The Story of Esther (1910)

Back in 2016 (was it really that long ago?) I wrote the first entry in my "Silent Bible Film Mysteries" series, seeking to get to the bottom of three Esther titles that Gaumont released around the early 1910s. The conclusion was that there were two shorter films, The Marriage of Esther and Esther and Mordecai that were released in the US a week apart in June 1910, but at other times and places were circulated as a single film Esther. There was also something of a lament that these films were not available to view outside of (offline) film archives.

Recently, however, I got notified by John from betweenmovies.com that a composite version of the film could now be streamed from the (online) Gaumont Pathé archives. You have to create an account – which takes a while, perhaps because they are individually verified – but then a composite version of the film is there to view. (BetweenMovies is a great website, by the way, and has some really interesting additional information about these films, including original reviews, press ads, still and some more screen grabs).

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The first thing to notice is that the title version of the film is The Story of Esther. It's plain enough that this is a renaming of the composite material, though perhaps with some additions and subtractions. The production was attributed to Louis Feuillade, and its stars were called "three of the most noted of Paris", "Mademoiselle" Gravier as Esther, Leonce Perret as Ahasuerus and "Monsieur" Legrand as Mordecai. Perret also worked for Gaumont as a director. He was at the helm of at least 292 of their films, including his La Fille de Jephté (1910) which I've discussed before. Mlle Gravier then is presumably Gisèle Gravier who starred in both another of Perret's films, Gisèle, enfant terrible  and another of Feuillade's La prêtresse de carthage the following year.¹ I could turn up nothing on M. Legrand.

The plot remains fairly close to the contours of the biblical text. Vashti has already been deposed before the start of the film, conveniently relieving the film's leading man of the suggestion of impropriety. Instead the opening shot sees an array of young women arrive at the palace as candidates for Ahasuerus' next wife. For most of the shot, though, Mordecai and Esther stand at the front right of the screen facing the crowd. Esther hesitates before entering – and is the last to do so – then Mordecai returns to centre stage and reaches his arms to heaven. 

After the width of the opening outdoor scene, the indoor scenes move in closer for a more intimate atmosphere. Esther and the other "maidens" are prepared to meet the king and there's a deft iris shot to close the scene focusing on Esther. 

In the next scene similar camera placement sees Ahasuerus chose Esther from only a handful of women, with everyone else ushered out before the King himself places the crown on Esther's head. Moving Picture World's Rev. W. H. Jackson called this moment "decidedly and extremely peculiar, most unwarranted, and without doubt not faithful to the times and custom".² I think he may be protesting a little too much. "Without doubt" seems a bit strong given how little was known about the era 110 years ago, even if he is probably right. Historical inaccuracies in Bible movie? Surely not.

In any case it's noticeable that this scene is not particularly romanticized. Given the lengthy procession of women into the palace, Ahasuerus seems to spend almost no time at all deciding on his new queen and while he picks his bride based purely on looks, there's very little indication that she is attracted to him.

Jackson was much more favourably disposed towards the wedding banquet scene however which manages quite an impressive depth of field with an advisor front, centre and relatively close while dancers twirl away on the stage at the back of the room. The composition is a little odd – Feuillade doesn't pan or zoom at all in this film – so the advisor is sat facing off screen, but it does leave a gap for Esther and Ahasuerus to process down. This seems to be the climax of The Marriage of Esther and, in honesty, it's more than a little slow.

It's also noticeable here how the walls reproduce some of the statues and bas-reliefs taken from the Palace of Sargon II (in Khorsabad). While Sargon II pre-dates the era in which the story was set by about 200-250 years, the palace had only been discovered by French archaeologist Paul-Émile Botta in the 1840s and was (and is) prominently displayed in the Louvre. If you compare the scene with this image from the Louvre you can see it's a direct attempt at reproduction.

A fairly detailed title card leads us into the second half (or Esther and Mordecai) opening the shot above. I've not managed to turn up any association between Esther and the harp, but it makes for quite a striking image. Mordecai warns Esther and the two proceed to foil a plot against her husband in the film's best action scene with Esther and Mordecai saving the king in the nick of time. 

The same set is also used for the next scene where Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman. The wall decorations here are not immediately identifiable; they look more Egyptian than Babylonian to me. Perhaps they were recycled from another Gumont film set in Ancient Egypt, perhaps even Feuillade's own L'exode (1910), which I've seen but don't have access to in order to check.

Haman goes to Ahasuerus who gives him the ring from his hand in order to enact his revenge on Mordecai and his people. Interestingly the throne room here resembles Jean Pesne's print/etching of the scene. It's supposedly based on Nicolas Poussin's "Esther devant Assuérus", but, Pesne's image mirrors Poussin's and makes it a good deal lighter such that the detail and architecture is far more apparent. Perhaps Feuillade and his set designers were influenced by one or both of them, perhaps neither. Haman sets off to set the wheels in motion.

However in the meantime, Ahasuerus discovers that Mordecai had not been honoured, calls in Haman and orders him to put Mordecai on a horse and lead it through the streets announcing his honour. One of my favourite parts of the story is omitted here. In the Bible, the king asks Haman to devise the method of honouring. Haman thinking it is he who is to be honoured is then appalled by to discover his method of honouring himself will now be applied to his hated enemy (Esther 6:6-10). This ironic switch is made all the worse as it is her who has to parade round honouring Mordecai. It also foreshadows the following chapter, with a not dissimilar switch whereby the method of execution Haman has devised for Mordecai will be used to kill Haman instead (Esther 7:9-10).

The scene of Mordecai's honouring is the film's most interesting in terms of influences. It cleverly combines both Gustave Dore's "Triumph of Mordecai" & Jacques Tissot's "Mordecai's Triumph" with a single static shot that merges the composition of one into the other. On top of this the bystanders wave palm leaves which also recalls Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. While it's appropriation / supersessionism this typological interpretation of Mordecai (as a "type" of Christ) has long been popular with Christian interpreters and so it's no surprise that biblical filmmakers carried on this tradition.

And then comes the climatic scene with Esther's banquet. the plot abridges the cycle of meals Esther goes through prior to explaining her predicament to her husband and instead cuts to the chase. The composition here is more akin to Rembrant, Lievens, Victors and Armitage than to Tissot or Dore, but it's notable how many depictions of this scene place Haman on the left, but none of the historical artistic takes on this moment capture the dramatic way in which Esther flings her arm out across Ahasuerus to point to the man she is accusing. 

It's noticeable also that she doesn't faint in contrast to the deuterocanonical passage from Esther 15:7 where she swoons. However Ahasuerus comforts Esther as she sobs which is found in Esther 15:8. Haman begs for is life, is seen and is led away. 

Haman's grim execution is omitted, but there's a final scene in Ahasuerus's throne room and a final Thanksgiving scene featuring women dancing in the kind of generic SE Mediterranean costumes that dancers are routinely given in this kind of scene. I don't know enough about costumes from this time and place to know if any of them are accurate, but these ones feel particularly orientalising.

There's little of the additional material from deuterocanonical books, or subsequent Jewish tradition. What's more interesting though is the way that he parts of the narrative that are omitted tend to benefit Ahasuerus, Mordecai and perhaps the never-mentioned God. The grim realities of Harem life are minimised. While Esther's not portrayed as attracted to Ahasuerus, he's made to seem decent enough with physical shows of affection and comfort. His questionable treatment of Vashti is left out as his Haman's execution. Meanwhile, Mordecai's orders which result in over 75,000 gentiles being killed are also not included.

So while there isn't anything as heinous as the trivialising in the Veggie Tales version, nor the teenage romanticising of One Night with the King (2006) and perhaps a few other recent outings), it is a fairly sanitised adaptation of the story. 

That said, all things considered this isn't a bad first cinematic screen outing for the Book of Esther. Some of the processions are over long and the characterisation is a little weak, and there's little of the spark that we find in Feuillade's Fantômas just a few years later, but it does have its occasional moments. And it's network of visual references from Assyrian bas-reliefs to Tissot and Dore provide a good deal of interest.

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1 - Gisèle, enfant terrible listed on the IMDb. La prêtresse de carthage listed on p4 of this catalogue of Early films from the collections of the Swedish Film Institute.

2 - Jackson, W. H. "The Marriage of Esther: A Critical Review by Rev W.H. Jackson" in Moving Picture World, vol 6 Jan-Jun 1910, p.1098. Available online at https://archive.org/details/movinwor06chal/page/1098/mode/2up?view=theater 

Absalon (Absalom, 1912)

Henri Andréani was just an actor when Pathé's "promoted [him] from within its ranks" to the role of co-director under Ferdinand Zecca.¹ At the time the market for 'respectable' material such as biblical films was growing rapidly. Gaumont, Vitagraph and a number of lesser known (mainly Italian) studios had all released films on biblical subjects such that despite Pathé's early Passion Plays, and a handful of New Testament films they were losing ground. Pathé's strategy had been to create/acquire various new 'Art' brands/subsididiaries such as SCAGL (Société cinématographique des auteurs et gens de lettres), Film d'Art and Filme d'Art Italiana ².

