the years of Jesus' ministry, according to Josephus. In the New Testament, the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John indicate he was an organizer of the plot to kill Jesus. He famously presided over the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus. The primary sources for Caiaphas' life are the New Testament, and the writings of Josephus. The latter records he was made high priest by the Roman procurator Valerius Gratus after Simon ben Camithus had been deposed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesus</span> Central figure of Christianity

Jesus, also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many other names and titles, was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. Most Christian denominations believe Jesus to be the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited messiah, or Christ, a descendant from the Davidic line that is prophesied in the Old Testament. Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically. Accounts of Jesus's life are contained in the Gospels, especially the four canonical Gospels in the New Testament. Academic research has yielded various views on the historical reliability of the Gospels and how closely they reflect the historical Jesus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Bible in film</span> Film that accounts Biblical narratives

Stories from the Bible have frequently been used in films. There are various reasons for motion picture producers to turn to the Bible as source material. The stories, in the public domain, are already familiar to potential audiences. They contain sweeping, but relatively straightforward, narratives of good versus evil, and feature crowd-pleasing battles, sword fights, natural disasters, and miracles.

<i>Teorema</i> 1968 film by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Teorema, known as Theorem in the United Kingdom, is a 1968 Italian surrealist psychological drama film written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini and starring Silvana Mangano, Terence Stamp and Massimo Girotti, with Anne Wiazemsky, Laura Betti, Andrés José Cruz Soublette, Alfonso Gatto and Carlo De Mejo. Pasolini's sixth film, it was the first time he worked primarily with professional actors. In this film, an upper-class Milanese family is introduced to, and then abandoned by, an otherworldly man with a mysterious divine force. Themes include the timelessness of divinity and the spiritual corruption of the bourgeoisie.

<i>La ricotta</i> 1963 Italian film

La ricotta is a short film written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1963 and is part of the omnibus film Ro.Go.Pa.G.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Temptation of Christ</span> Biblical narrative in the gospels

The temptation of Christ is a biblical narrative detailed in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. After being baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus was tempted by the devil after 40 days and nights of fasting in the Judaean Desert. At the time, Satan came to Jesus and tried to tempt him. Jesus having refused each temptation, Satan then departed and Jesus returned to Galilee to begin his ministry. During this entire time of spiritual battle, Jesus was fasting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luis Bacalov</span> Argentine-born composer (1933-2017)

Luis Enríquez Bacalov was an Argentine film composer and musical director. He learned music from Enrique Barenboim, father of Daniel Barenboim - conductor of the Berlin and Chicago orchestras, and from Berta Sujovolsky. He ventured into music for the cinema, and composed now-classic scores for many Spaghetti Western films. In the early 1970s he also collaborated with Italian progressive rock bands. Bacalov was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Original Score, winning it in 1996 for Il Postino.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Good Shepherd</span> Epithet of Jesus

The Good Shepherd is an image used in the pericope of John 10:1–21, in which Jesus Christ is depicted as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. Similar imagery is used in Psalm 23 and Ezekiel 34:11–16. The Good Shepherd is also discussed in the other gospels, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the First Epistle of Peter and the Book of Revelation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ninetto Davoli</span> Italian actor (born 1948)

Giovanni "Ninetto" Davoli is an Italian actor who appeared in several of Pier Paolo Pasolini's films.

The Nastro d'Argento for Best Director is a film award bestowed annually as part of the Nastro d'Argento awards since 1946, organized by the Italian National Association of Film Journalists, the national association of Italian film critics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enrique Irazoqui</span> Spanish actor (1944–2020)

Enrique Irazoqui was a Spanish professor of literature, computer chess expert and actor, best known for his role as Jesus Christ in the 1964 film The Gospel According to St. Matthew, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. He was 19 when he played the lead role in Pasolini's film and only had a small number of screen roles afterwards.

Jewish deicide is the theological position and antisemitic trope that the Jews as a people are collectively responsible for the killing of Jesus, even through the successive generations following his death. The notion arose in early Christianity, and features in the writings of Justin Martyr and Melito of Sardis as early as the 2nd century. The Biblical passage Matthew 27:24–25 has been seen as giving voice to the charge of Jewish deicide as well.

European art cinema is a branch of cinema that was popular in the latter half of the 20th century. It is based on a rejection of the tenets and techniques of classical Hollywood cinema.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apostles in the New Testament</span> Primary disciples of Jesus

In Christian theology and ecclesiology, the apostles, particularly the Twelve Apostles, were the primary disciples of Jesus according to the New Testament. During the life and ministry of Jesus in the 1st century AD, the apostles were his closest followers and became the primary teachers of the gospel message of Jesus. There is also an Eastern Christian tradition derived from the Gospel of Luke that there were seventy apostles during the time of Jesus' ministry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saint Peter</span> Christian apostle

Saint Peter, also known as Peter the Apostle, Simon Peter, Simeon, Simon, or Cephas, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ and one of the first leaders of the early Christian Church. He appears repeatedly and prominently in all four New Testament gospels as well as the Acts of the Apostles. Catholic tradition treats Peter as the first bishop of Rome‍—‌or pope‍—‌and also as the first bishop of Antioch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nino Baragli</span> Italian film editor

Nino Baragli was an Italian film editor with more than 200 film credits. Among his films in English, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), both directed by Sergio Leone, are perhaps the best known.

