Gospel Films Library: Scores of old Bible films free on GFA's new website

At various times in the past I've mentioned the wonderful work done by Bob Campbell and the rest of the team at the Gospel Films Archive in preserving mid-20th century biblical films and other Christianity-related films. 

So it's really exciting to mention their new website – Gospel Films Library – where you can now view dozens of old biblical movies, not only for free, but also without any ads etc.

There's a really good range of these films available from short, rarely-treated stories from the Hebrew Bible such as Ruth (1948) to those released in cinemas such as Day of Triumph (1954, my review). When I think about what I had to go through to watch this film when I first got into Bible movies around the year 2000, it's incredible how easy it is now!

There's a bunch of films I've already reviewed, such as the Living Christ series, No Greater Power (1942), The Living Bible : Old Testament series and Queen Esther (1948) as well as those I'm planning to review when I get a moment. There's also a making of documentary for Day of Triumph  which I am looking forward to seeing.

One of the things that is really good about the new site is that it seems really easy to navigate – it's laid out nicely like a modern streaming service. And for those who might prefer (and are based in the US/Canada or Mexico) you can also stream it on Roku. Check it out and bookmark it as I'll be reviewing some of these films in the coming weeks and months.

The Antkeeper (1966)

What do "Late Great Planet Earth" and Luis Buñuel have in common? Well if the IMDb is to be believed the answer is Rolf Forsberg. The first part of that comparison is fact: Forsberg directed the 1979 movie based on Hal Lindsay's bewilderingly successful book. The other half of the equation is more open to interpretation. Certainly Forsberg made surreal films about religious issues, of which his first, The Antkeeper is a good example. But I'm not sure how far the comparison goes beyond that. Certainly it flatters Forsberg far more than it does Buñnuel.

The Antkeeper is certainly a novel little movie. Just shy of half an hour and the only Jesus-as-an-ant movie I know of. It’s premise is a simple one - to explain the Gospel as a metaphorical story about ants and their watchful keeper. In and of itself the idea will be surreal enough for some, but Forsberg makes a number of choices which move it into the field of the experimental as well as the surreal.

Firstly there are some really interesting shots. The opening shot is an ant’s eye view of some grains of sand that look like rocks. There are the extreme close ups of the ants themselves.Then there is the use of light, colour and film-stock. The film uses bright, almost gaudy, colours but there’s a certain translucence about them. Certainly it deliberately eschews a studio feel in favour of a more arty cine camera feel.

Lastly there are the portrayals of the characters. One of the characters, Bruja the character who is analogous to the devil, has a bizarre half old-man, half woman appearance. There’s a brief explanation for this, but it’s none too convincing, and really it seems like mainly an artistic choice. It does heighten the bizarre other-worldly feel of the film which some will enjoy, but others will find weird for weirdness’ sake.

The problem with the film however is that the metaphorical aspect of the film fails in various significant ways. Firstly, and perhaps most significantly, the God character comes out of it very badly indeed. My daughter hit the nail on the head when she inadvertently called the antkeeper "the Evil Gardener". That was surely not Forsberg’s intention, but my daughter won’t be alone in viewing the character that way. For no reason he bans the ants from part of the garden - a decision that is not only incomprehensible to the ants, but also to us as well. When, despite his command, they visit the garden anyway, he pulls off their wings and banishes them to a barren desert bit of wasteland even though it’s surrounded my lusher looking areas.

This touches on the other significant failing that using such an allegory exposes the holes in their narrative. (I say “their narrative” because while The Antkeeper is presented as a metaphorical retelling of the Christian Gospel certain parts of that gospel are particular to only certain groups of Christians. Certainly there are many Christians who would not accept the version of the gospel that The Antkeeper portrays).

So taking the examples above the antkeeper’s deliberate maiming of the ants discredits the idea that he has any particular care for the ants. Creating a literal devil character likewise left me wondering why. The analogy makes the original story seem far less credible, rather than more, which surely cannot have been the original intention.

Finally there’s a problem with the chosen allegory itself. In order to get the analogy to work the film has to anthropomorphise the ants. This then reverses the flow of the metaphor. The ants think and act like humans to the extent that it might just have been easier to tell an allegory using human characters.

The metaphor is not without its strengths - the idea of a God that is to us like a gardener might be to an ant is an interesting idea, and it may help viewers to think more about how earth-shattering the idea of the incarnation is - but the best aspects of the film are its visual ideas rather than it’s theological ones.

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The Antkeeper is available on DVD as part of the Gospel Film Archive's Easter 2015 Collection. The GFA provided the disc for this review. There's a little more on the film at the Christian Film Database.

Dawn of Victory (1966)

Dawn of Victory (1966) is one of the four titles that form part of the Gospel Film Archive's 2015 Easter Collection. It's later than many of the films released by the GFA and whilst it still clearly made on a limited budget, it's a more accomplished production than many similar-level projects from the 40s and 50s.