Having learned from Zecca (who had previously co-directed the 1902-05 Passion Play La Vie et passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, and directed its 1907 remake), Andréani's first solo effort was David et Goliath (1910) before he went on to make films about Moses, Cain and St. Stephen, but he returned to the story of David in 1911 with David et Saül and with La Mort de Saül the following year. 

Given Andréani's penchant for the Bible's more visually striking acts of violence - Andréani is the only director to have given us Jael driving a tent peg through Sisera's skull, and also gives us Goliath's head on a spike, Cain caving in his brother's head and one of the few versions of Jephthah's daughter - it was only a matter of time before his continued adaptation of the David narratives tackled Absalom. For those unfamiliar with the story, Absalom is one of David's sons who started a rebellion against his father after his half-brother raped his sister. Sadly, he proves to be more of a politician than a warrior and when the battle with his father's forces starts to go against him, he flees into the woods and gets caught in a tree by his hair and is stabbed by David's general Joab.

The film largely follows this narrative (there's more in the Bible, but, like Andréani I've not gone into all the details. You can read the story for yourself in 2 Sam 13.1–19.8). The main difference occurs at the start. Despite Andréani's apparent relish for grizzly deaths, he omits Amnon's rape of Tamar. Instead Absalom's motivation derives from David choosing Solomon to succeed him even though Absalom is the eldest. This is a bit of conflation. By the time David appoints Solomon, Absalom is long since dead and it is David's next eldest son Adonijah who misses out to Solomon and starts a rebellion. (The scene is covered in Solomon and Sheba (1959) featuring George Sanders as Adonijah).

In any case, this is the scene with Absalon (also known as A Prince of Israel) begins. The composition strongly echoes that of the battle between David and Goliath in Andréani's earlier film with the low camera, looming figures and the depth of the shot, but the scenery is very different. Solomon is still  child. Absalom cuts a pretty hefty figure. Of all the characters in the Bible none are described as thoroughly as Absalom. Not only are we told that "in all Israel there was no one to be praised so much for his beauty as Absalom"  and that he was without blemish (2 Sam 14:25), but also that he only cut his hair once a year and that it weighed "two hundred shekels" (2 Sam 14:26) – about 2kg according to the Good News Bible. Perhaps the film was meant to be set shortly after that annual trip to the barbers, but it's fair to say this is not how I pictured him.

However, the casting is interesting for another reason. I think Absalom might be played by Louis Ravet who starred as Goliath in Andréani's earlier film. Meaning he Ravet had pretty much cornered the market in playing enemies of King David. Ravet's is credited in the intertitles to David and Goliath as being from the Comédie Française - the world's oldest active theatre company. Ravet was more or less simultaneously involved in various productions of Racine's "Athalie" at the Comédie Française while appearing in a string of historical films for Pathé, particularly working with Andréani ³. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his build, he also took the lead in Capellani, Zecca and Andréani's Samson (1908).

In film-making terms Andréani had moved on significantly since the start of his David series. Here there's a little more insight into the motivations of the characters, though not to the extent we find in La Mort du Saul. More significantly we see a far greater cast. There are a number of crowd scenes as Absalom puts himself about gaining popularity while undermining David and fomenting rebellion. perhaps the biggest spectacle here is the battle scene (pictured above). It would be interesting to compare Andréani's crowds with one of its contemporaries Enrico Guazzoni's Quo Vadis? (1912/3) for Cines. Certainly they are more sizeable than those in D.W. Griffith's Judith of Bethulia a year or two later. Andréani also uses a cut to make the start of the battle larger. The result is what looks like a rather odd panning shot. It starts on one set of advancing soldiers, only to pan away to empty space, presumably to enable an invisible cut while the extras move to the other side of the imminent conflict and charge in the other way. Either way the next shot (above) - of soldiers in hand to hand combat looks very impressive, and there's a depth of field on display here which really makes the battle look huge.

Indeed Andréani's use of the 3D space here is a significant advance on David and Goliath. See for example the shot below of two men sent by David's spy Hushai, peeling off from Absalom's marching forces and cross (the River Jordan?) to warn their King. It very effectively tells the story with the river clearing marking the distance between Absalom's forces and David's spies. Their prominence in the shot reinforcing the fact that these are the good guys. (Though Absalom is portrayed relatively moderately in the film).

As with many films revolving around an iconic moment ⁴, a significant part of how it is judged depends on how it handles that moment. Here's it's a little disappointing. This is in part because the first time I remember hearing this story it was Absalom's hair (specifically) that got caught in the tree, rather than just his head as the text says (2 Sam 18:9). I was probably a teenager and the preacher in question was from a free/ independent/ conservative evangelical church and used the story as a warning against vanity. Doubtless the idea that Absalom's fate was an apt punishment for his vanity persists in some circles.

However, this is to take things quite a way beyond the text. Firstly it only says "head" and there seems to be no connection in the writer's mind between the two. Perhaps the further you get from the story the more appealing the connections seems. As Daniel Lavery points out in this quirky reworking of the story, "if Absalom’s heavy hair were caught in the limbs of the terebinth tree, he would have only to cut it to free himself."⁵ Moreover, the text has plenty of bad things to say about Absalom, but it doesn't criticise him for being vain, nor does anyone view the accident which led to his execution as being an act of God. 

In any case, here Absalom's hair is not long enough to get accidentally caught in a passing tree while fleeing a battle, and, as you can see from the .gif below, it doesn't really show him as getting his head caught either. There's an attempt at an impressive stunt. Absalom/Ravet grabs at the tree as his mule goes under it. It must have been fairly difficult, but it never looks anything other than a man hanging from a tree with his arms. It's difficult to know if audiences would have been impressed by this at the time. I suspect not because while movie stunt work, like the rest of cinema, was in its infancy, it was well enough established in the theatre that it's unlikely anyone was as impressed as they would have been by some of Méliès' camera trickery. After he's cut down there's some sort of plait that's left swinging as the soldiers ride on. Was this deliberately included as part of his hair (in which case how did it get caught?) or some part of his apparel? Or was it just part of the stunt that was left, a little carelessly on display afterwards?

Joab stabs the dangling Absalom ("exactly as stabby as we could wish" in Fritzi Kramer's words) and his men hack him down and carry him to David.⁶ It works dramatically, but it does mean that one of the few Black characters in the Bible – an unnamed Cushite – is excluded. Having been marginalised in the text by not having their name mentioned, they are cut out of this film adaptation entirely. The final shot shows David morning for his son rather than celebrating the victory, while Joab looks on disdainfully.

It's interesting how the final shot in many ways mirror the first. David showering affection on one of his son's in the middle of the screen, unaware of the extent to which it is irritating one of those close to him who is shown on the left of the screen demonstrating visible signs of their annoyance. While Joab continues to serve David the incident with Absalom seems to have been the start of a rift between him and David, which led to Joab eventually being replaced as David's commander and David advising his son and appointed successor Solomon to have Joab killed, advice Solomon takes. The film nicely captures that cycle.

Absalom appears in a handful of films about David, particularly The Story of David (1976), the Richard Gere vehicle King David (1985) and the Bible Collection's David (1997), but they tend to be ruined by terrible wigs failures an a failure to empathise with the character or give him any sense of depth. In a way, this portrayal of Absalom avoids those pitfalls, mainly because even though this is in some ways a continuation of Andréani's David series, the film-makers are happy to make Absalom centre stage. Admittedly, the acting is in that stagey style (which people assume typifies acting in the silent era, even though it doesn't), but nevertheless the film is fairly effective at telling the story dramatically and cinematically and the battle scenes and its use of depth of field is an interesting development in the directors style.

Readers might also be interested to see Fritzi Kramer's review of Absalom at Movies Silently.

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1 - Shepherd, David J., The Bible on Silent Film: Spectacle, Story and Scripture in the Early Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p.125.
2- Abel, Richard, The Cine Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp.38-43

3 - Anon. "Louis Ravet" Wikipedia, France. Available online: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Ravet

4 - I know "iconic" is overused, but I struggle to find a suitable alternative. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

5 - Lavery, Daniel, "Absalom's Death and Death", The Chatner. 11 March 2020. Available online: https://www.thechatner.com/p/absaloms-defeat-and-death 

6 - Kramer, Fritzi, Absalom (1912) A Silent Film Review", Movies Silently, 8 September 2019. Available online: https://moviessilently.com/2019/09/08/absalom-1912-a-silent-film-review/

Histoire de Judas (2015)

As the cradle of cinema in general, and biblical movies in particular, France's religious films (often featuring long static takes) have travelled from the Lumieres, Pathé Passion plays and Alice Guy, via the likes of Robert Bresson and Philippe Garrel, to find recent expression in works such as Le fils de Joseph (2016) and now Histoire de Judas (The Story of Joseph). Of course this kind of slow, contemplative cinema is hardly unique to France, but the connection between the two is certainly well-established.