The 25th annual Venice International Film Festival was held from 27 August to 10 September 1964.

References

  1. ↑ "THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW (U)". British Board of Film Classification . 4 November 1964. Retrieved 30 December 2012.
  2. ↑ "Lumiere".
  3. ↑ "Film as Art: Danél Griffin's Guide to Cinema". Archived from the original on 22 August 2004. Retrieved 7 February 2016.
  4. ↑ [ dead link ]
  5. ↑ "In Francis' Church Pasolini goes to heaven". Vatican Insider – La Stampa/. Rome. 22 July 2014. Archived from the original on 24 July 2014. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
  6. ↑ Wakeman. John. World Film Directors, Volume 2. The H. W. Wilson Company. 1988. pp. 746.
  7. ↑ Roger Ebert (14 March 2004). "The Gospel According to St. Matthew". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. Archived from the original on 20 September 2012. Retrieved 3 January 2015.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Wakeman. pp. 746.
  9. ↑ "Pasolini". Cinemaseekers.com. Archived from the original on 19 August 2014. Retrieved 3 January 2015.
  10. ↑ Martellini, Luigi (2006). Pier Paolo Pasolini; Retrato de un intelectual. Valencia: Universitat de Valencia. pp. 119–120. ISBN   978-84-370-7928-8.
  11. ↑ Martellini, Luigi (2006). Pier Paolo Pasolini; Retrato de un intelectual. Valencia: Universitat de Valencia. pp. 117–118. ISBN   978-84-370-7928-8.
  12. ↑ Thomson, Ian (23 February 2013). "Pier Paolo Pasolini: No saint". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
  13. ↑ On the new draft film, he went as follows: "The film is an extremely violent action against the Church and the Vatican, since I put together a double-sided Paul, i.e. schizophrenic, clearly dislocated into two: one is a saint [...] while the other is a priest, an ex-Pharisaic, one that retrieves his former cultural status and founds the Church. Hence my condemnation; as a mystic he is fine, it is a mystical experience like any other, respectable, I am not judging that, but I do condemn him firmly as the founder of the Church, with all the negative elements inherent to it: sexophobia, anti-Feminism, the organization, the collects, triumphalism, moralism. To sum up, all the things that have made the Church a bad thing." See Martellini, L. 2006, p. 119.
  14. ↑ lchadbou-326-26592 (11 July 1965). "Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il vangelo secondo Matteo (1965)". IMDb. Retrieved 3 January 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  15. 1 2 3 Wakeman. pp. 747.
  16. ↑ Aleksandr Lipkov; Robert Bird (1 February 1967). "The Passion According to Andrei: An Unpublished Interview with Andrei Tarkovsky". nostalghia.com. Literaturnoe obozrenie 1988, University of Chicago. pp. 74–80. Retrieved 22 March 2024. Interviewer: "What do you think about Pasolini's Gospel according to Matthew? That's also a kind of historical film." Tarkovsky: "Of course. I like the picture. I like it precisely because its director did not succumb to the temptation of interpreting the Bible. The Bible has been interpreted for two thousand years and no one can reach unanimous agreement. So Pasolini did not set himself this task, he just left the thing in the form in which it was born. Many feel that the image of a militant cruel Christ was made up by the author of the film. Not true! Read the Gospels and you will see that this was a cruel, cantankerous, irreconcilable man. Moreover with what genius was it written! On the one hand he's God and the Church has been relying on him for two thousand years, but he succumbs to doubt in the garden of Gethsemane. What could be simpler than to call for help from his father and avoid dying on the cross, but he doesn't do this. He is all back-to-front..."
  17. ↑ "Arts & Faith Top 100: The Gospel According to Matthew". Arts & Faith. Archived from the original on 22 January 2015. Retrieved 3 January 2015.
  18. ↑ "USCCB – (Film and Broadcasting) – Vatican Best Films List". United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Archived from the original on 22 April 2012. Retrieved 3 January 2015.
  19. ↑ Roger Ebert (14 March 2004). "The Gospel According to St. Matthew Movie Review (1964)". RogerEbert.com . Retrieved 3 January 2015.
  20. ↑ The Gospel According to St. Matthew at Rotten Tomatoes
  21. ↑ "BAFTA Awards: Film in 1968". British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Retrieved 26 January 2016. for the best Film embodying one or more of the principles of the United Nations Charter in 1968
  22. ↑ Crowther, Bosley (18 February 1966). "Movie Review – The Gospel According to St Matthew – Screen: The Life of Jesus:Pasolini's Film Opens at the Fine Arts". The New York Timesvv. Retrieved 3 January 2015.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.