Histoire is a strikingly beautiful film. Director Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche sets his take on the Jesus story in the midst of some remarkable exteriors on the edge of the Sahara Desert. Ameur-Zaïmeche was born in Algeria, before his family moved to France two years later, which is perhaps why he chose to locate the film in the Biskra province in northeastern Algerian and the Roman ruins at Thamugadi in the Aurès Mountains.  While his film is very much anti-epic in style with it's long static takes and its slow pace, in an odd way the breathtaking scenery lends the film some of the same kind of feeling the original audiences might have got from a DeMillean spectacle; one is seduced by the striking images, even though there's an historical unlikeliness inherent in their eye-catching nature. Riccardo Centola sums up well the film's anti-epic style:

Lo stesso Gesù viene rappresentato volutamente secondo canoni antispettacolari, in atteggiamento quasi sempre meditabondo, a viso semi-coperto, mentre snocciola frasi celebri nel modo meno enfatico possibile.

Often Jesus' representation is deliberately according to anti-spectacular traditions: in attitude, almost always brooding; his face half covered, while he rattles off celebrated phrases in the least emphatic manner possible. (translation mine).¹

Irina Lubtchansky's cinematography brings a sensuous, materialist quality to the images here. When a woman anoints Jesus with perfume - which we have just witnessed her bartering prized possessions to obtain - you can practically smell the aroma of the oil as it dribbles tantalisingly across Jesus' forehead. As with other films directed by Ameur-Zaïmeche's, the ambient sounds are enhanced giving the impression of a world that endures beyond the confines of the narrative. Elsewhere it's the lighting. In contrast to the bright, colourful exteriors dominated by blue skies and ocre rocks, the interiors opt for more a tenebristic feel. Indeed Ameur-Zaïmeche cites Caravaggio and Rembrandt as the inspiration for these scenes. ²

Visually Histoire de Judas recalls a number of Jesus films. The anti-epic and desert locales recall Pasolini's Il vangelo secondo Matteo (Gospel According to Matthew. 1964) and Albert Serra's less familiar El cant dels ocells (Birdsong, 2008), but also, to a lesser extent, Le lit de la Vierge (The Virgin's Bed, 1969), although that may be partly due to both films - and perhaps French-language Jesus films in general - typifying the tendency to veer into philosophy. (Indeed, the trial scenes feel similar to those from Jesus of Montreal (1989), for this very reason, and that's only French-Canadian). Surprisingly, the Jesus film to which Ameur-Zaïmeche actually refers to in the press pack is Carl Theodore Dreyer's (ultimately unmade) Jesus of Nazareth.³ However, the most striking piece of intertextuality is with Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). Both films rely on desert locations, even during the trial scenes and both films are set amongst Roman remains which whilst largely ruined nevertheless both feature prominent columns.  

One other Jesus film that comes to mind while watching Histoire is Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Both films re-cast Judas as Jesus' closest friend, who knows him even before his temptation in the desert and who remains faithful even after Jesus' crucifixion. Ameur-Zaïmeche's film goes several steps further, however, for here Judas is not even responsible for leading the guards to Jesus.⁴ Indeed this attempt to "rehabilitate Judas" with a more sympathetic portrayal is the film's main premise.⁵ The opening scene shows Judas ascending a mountain to retrieve Jesus after his 40-day fast, which has left his master so weakened by the experience that Judas has to give him a piggy back all the way back to Nazareth. Later Judas persuades his former zealot colleagues to arrange for a crowd to attend Jesus' triumphal entry in to the city and he quickly follows his master's lead in destroying the cages and tables in the temple. "No living being deserves to be in a cage" he announces as the people begin to contribute to the carnage.

However the biggest and most significant deviation from the Gospels surrounds the Last Supper and Jesus' arrest. Earlier in the day Judas witnesses a man from Qumran (who is presumably meant to be an Essene, the group responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls) writing down what Jesus is saying. Judas knows Jesus is opposed to this (he "distrusts the word that is frozen, and which will inevitably become dogma, a tool of power, an instrument of domination and submission") and so having confronted the man, seeks permission to destroy his writings. And this what Jesus means at the Last Supper when he tells Judas to do what he has to do quickly.

[SPOILERS]So while Jesus and the other disciples head to Gethsemane (seemingly without the knowledge that Jesus is to be arrested there) Judas heads to Qumran and burns the Essene's writings. However, shortly afterwards the man finds his records in ashes and rushes to confront Judas, stabbing him in the stomach and leaving him for dead. Judas is found and returned. A Samaritan (named so in the credits⁶) returns him to the city, but by the time Judas awakes and staggers to Golgotha, Jesus has already died on the cross. Judas finds Jesus' recently vacated tomb and unaware of the significance of what has happened lies down 'in Jesus' place' and dies. The shot deliberately evokes Hans Holbein the Younger's "The Dead Christ in the Tomb" (1521-22),⁷ and is the first film I can think of where Judas dies not by hanging as in Matt 27:3-10, but in a way that more closely relates to the Bible's other description of Judas' death in Acts 1:15-20.[END SPOILERS]

But the film's inherent sympathy for Judas is perhaps best embodied by the fact that Ameur-Zaïmeche himself plays Judas and that he chose his close friend Nabil Djedouani to play Jesus. (Djedouani is a director in his own right and is also credited by Ameur-Zaïmeche as an Assistant Director, one of a number of cast members to also take roles in the crew - Marie Loustalot cast as Bathsheba, was assistant editor).⁸

Ameur-Zaïmeche's five other major films - Wesh wesh, qu'est-ce qui se passe? (2001), Bled Number One (2006), Dernier Maquis (2008), Les chants de Mandrin (2011) and Terminal Sud (2019) - have, to a greater or lesser extent, explored Algerian-French identity, and the accompanying internal and external conflicts. His Berber family moved to France when he was just two, so just as all his other films have primarily been in French, and so too is Histoire. This does seem to have raised a few eyebrows,⁹  However, whilst it's understandable that a director born in Algeria might seek out Algerian locations to stand in for the Holy Land, as someone who has lived in France since the age of two it's only natural that his film is shot in French. Rather than being a purely Algerian film it's more nuanced and complex than that.

However, the use of French in an Algerian context does recall the country's suffering under French colonialism. In particular the extended scenes where Pilate (Régis Laroche) and his colleagues - played by a white actors -  interrogate Jesus adds an extra dimension, almost as if they are events from the fringes of the Algerian War. Pilate fears Jesus is a revolutionary and wants to quell the threat to the empire. "Look all around you. Your empire lies in ruins" says Jesus at one point, "it’s in my name that nations will place their hopes".

That said the tone of the discussion here is decidedly philosophical compared to standard Hollywood fare. It feels like a number of French-language Jesus films similarly pit Pilate and Jesus against one another in a battle of philosophy, though perhaps my impression of that is exaggerated by my love of existential New Wave movies. Nevertheless, both Golgotha (1935) and Jesus of Montreal (1989) feature relatively long sequences where Jesus and Pilate engage in philosophical tête-à-tête. It perhaps also reflects Ameur-Zaïmeche's uses of Roger Caillois' "Ponce Pilate". I have to say I'm not hugely in favour of these kind of portrayals: The more Pilate appears as philosophical, the less he seems like the brute of Luke 13, Philo and Josephus, and the more the blame for Jesus death deflects from him onto the Jewish people. That said, given that Ameur-Zaïmeche's motivation for making Histoire de Judas was to counter antisemitism, it's less of a concern in this case.

These concerns are also offset by the film's handling of the Barabbas figure. Here he is called Carabas and he appears to have a severe cognitive disability. Pilate has him arrested but the chief priests seeing the injustice appeal to Pilate and persuade him that Carabas is not a threat. By dismantling the way the Gospels place the two men in opposition, and by making distinction (found in Mark 15:6-8) between trying to save Carabas / Barabbas and trying to have Jesus killed this also counters many of the ways that the text has often been presented which reinforce antisemitism.

However, perhaps the film's biggest weakness is that it's unclear who exactly was driving Jesus' execution. Judas is recast as Jesus' great friend, nowhere near the events in Gethsemane. The priests have some qualms, but don't seem particularly involved and even Pilate seems reluctant. Things kind of fall on one of Pilate's advisers, but it's not exactly convincing.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting take on the story and one which is beautifully shot. For those who are interested, it's currently available on Mubi along with several of Ameur-Zaïmeche's other films.

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Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat have also reviewed this film at spiritualityandpractice.com. Moreover Reinhold Zwick has written more extensively on the film in the soon to be published T&T Clark Handbook of Jesus and Film (pp.67-76) edited by Richard Walsh and also containing an essay from me.

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1 - Centola, Riccardo (2015) "21 MFF Histoire de Judas" at Cinemafrica, 11 November. Available online: http://www.cinemafrica.org/spip.php?article1603 

2 - Frodon, Jean-Michel (2015), “An Interview with Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche,” in Sarrazink Productions (ed.), Presskit for Story of Judas. Available online: https://medias.unifrance.org/medias/7/42/141831/presse/story-of-judas-presskit-french.pdf

3 - Frodon, "Interview"

4 - In Last Temptation Judas does this only after Jesus' emphatic instructions to do so. It's hardly what could be called a betrayal.

5 - Ameur-Zaïmeche, Rabah (2015) "Director’s Note" in Sarrazink Productions (ed.), Pressbook for "Story of Judas". Available online: https://medias.unifrance.org/medias/44/47/143148/presse/story-of-judas-presskit-english.pdf

6 - Zwick, Reinhold (2021) "Inculturation and Actualization: Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Histoire de Judas" in Walsh, Richard (ed.) T&T Clark Handbook of Jesus and Film, London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. p.69

7 - Frodon, "Interview"

8 - Frodon, "Interview"

9 - Not only does Frodon ask Ameur-Zaïmeche about this in the press-pack interview, but both Centalo and Zwick (p.67) have also questioned this decision/choice/move.

2015's French Jesus Film - Histoire de Judas

I know I will have heard the name of this film - Histoire de Judas - but I'm only just wising up to its existence. Shot in 2015 it's a French production, but apparently filmed in one of the Berber parts of Algeria. As I say, I've not really heard much about this, let alone seen it, and there's not a great deal about it on IMDb. I do know, however, that long-time Jesus films scholar Reinhold Zwick is preparing something on it, though we will have to wait a couple of years to get to read it.
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There is however, a nice write up of the film and director Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche's work in general by Dan Sallitt. Sallitt introduced the film when it played in New York in 2016. Ameur-Zaïmeche was born in Algeria and most of the cast and crew seem to have similar origins. There are a couple of other reviews of it at MUBI, as well as one from Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat who I've crossed paths with before. MUBI also reveal that it was the winner of the Ecumenical Jury prize at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival.

In addition, various sites have a short trailer which provides a number of shots. The most interesting of these is what looks to be a triumphal entry scene, only one where Jesus is carrying a donkey foal, rather than the other way round. A major element of the story is the redemption of the Judas character and there seems to be an element of the Judas as a buddy element of Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ.

Sallitt's review provides the most interesting details however

One interesting addition that can perhaps be mentioned without spoiling the film is the important character of the madman who impersonates Jesus and functions in the film as his double, and who eventually is the focus of a emotional scene on the site of the crucifixion.

This sounds a little like Philip Pullman's book "The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ" though not having read it or seen the film I'm hardly in a place to comment. I'll try and dig this one out and report back.

Silent Bible Film Mystery - #04 Untangling the Pathé Passion Plays

I've been promising for a while to write a post disentangling the various Pathé Passion Plays made during the turn of the twentieth century. The films are most widely known due to the 2003 Kino-Lorber/Image Entertainment joint DVD release with From the Manger to the Cross, although obviously they are also available on YouTube. However, both the DVD and that YouTube link claim that the version of the film they have is from the period 1902-1905. Having a range of years is, in itself, a bit odd, and what's more subsequent research suggests that their dating is incorrect.

Pathé's first Jesus film was released in 1899. Gaumont produced their first Jesus film at around the same time. Over the years they evolved it and remade it such that the final version wasn't completed until 1914. By which time it's style will have been looking very mannered, though that didn't prevent subsequent re-releases. This development took two different forms. One the one hand, there was the creation of new scenes to complement the original ones. This, for example, is why a time range of 1902-05 is often ascribed to the film. The first scenes were shot in 1902 and released but new material was being filmed and gradually made available as things progressed.

On the other hand, there was also the refilming of material that had already been filmed before. Indeed, within that 15 year period there were four distinct series, one in 1899, one in 1902-05, one in 1907 with the final incarnation in 1914. For each of these material was re-shot, often improved in certain ways, such as the creation of more impressive sets - something that became a key part of the Pathé brand - larger numbers of actors, improvements in camera quality, and variations in location. At the same time there is a remarkable consistency in terms of composition and ideas, with various scenes being recreated in almost exactly the same fashion from version to version.

Three further obstacles hamper the progress of those trying to get to the bottom of this situation. Firstly, there is range of different titles given to the different editions. The films have come to be known as The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ in English or La vie et passion de notre Seigneur Jésus Christ in French, but the shorter La vie et passion de Jésus Christ or even La vie de Jésus or The Passion Play have also been used.

Secondly, there is the fact that Pathé gave distributors and exhibitors the opportunity to pick and choose which scenes they wanted to display. So a theatre owner could choose just to show the nativity scenes, or run a shorter version of the film and not have to pay for the whole thing. This is a totally different mindset to how cinema is distributed today. Given that so many copies of the film have been lost over the years it's hard to work out what is happening with various different fragments and run times of similar, but slightly different looking material.

Lastly there are also various red-herrings. The film's use of colour is much discussed, but it's unclear when this first began (though it was certainly fairly early) or at what stage the colour was added to the various remaining fragments of material we have today. The film's artistic choices in terms of a central, fixed, camera became such a typical part of Pathé's house style, and Pathe's success in this era was so substantial, that it came to be seen a something primitive that later filmmakers evolved on from, rather than a creative choice. But look at a variety of 1890s and 1900s films and you'll soon see that many other approached to camera positioning and use were in evidence. And then there's the use of intertitles, which can date from far later and can themselves contain incorrect information; the release of intermediary versions; and the quality of the print which can make a newer film look far older to the uninitiated than a pristine print of an old version. A further complication is that the film continued to be chopped about, repackaged, recycled and re-released under new titles well into the sound era. I have a VHS at home which calls the film Son of Man (1915) but which comes from a release after it was "hand-colored by Nuns" in 1928.

Anyway, there's been a great deal of work into these films over the last few years, not least by Alain Boillat and Valentine Robert, Dwight Friesen, and Jo-Ann Brant, all of whom have essays in David Shepherd's book "The Silents of Jesus". Between them they break down and de-lineate the four films, which I'll summarise here with references to the relevant page in Shepherd's book:

1899
Little is known of this film. It contained 16 tableaux (p.27) and the odd scene may be included in these films I discussed back in 2006 (though I stand by very little that I wrote in that post and I think most of those are from later versions). The director is not known, but it's possible that it was Ferdinand Zecca who first joined Pathé at this time.

1902-05
This is the version that the Image/Kino DVD claims to be, but it appears they are mistaken. We can forgive them - it they had not painstakingly restored this film and made it widely available, the subsequent research which has cleared things up a little might not have happened. There was a VHS release in 1996 by Hollywood’s Attic (31). In any case, it was directed by Ferdinad Zecca and his assistant / co-creator Lucien Nonguet. As the time range suggests this was the most evolutionary stage. The 16 original tableaux were reshot - some longer some shorter - and new titles were added (p.27). Then over the following three years additional tableau were created, taking the eventual total to 32 (p.27).

1907
This is the version that is available on the Image/Kino DVD, or at least that is one of them because two very, very slightly different versions exist, one in black and white and one in colour, though the differences extend to marginal variations in composition, not just the use of colour (p.79f). The number of tableaux in this version are hard to number with precision. Boillat and Robert state 37; Friesen cites 39 (p.79), but only lists 35. In many ways Zecca seems to be responding to his friend and rival Alice Guy's 1906 Jesus film (p.87-92) as evidenced by the increased percentage of outdoor footage at a time Pathé was increasingly building its reputation on its sets (as evidenced by the now prominent Pathe logo on several of them). The film has been discussed in many places at length, so I'll say no more on this for now.

1913-4
In contrast to the previous two or three stages, the fourth and final film was directed by Maurice-André Maître. It's this version which was re-released as Son of Man in 1915 and again after 1928 and for several years was available on VHS from Nostalgia Family Video. As you might expect everything here is bigger and better. Abel claims that there were 75 tableaux, but Boillat and Robert, writing more recently reduces this figure to 43 (p.27). Brant notes how his use of "deep staging and misè en scene "intensify the pathos", "dramatize the logic", provide a "more complicated visual experience" and "liberate his story" (158). Again he uses more outside scenes, bigger crowds and scenery, but he uses this to increase his depth of field.


I hope this helps clear up some of the confusion over the various films - I must admit it's still not entirely clear to me, and still I watch  the DVD I discussed back in 2006 and long to know the story of how what seems to be a jumble of fragments came to be assembled in this way. In writing this post I also sat down and watched the two later films together in parallel, pausing one or the other to keep the episodes in sync. That in itself was enough of an interesting exercise to make this worthwhile.


1 - Abel, Richard (1994) The Cine Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896-1914, Berkeley: University of California Press. p.320

La vie et la passion de Jésus-Christ (1898)

The first biblical films date all the way back to 1897. Albert "Léar" Kirchner's La Passion du Christ and The Horitz Passion Play by Mark Klaw and Abraham Erlanger, are now, sadly, considered lost, as is Siegmund Lubin's The Passion Play from the following year.¹ In a similar manner almost all of the 1898 silent The Passion Play of Oberammergau, which was famously shot on a New York rooftop rather than in Bavaria, has been lost, though a fragment has survived.²

The earliest remaining Bible film, then, is La vie et la passion de Jésus-Christ (The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, available online here) by George Hatot and Louis Lumière. Shot in France 1898 when most moving pictures were little more than short slices of real life (les actualités) it retains something of that documentary feel - is this a film about Jesus or the filming of a real-life play about Jesus? Any audience is kept off screen, but the sets retain the feel of an amateur stage production. Furthermore, the placing of the camera in several scenes feels as if it is placed at the side of an audience. These aspects are perhaps most obvious in the crucifixion scene where the shadow of the cross falls not across the ground, but against the back wall. Strangely the scene that feels most like it has been made with the camera in mind - the Garden of Gethsemane - is the one shot outdoors in the most natural setting. At the time documentary footage was commonly shot outside. Drama tended to be set indoors.

Louis Lumière, of course, was the man who, along with his brother Auguste, "invented" cinema, by being the first to display moving pictures to a paying audience. The company the two founded for a while specialised in these actualités but also made comedies and the occasional reconstruction of historical events. Hatot was one of their key early collaborators, first on early documentary footage, but around this time also began to specialise in reconstructions of famous deaths including Mort de Robespierre (1897) and the execution of another religious martyr in Exécution de Jeanne d'Arc (1897).³

Whilst the title of this film is The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, very little of Jesus' ministry is actually shown. The film starts with the Magi and the Shepherds worshipping Jesus as a baby in a manger, and is followed by a flight to Egypt scene where Mary, Joseph and Jesus stop to rest between the paws of a/the Sphinx. It's a scene that would be reproduced almost fifteen years later in From the Manger to the Cross, only that time shot on location in Egypt.

All that lies between that and Jesus' Passion is a solitary miracle - the raising of the Widow of Nain's son. This scene is rare in Jesus movies, providing neither the human interest of the raising of Jairus' daughter, nor the prophetic resonance of Lazarus breaking out of his tomb. Here though is is handled in a relatively low key manner. The adult son is brought out to Jesus on a stretcher. Jesus (Gaston Bretteau) simply raises his arm and the man sits up, his sheet falling away as he does so.

The lack of spectacle at this point is made all the more interesting by the inclusion of an invented miracle slightly later on. The Last Super scene, shot statically, from slightly close up, starts focused on Jesus' empty chair whilst various preparations are made. Suddenly there's a cut and Jesus appears in their midst. The disciples react with astonishment.

Such jump-cut reappearances were relatively common at the time. Georges Méliès was in his prime and produced numerous short films making use of the technique that same year. These included the religious picture  La tentation de Saint-Antoine (The Temptation of St. Anthony) which featured the titular saint desperately trying to keep his mind on his prayers whilst young women keep materialising to tempt him, including including a moment when a statue of Jesus comes to life. Not only did this make him a forerunner of all those directors who entertained their audiences with a potent mixture of sex and religion, but when the following year he used his camera tricks to portray one of Jesus' miracles in Le Christ marchant sur les flots (Christ Walking on the Water, 1899), he became the first filmmaker to create both a reverent film about Jesus and an irreverent comic depiction of the crucifixion.

More to the point, Georges Hatot himself, having started his career making actualité films of every life such as street scenes and military parades, began elaborating on the jump-cut technique. Whereas it is absent from his 1897 film Mort de Marat, and only used once in Métamorphose de Faust (1897). Having made La vie et la passion the following year, he then moved to Gaumont with Bretteau (who had played Jesus) to remake the Faust story. The resulting Les métamorphoses de Satan (1898), which Bretteau both starred in and co-directed made repeated use of the tec"hnique to portray as Mephistoles, Satan and a young woman continuously appear and disappear.

It's more than possible, of course, that the jump-cut scene in La vie et la passion was at one stage intended as the episode in Luke where the resurrected Jesus miraculously appears amongst the disciples, but the resulting scene here is quite clearly The Last Supper: not only are their echoes of Leonardo's painting, but Jesus distributes the bread and wine and Judas kisses him on the cheek.

The success of this film did little to dissuade other filmmakers from producing their own versions of Jesus' life and death. In particular, Pathé brought out their own tableaux-style Jesus film called La vie et la Passion de Christ in 1899 which gradually expanded (in both number of scenes and title length) through three new versions around up to 1913. There are a few posts on these films (now including this one) on this thread. The relationship between them itself is fairly complex. Hopefully I will be able to expand on it some point, but if you can't wait until then I encourage you to look up Boillat and Robert's article as detailed below.

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1 - Boillat, Alain and Robert, Valentine. (2016) "La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (1902–05)" in The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927); ed. Shepherd, David. p. 27

2 - According to Kinnard and Davis, a 35mm fragment of the film remains in the George Eastman House archives. The film was produced by Rich G. Hollaman despite the fact he had never actually seen a movie before. He proved so inept at the task that the rest of the cast and crew teamed up to shoot it in the early evening once he had left for the day. These days Henry C. Vincent is credited with being the director, but this marked the first time the roles of producer and director had been separated (The Guinness Book of Film Facts and Feats).

3 - Abel, Richard (1994) The Cine Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896-1914, Berkeley: University of California Press. p.91 The observation about famous deaths is thanks to Luke McKernan.

Le lit de la Vierge (The Virgin's Bed, 1969)

Undoubtedly one of the most beautiful Jesus films if also one of the most likely to offend the devout, French auteur Philippe Garrel's Le lit de la Vierge (The Virgin's Bed) is and usual take on the life of Jesus. Filmed shortly after the May 1968 protests in Garrel's trademark high-contrast, black and white style, it follows a young Jesus round the countryside as he tries to work out his angst and sense of lost-ness. The imagery and characters (Jesus, his mother and Mary Magdalene) are clearly biblical but the events that unfold are only tangentially related. As with Garrel's Le révélateur (1967) the images are dreamy and surreal and you sense that to try to interpret each as if it were some sort of cipher is to miss the point.

The film sits, both chronologically and stylistically, somewhere between Pasolini's Il vangelo secondo Matteo and the 1973 Jesus Christ Superstar, with the starkly beautiful black and white photography of the former and the rocky vibe and attitude of youthful rebellion of the latter. The second scene - a long tracking shot of Jesus riding a donkey down the middle of the street whilst being taunted by people riding on horses - accompanied by rock guitar, is perhaps the coolest shot of all biblical films. At other points the music is more accordion based - perhaps one of the sources of inspiration for the similarly surreal Little Baby Jesus of Flandr (2010).

Some of the events that occur are easier to make sense of than others. Jesus is frequently rejected by those he meets, aside from Magdalene and, towards the end of the film, a small boy who asks him to open the large box he has begun to carry round on his shoulder. There' s a sense of foreboding about this, and the horrors that unfold when it is finally opened suggest Jesus has been carrying a sort of Pandora's box, containing the sins of the world. A Jesus type figure appears before Pilate, but it is only when they are dragged away that we realise it's not Jesus but Magdalene. The imagery here however suggests that this is not an attempt to radically revise the gospels as much as an attempt to appropriate the imagery of the gospels as metaphors relating to the failure May 1968.

There's an interesting quote from Garrel on this aspect of the film on the Artfilms site:

I believe my point of view on the Christian myth is quite clear in Le Lit de la Verge. It is a non-violent parable in which Zouzou incarnates both Mary and Mary Magdalene while Pierre Clementi incarnates a discouraged Christ who throws down his arms in face of world cruelty. In spite of its allegorical nature, the film contains a denunciation of the police repression of 1968, which was generally well understood by viewers at the time.

There's also a quote there from Harvard's David Pendleton who says the film is only "minimally concerned with traditional religion" instead focusing on "the ways in which Garrel and his friends saw themselves as belonging to a kind of religious sect, engaging in ritual behavior.” I assume that the "friends" referred to here are those related with the Zanzibar Films Collective a group of directors and artists even younger than the French New Wave directors who had been inspired by the '68 uprisings. Also worth a read is a brief piece at Strictly Film School.

La naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ (1906)

I'm reviewing this film as part of the Early Women Filmmakers Blogathon (though I've been meaning to do so for some time). The film is available as part of the Gaumont Treasures (1897-1913) box set from Kino Lorber or if you're naughty/skint like me you can see it on YouTube.

Alice Guy¹ is famed for being cinema's first female director and producer, having a hand in around 1000 films beginning with her directorial debut La Fée aux choux (The Cabbage Fairy) in 1896. Having revolutionised the infant industry in her native France she moved to America and set up a studio, but not before creating her film on the life of Jesus La naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ (The Birth, Life and Death of Christ, 1906). From a technical angle it's shot in a similar tableau style as Pathé's 1905 and 1907 films La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ).²

The Pathé film was down to Guy's friend and rival Ferdinand Zecca. Indeed two years before the release of this film Guy found Zecca selling soap on a street corner having been seen as surplus to requirements at Pathé (McMahan:2009, 125). Guy hired him instead, leaked the news to Pathé who reinstated Zecca and he then proceeded to re-work La Vie et La Passion de Jesus-Christ. It's an anecdote typical of Guy who was not only a pioneer in the film of cinema, but also a mentor who possessed the canny knack of spotting talent and developing it. In addition to Zecca she also gave a hand up the ladder to Victorin Jasset (although he was fired during the making of this film), Lois Weber, Louis Feuillade and her future husband Herbert Blaché all of whom would go on to great success (McMahan:2009, 125-126).

As filmmakers though Guy and Zecca could not be more different, at least within the limitations of the tableau approach that so typifies films from cinemas first decade and a half. Zecca's film is far more theatrical, his actors perform in a manner that is often seen as over the top. The use of stencil colour also adds to this flashy style.³

Guy however is far more subtle and nuanced. Her actors are far more naturalistic and the film lacks the grand, showy gestures of Zecca's film. It's often thought that the style of acting found in Zecca's film is deliberate and typical of the era. What isn't given sufficient consideration, in my opinion, is the fact that many of those who appeared on screen at this time were simply not very good actors. At this stage in the development of cinema it was still very much theatre's poor relation. The best actors appeared on stage rather than on screen and the theatre was a far more lucrative source of income for those with talent. In this context then, Guy's ability to both see the need for, and manage to produce this kind of more natural and realistic types of performance is critical, and far more fitting, I would argue, for her subject matter. "Guy's work is more modest, but more deeply felt." (Williams, p.40)

This noticeably more humble aesthetic did not prevent Mademoiselle Alice from using camera tricks. There are a number of uses of double exposure, or cuts allowing angels to suddenly appear on screen. In fact such angelic visitations happen five times throughout the film (not including the charming original intertitles), most notably in the, extra-biblical, scene above where they guard the sleeping baby Jesus when Mary pops inside for a moment. Notice too the simplicity of the angel's costumes in that shot contrasting with Zecca's elaborate halos.

But Guy was very much an innovator. Whilst she was not quite the first director of drama (the very first films were effectively documentaries) she was certainly one of the first, persuading her boss Leon Gaumont to let her make La Fée in her own time. As Gaumont's Nicolas Seydoux has put it "She told her boss that making movies was the best way to sell his equipment" (Simon: Preface, xv). At the time Guy was only employed as his office manager. having witnessed her success Gaumont freed up Guy to produce more films. When he invented the Chronophone (an early system that synchronised sound with moving images) she produced the 'photoscènes' that showcased it. Guy later moved to the US with her husband and the two set up their own studio, Solax, one of the first to move away from New York.

This entrepreneurial thirst for innovation can be seen in the way Guy uses the camera in the film. Camerawork was still very much point-and-shoot, but this films showcases a number of developments in that respect. Firstly, I recently read David Bordwell's post "Anybody but Griffith". Whilst he describes how during 1908-1920 the move towards editing began to predominate, he argues that "the tableau strategy developed into a powerful expressive resource which "offered rich creative choices to filmmakers" (Bordwell). Bordwell highlights shots from a number of films from the 1910s that suggest that directors using the tableau style were doing more sometimes doing far more than just plonking down the cameras in front of what was effectively a theatre stage and letting the scene play out, but that this was a creative choice.

One of the key things Bordwell focuses on is various times where the "shot makes sense from only a very limited number of points" and he cites various examples from 1910. Yet this approach is found various times in Guy's film. The most notable example is in the scene where Peter denies knowing Jesus (see image below). Like many of the scenes in the film it is inspired by James Tissot's illustrations of biblical scenes, though whilst they owe something to Tissot, by no means does she merely slavishly reproduce his work in moving form. Here the architecture of the scene owes more to Tissot's second denial of Peter whilst the sense of action belongs more to Tissot's third denial.

It's clear however that whilst Guy is inspired by them she also creates something of her own that is more cinematic. When the shot begins Jesus is absent and the focus is on Peter. At the end of the shot Jesus walks along behind the scenery and perpendicular to the camera line. As he does he appears in two places where there is no wall, stopping on the second occasion to look back at Peter. Like the scenes Bordwell discusses, this shot would not work for many viewers in a theatre. It works here by using the composition, and the audience's prior knowledge of the subject to draw their attention to the place where Guy wants to focus their attention.


There are several other shots like this in the film such as "The Arrival of the Magi" where the camera can see the infant Jesus for almost the whole time, but very few people would be able to see him were the same scene reproduced live in an auditorium, and "The Samaritan" where the audience is pre-warned as to the disciples arrival in a similar fashion to the denial scene.

Another way in which Guy develops the tableau style is by filming various scenes from more interesting angles. For example the Last Supper. Whilst the vast major of artistic presentations of this subject have simply captured it with table in the centre of the frame and square-on, Guy films it from an oblique angle, and therefore is able to make Judas's early departure all the more obvious for the audience.

Thirdly, there is a panning shot as Jesus is brought before Caiaphas. It's slight, but still relatively rare for the period. More striking in this respect is the scene "Climbing Golgotha" which begins partway up the hill looking down at the crowd accompanying Jesus to his execution as they snake up the hillside. But as Jesus himself is about to file past the camera it pans left and upwards to view Jesus and the rest of the procession from the rear. Again Guy could have chosen to insert a cut here, but her panning of the camera is a deliberate choice to keep all of the action within the same shot

Most impressive in this respect is a three shot sequence involving a degree of continuity editing. The first "Jesus Before Pontius Pilate" shows Jesus before Pilate, shot from an angle to Pilate's seat of power. Not only does Guy's blocking move both characters around all of the space, but as the shot ends Jesus is taken out of the rear of the shot, more-or-less along the camera line and seemingly down some steps, but Pilate exits to the back and stage right.

The next shot, "The Torment" shows both men arriving at their destinations, Jesus at his whipping post and Pilate at the balcony that overlooks it. Whilst the camera has dropped a floor to be on the same level as Jesus, there's no mistaking that we are seeing the back of the previous shot, filmed from the opposite angle. It's an attempt at continuity in the form of "something close to a reverse-angle shift" although the flow is rather disrupted by the intertitle that introduces the new scene (Abel, p.166).

The third shot, "Ecce Homo", is again looking up at Pilate's balcony, but this time the camera is filming from a fresh angle, straight on as opposed to the previous angled shot. The main reason that the three shots here and the "Climbing Golgotha" shot are possible is because much of the production was filmed on location. Again this gives the film a more natural film in contrast to Zecca's edifices, but it also means the terrain is far more interesting than what could be shot on the flat floor of a studio.

The most celebrated of this film's innovations is the mid-shot of St Veronica that appears as Jesus is dragged along the road to Golgotha. Veronica wipes his face and then Guy cuts to the mid-shot of her displaying a likeness of Jesus's face on her cloth. As David Shepherd points out as this shot is immediately preceded by an unnamed woman kneeling in front of the cloth and gazing upon it this essentially becomes cinema's first point-of-view shot (Shepherd, 73).

Shepherd also notes how the white sheet Veronica uses to show her viewers an image of Christ evokes the cinema screen that Guy is using to display her image of Christ to her viewers (p.73). The fact that the observers of Veronica's image are predominantly female is just one of many suggestions that this film was made with a female audience in mind.

Certainly it is the most female focused of all the major Jesus films. This starts with the emphasis on the birth scenes, noticeably on Mary, including the scene described above where angels care for Jesus to keep him safe whilst she finds some respite. Most notably, as my scene guide demonstrates, the only three scenes included from Jesus' ministry all feature women prominently, the woman at the well (here just titled "The Samaritan"), the raising of Jairus's daughter and the washing of Jesus' feet. "The scene in which Peter denies Jesus focuses on the women around the disciple as much as on him." (Abel, p.166) When Jesus falls on the Via Dolorossa it is "six women coming to Jesus' aid", rather than Simon of Cyrene (Hebron, p.546). Naturally, the scenes of women witnessing Jesus' resurrection feature heavily in the film's closing scenes.

It's disappointing that 111 years later, and all the gains in equality that have been won in that time, that no subsequent filmmaker has yet matched Guy's vision of a Jesus who had women right at the heart of his ministry. Many more recent films have sought to include women at the Last Supper, and highlighted their presence at the resurrection, but all too often this seems like window dressing rather than something akin to Guy's core conviction that women were so central to Jesus' plans. But then few people saw the things in such a remarkable way as Alice Guy. I'm grateful to those who have championed her achievements and helped us see a little of more of how she saw the world.

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1 - Whilst after her marriage to Herbert Blaché she became known as Alice Blaché and then after their subsequent divorce, Alice Guy Blaché, at the time of making this film she was unmarried and simply known as Alice Guy. Therefore I have chosen to use this name throughout.
2 - Contrary to what it says on the case, this is the version that has been available on DVD for many years (along with From the Manger to the Cross). One day I'll get around to summarising the evidence for that, but you can find out for yourself in Shepherd et al, "The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927)"
3 - For a longer comparison see Friesen pp.87-94

- Abel, Richard (1994) "The Cine Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896-1914", Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Boillat, Alain and Robert, Valentine. (2016) 'La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (1902–05)' in "The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927)"; ed. Shepherd, David. p. 27
- Bordwell, David (2017) "Anybody but Griffith" http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2017/02/27/anybody-but-griffith/ retreived 24th March 2017.
- Friesen, Dwight H. (2016) 'La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (Pathé-Frères, 1907): The Preservation and Transformation of Zecca's Passion' in "The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927)"; ed. Shepherd, David. pp.158-178
- Hebron, Carol A. (2016), 'Alice Guy Blaché and Gene Gauntier: Bringing New Perspectives to Film', in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.), "The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of Biblical Reception in Film", vol. 2, 543-55, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter
- McMahan, Alison, (2009) "James Tissot and Alice Guy Blaché" - http://www.aliceguyblache.com/news/james-tissot-and-alice-guy-blache retrieved 25/3/2017
- McMahan, Alison, (2009)'Key Events and Dates: Alice Guy Blaché' pp.124-131 in "Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer", Simon, Jean (ed), London: Yale University Press
- Shepherd, David J. (2016) 'La naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ (Gaumont, 1906): The Gospel According to Alice Guy' in "The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927)"; ed. Shepherd, David. pp.60-77
- Simon, Joan, (2009) 'The Great Adventure: Alice Guy Blaché, Cinema Pioneer' pp.1-32 in "Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer", Simon, Jean (ed), London: Yale University Press
- Simon, Joan, (2009) 'Preface' pp.xi-xx in "Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer", Simon, Jean (ed), London: Yale University Press
- Williams, Alan (2009) "The Sage Femme of Early Cinema" in "Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer", Simon, Jean (ed), London: Yale University Press , 2009

Le Fils de Joseph (2016)(The Son of Joseph)

This essay isn't so much of a review as a look at some of the film's main themes. As such it will contain spoilers though there are not any particularly shocking twists that would be spoilt by what I discuss below. It's also very much a work-in-progress,so please don't judge it too harshly...

Eugéne Green's Le Fils de Joseph is a Bible film but, crucially, neither a biblical epic nor a typical modernisation of the Nativity accounts. Instead of taking those two more well-trodden routes it opts for a different approach that is quite distinct from any other biblical adaptation I can recall. Instead Green's film explores the story via a modernised story of Vincent a teenage boy who begins the process of discovering who is father is. Whilst for a moment Green toys with his audience to suggest that there might be some kind of supernatural element to his birth, it quickly becomes apparent that, far from being divine, his father is not even a particularly good human.

At the same time Le Fils de Joseph is far more than just an off-beat modern-day story with familiarly named characters. Instead it examines issues of fatherhood, divinity and parentlessness on a number of different levels, enhanced by a technical formalism which underpins these different elements.

Firstly there is the way the film is divided into five acts, each of which is named according to a different biblical story as follows:

I - The Sacrifice of Abraham
II - The Golden Calf
III - The Sacrifice of Isaac
IV - The Carpenter
V - The Flight into Egypt

This is a relatively unusual formal element, made all the more notable by the fact that two of these intertitles are named after the story of Abraham and Isaac, and one after the Israelite's exodus from Egypt, rather than Mary and Joseph. They're also one of a number of ways in which the film references the work of Jean Luc Godard, whose own modernisation of the Nativity, Je vous Salue (Hail Mary, 1985) was a more straightforward, and perhaps less successful, adaptation of the narratives about Jesus' birth.

Other formal elements of the piece however would appear to owe more to the work of other French filmmakers, most notably the work of Robert Bresson, whom Green acknowledges as a major influence.¹ The second aspect, and perhaps the one that has been most remarked on by reviewers, is the manner in which the characters frequently speak or stare directly into the camera.

Whilst not a few films allow their leading characters to speak into the camera, it is relatively rare that the majority of the lead characters do so. Interestingly, this is done in such a way that leaves the question open to interpretation as to whether the characters/actors are meant to be aware of the camera. There are no Alvy Singer / Frank Underwood moments when characters knowingly address the camera, but at certain times, certain characters seem to sense it without specifically interacting with it. This technique itself brings a level of meaning; the viewer observes from a position with some echoes of divinity - on the one hand present yet unable to intervene or interact with the characters. Likewise the characters sense our presence but do not interact with us.

Thirdly, the actors often hold their poses in a certain way and underplay their acting style. Rather than pacing around set and twisting and turning to indicate their passion or emotions, generally they more or less remain standing on the same spot throughout a scene. They tone down the use of their limbs and keep their facial expressions relatively non-demonstrative. As in Bresson's work is a refusal to tell the viewer what to think, leave it instead to the viewer to draw their own conclusions about the character's thoughts and emotions. As Green has explained it's also about enabling the viewer "to see more deeply into the reality of the present....you have to take your time...I want to take the time to go into what is hidden behind the appearance of reality."²

Finally, by keeping the actors' relatively stationary, Green is able to repeat the same sequence of shot types numerous times throughout the film, most notably for dialogue where he typically starts with a mid-length two shot of the characters, before alternating over-the shoulder shots which gradually edge forward until they become close-ups. Often the sequence will end up on a mid-shot again, without the characters appearing to have moved. Alternatively the sequence ends on a close up that is held for several seconds with the character starring into the camera.

These techniques are consistent throughout the film and, as we have seen, provide one of the levels with which the film addresses its themes. The other levels, however, appear less consistently and in many places intersect with one another.

The most obvious of these is the plot. Vincent has been brought up by his mother, Marie, in the knowledge that he doesn't have a father. One day however he opens Marie's desk and find a letter she sent to his father that was returned. When Marie refuses to give him any more details he tracks down his father, Oscar Pormenor, who is now a successful publisher. Later Vincent sneaks into Oscar's office, witnesses first-hand his father's philandering and disregard for his other children, and proceeds to attack him. But in fleeing the scene he has a chance encounter with Oscar's brother Joseph. The two become friends and together with Marie they flee to the country. Given this is a film about Mary and Joseph made by a Bresson fan it's perhaps no surprise that the final, and most iconic, scene features a journey with a seemingly watchful donkey.

Attached to this basic structure are a number of individual conversations, particularly in Act i, which revolve around different facets of absent parents, in quite oblique ways - one of Vincent's friends is selling his sperm on the internet; his mother, who is a nurse, has to care for a young girl whose father has just been killed in a car accident; Vincent's father has obvious pride in his literary son, writer Mathieu Orfraie; Oscar and Joseph's conversation about their own judgemental father; Vincent and Joseph have various conversations about the biblical characters Joseph ("Through his son he became a father") and Abraham ("God didn't ask him to [sacrifice his son]. The voice he heard was his own."); and the pair watch the performance of a 17th century song written after the death of the author's son.

Then there are all the small almost incidental references the film makes. Most obviously in this respect is the naming of Vincent's mother as Marie and of his "adopted" father Joseph. But many more exist far more fleetingly. Early on a shop banner reveals its name to be Pere & Fils, Orfraie's book is called "The Predatory Mother". Then there's the way that when Vincent first spots Pormenor he is wearing a red scarf and later on in the film Vincent mirrors that by wearing one himself. In a later scene Green captures a two shot of Vincent and Joseph both with the sweater tied around their neck in identical ways (above) - they are a mirror image, but together and now united on the same size.

Surprisingly, the biggest "reference" makes in the film has nothing to do with Mary and Joseph. Caravaggio's painting "The Sacrifice of Isaac" (1603) plays a pivotal role in the film. A large copy of it is displayed on Vincent's wall and early in the film it features prominently in a discussion between Vincent and Marie, often with the shot arranged to make it, rather than Mary, the focus of attention. Green allows his audience plenty of time to take the painting in, as he wants them "to be able to have the same experience as they [the characters looking at the paintings] do".³

When the scene ends Vincent takes a long stare at this image, which we are given as a point-of-view shot, and at the end of the act we see a shot which superimposes Vincent putting handcuffs around his wrists in the foreground with the Caravaggio in the background. Clearly the image forms part of his motivation in the following scene for his attack on his biological father. Pormenor, like Isaac, is bound (by those same handcuffs), gagged (using the aforementioned red scarf) and laid horizontal awaiting an attack that never comes. Vincent brandishes his knife and seemingly has every intention of going through with it (below). The only difference, aside from the role reversal, is that the angel that prevents Abraham from striking in Caravaggio's work is not depicted in Green's. Similarly, the second act - named "The Golden Calf" because it has become clear that Oscar cares far more for his literary prodigies than he does for his biological children - ends with another point-of-view shot of the painting. This time the camera moves slowly leading the eye towards Isaac's distorted face before panning back towards the angel and then back again to ending on a close up of the knife. The camera works in a similar fashion when the scene is re-enacted by Vincent, only rather than taking it in one continuous shot, Green uses cuts, making the experience more abrupt and shocking and replaces the angel with a shot of the closed door.

Of course, whilst the title and subject matter of the film may prime the audience to expect Vincent to be a Christ figure, this scene confirms that this is not Green's intention here. Not only is this not how a Christ figure is expected to behave, but the film makes no explicit attempt to link Vincent to Jesus aside from the names of his mother and his adopted father. Whilst early in the film Marie says to Vincent "You have no father." it soon becomes clear that this is not meant in a literal sense. Furthermore there are no Christ figure poses, halos, sacrificial acts, pseudo miracles or people revering Vincent in some way, indeed quite the reverse. In the film's opening scene, Vincent leaves two of his friends as they torture a rat. One asks where Vincent has gone. "He's weird." replies the other. In the next Vincent takes a long walk straight towards the camera in a shot laced with an ominously meaningful-looking aura. But just as he opens his mouth, as if to make some profound utterance, a passing cyclist accidentally clips Vincent's rucksack and the profound moment is gone. This is not what audiences of biblical films have come to expect.

If Vincent is not to be associated with Jesus, then it's tempting to align him with Isaac. Jesus, of course, had no earthly father; Isaac may have wished he also had not. Both were children who were subject to their father's desire for sacrifice. The use of Caravaggio's painting and the titles of acts i and iii ("The Sacrifice of Abraham" / "The Sacrifice of Isaac") may suggest that this is a more of a role reversal however with Vincent, the abandoned son, taking revenge on his errant father.

These themes sit neatly alongside the two other paintings that feature prominently in the film. Indeed for Ben Kenigsberg of the New York Times, Green's films "draw as much on architecture, paintings, music and theater as on cinema".⁴ In the fourth act Joseph takes Vincent to the Louvre where the pair are shown looking at Georges de La Tour's "St. Joseph the Carpenter" and Philippe de Champaigne's "The Dead Christ on his Shroud". The first portrays Joseph (who bears a striking resemblance to the Abraham of the Caravaggio painting) with a young Jesus in his carpentry shop. As the filmic Joseph explains to Vincent the drill is in "the shape of a cross, to remind us how Jesus will die". The second shows us the aftermath of the crucifixion with the dead Jesus stretched out, his sacrifice complete. In the latter image Jesus' hand rests on his loincloth as if to draw attention to his 'humanity'.

Throughout his career Green has been heavily influenced by the Baroque period and the idea of the hidden God who only appears "in certain moments when the natural moments of nature were suspended".⁵ Much of his interest, which goes back over to 40 years ago when he founded le Théâtre de la Sapience partly to perform Baroque productions, lies in the manner in which Baroque thought "gives a possibility to live in the modern world with a spiritual life".⁶ In addition to the three paintings that are so prominently featured, then, there is also a pivotal scene where Joseph takes Vincent to see a piece of Baroque theatre. After the trip to the Louvre the pair enter a church where a classical singer accompanied by a lute perform a version of The Lament of Euryalus's mother from Virgil's Aenid.⁷. This time it's an expression of another parent-child relationship a mother expressing the loss of her son. It's significant, then, that in the next scene Vincent is seen at home in his mother's company for the first time since Act 2. Having returned home Vincent decides to introduce her to his adopted father.

Yet despite the depth of issues the film explores it remains surprisingly comic in tone, just one of the many departures from traditional biblical epics. Variety described it as a "mirthful contemporary remix of the Nativity story",⁸ the New York Times noted its "throwaway humor"⁹ and the Phoenix Cinema summed it up nicely as "A delightful and enjoyably off-beat comedy of misplaced paternity".¹⁰

Indeed whilst the films humour comes and goes, it's usually used to make a point. At the beginning of the film Green shows us a shot of the high street where two people focusing on their phones unexpectedly crash into one another. Green has spoken about his concerns that "we live in a world in which the present doesn't exist. If you go out on the street you see people with their mobile phones...they have no contact with their present. But the present is the most important time".¹¹

The funniest scenes revolve around the literary world which Green, as an author of books has experienced first hand. In particular the scenes at the launch party for Mathieu Orfraie's book which satirises literary reviewers in much the same way Denys Arcand mocked film and television critics in Jesus d'Montreal. Vincent, for example, meets one self-aggrandising critic who, assuming he must be an author, proceeds to tell him how Oscar has told her he is "brilliant". It's not only a swipe at literary criticism, but it also reminds us ironically that Oscar has not even acknowledged his son Vincent, let alone made plans to publish his novel.

Oscar is a comic-tragic figure. Despite having no interest in his children and cheating on his wife, Oscar believes himself to be "a man of principle", merely bored by the "details" of how many children he has. His chief principle however seems to be refusing to help his, once-errant, brother. It's a judgement that prompts Joseph's to reply "I hope you reap the fruits of your virtue", (a prophecy is fulfilled just moments later when Vincent knocks him to the ground and puts a knife to his throat). "Pormenor" is an ironically chosen name which translates as "details", which Green has explained is because whilst "he thinks that everything that's important is a detail" ultimately it is he who "turns out to be a detail".¹² Significantly, we are told that Joseph did not take this surname, and that neither did Marie give it to Vincent.

Since Oscar is Vincent's true father who leaves a man called Joseph to do his fathering for him, it raises the question of whether Oscar is meant to represent God. Certainly the distant father who having brought his child(ren) into existence then has nothing to do with him (them) close to the deist idea of a non-intervening god which is so critical to deist thought. However, whilst he may be the biological father of Mary's 'fatherless' child, that child, as we have seen above, is neither a modernised Jesus or Christ figure. Green's films are marked by this love of paradox and ambiguity. As Green himself has said, “Cinema is the place where the materiality of the world and the sacred, the visible and the invisible meet”.¹³ It's a quote that goes back to at least 2014's La Sapienza but it deftly captures the paradoxes and contradictions that lie at the heart of Le Fils de Joseph. It's a film where the world that is portrayed is not quite the world we live in. Instead its a world that tells us far more about our own world and makes us yearn to meet the hidden God even if only at the end of our journey.

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1 - http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/
interviews/great-beauty-eugene-green-la-sapienza
2 - Interview with Green at the Film Society Lincoln Centre - the Close Up podcast
3 - Interview with Green at the Film Society Lincoln Centre - the Close Up podcast
4 - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/movies/the-son-of-joseph-review.html?nlid=73642489&_r=1
5 - Interview with Green at the Film Society Lincoln Centre - the Close Up podcast
6 - Interview with Green at the Film Society Lincoln Centre - the Close Up podcast
7 - Vergil, Aeneid 9.460-524
8 - http://variety.com/2016/film/reviews/le-fils-de-joseph-review-1201705952/
9 - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/movies/the-son-of-joseph-review.html?nlid=73642489&_r=1
10 - "The Son of Joseph". Online synopsis from Phoenix Cinema http://www.phoenix.org.uk/film/the-son-of-joseph/ - accessed 12 Jan 2017
11 - Interview with Green at the Film Society Lincoln Centre - the Close Up podcast
12 - http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/feature/2016-10-13-eugene-green-in-conversation-on-son-of-joseph-le-fils-de-joseph-feature-story-by-anne-katrin-titze
13 - http://isalyinnroadtripblues.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/blog-post_27.html