This is apparent right from the off with a striking, 60s title sequence not dissimilar to many Hollywood productions of the time. Unusually the film opts to start with Jesus already on the road to Golgotha struggling under the weight of a full cross. But as Simon of Cyrene is pressed into action the camera focusses instead on Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea who decide to retreat from the crowds to study what light Isaiah 53 may have to shed on the events they are witnessing. At this stage neither of the two is a follower of Jesus, but they are both intrigued by Jesus and trying to fit all that they have seen into their world-view.

The publicity for this film really emphasises this part of the film, but after less than 9 minutes it's more or less finished, as the camera arrives at Golgotha to witness the prosecution. Whilst the first shot (above) is a little out of focussed it's very nicely composed. It's noticeable as well that Jesus and the two men crucified with him are only a little higher than the crowd witnesses Jesus' execution. This is actually more accurate than the majority of films about Jesus: those being crucified tended to be more or less at eye level with those witnessing the crucifixion, rather than high above them as per the majority of Jesus film.

It's also one of the few films about Jesus to include all 7 of the phrases the gospels record Jesus as saying from the cross. Having witnessed Jesus' death we also get the traditional proclamation from a Roman centurion, before the camera returns to Nicodemus and Joseph who are now convinced that Jesus is who he (apparently) claimed to be. "Only the Son of God could have died like that". That's one of those phrases that seems quite dated nowadays. These days it's more widely accepted that claiming to be the/s "son of God" was not as unique a claim and many took it for.

Joseph heads off to arrange Jesus' burial and so the next scene takes us into Joseph's garden where a small battalion of soldiers are grumbling about having to keep an eye on Jesus' tomb. These scenes are rather mixed. There's a great shot of the soldiers around the campfire, but when the tomb is shaken open the special effects are really not very special. As the film's title suggests it is the scenes on Sunday morning which really take precedence here. The poorly executed moment when the tomb opens comes at the end of a fairly lengthy conversation between the Roman guards, again a moment that is not covered very often by films about Jesus.

There then follows one of the most extensive selections of episodes from after Jesus' resurrection that I'm aware of - perhaps, even, on a par with The Miracle Maker. It makes a reasonable effort to harmonise the accounts from the four gospels, even if that means occasionally doing things like keeping the voice that first speaks to the women off camera so it's not clear whether they are being spoken to by one man (Mark), an angel (Matt) or two men (Luke), or if it's Jesus himself. It's also interesting that Peter claims to have met Jesus as well, a clear nod to 1 Cor 15:5. Finally Jesus ends, rather strangely, with the words from John 14:27.

So for various reasons this is an interesting addition to the canon and certainly not the dry proof-texting I was inspecting from the film's description. Sadly the producers, Concordia Films, didn't make many more film, but the actor who played Jesus - Jason Evers - went on to star in a string of classic 80s TV programmes including The A-Team, Dukes of Hazard, CHiPS, Knight Rider and Murder She Wrote. Essentially, if it was popular with boys my age early on Saturday evening, it appears that Evers must have been in it at some point.

I'll be reviewing the other films on this disc over the next few weeks. (Please note I was sent a copy of the disc to review).

No Greater Power (1942)

Many years ago I won a copy of the cine projector release of this film and have been waiting for our family projector to get into a fit state to be able to watch it. Having finally got around to seeing it I’ve now found out that the Gospel Films Archive have released it on DVD (along with I Beheld His Glory (1952) and the 1949 film Ambassador for Christ from Cathedral Films’ “Life of Paul series) so it’s available to view for considerably less hassle than I had to go through.

The film itself dates from 1942 which puts it in that early talkie period when very few companies were making Jesus films were made. One of the major exceptions was Cathedral films who also made other early, sound-era, Jesus films such as The Great Commandment (made in 1939 but not released until Fox did so in 1942) and Child of Bethlehem (1940). Like those films No Greater Power was produced by Rev. James K. Friedrich who also co-wrote it with Robert Edmunds. Friedrich’s regular collaborator John T. Coyle directed, a partnership that would produce a vast body of Bible films in the years to follow.

The film starts, somewhat unusually, with a man and woman arriving in what appears to be a rural village. As she is pregnant and riding a donkey it’s natural to think of the Nativity and to wonder how these images will fit with what we have already been told is the story of Zacchaeus, particularly as the couple are searching for somewhere to stay the night.

Further unexpected twists are to come: We meet Zacchaeus, but he’s only a down-on-his-luck potter; the couple are not married but brother and sister; and it emerges that the man of the couple, rather than Zacchaeus who is the tax collector.

Initially Zacchaeus turns the couple away. He already has some financial difficulties and offering hospitality to a tax collector is bad for business such is the feeling of hatred and the fear of spiritual contamination from his fellow townspeople. But then there’s a chance encounter with a pernickety Jewish scribe who forces him to destroy one of his pots when it momentarily comes into contact with a dead insect. Zacchaeus is infuriated and decides to reject the strictures of the Jewish law and offer hospitality, at a considerable price, to the tax collector and his wife.

As the evening passes, the two men chat and the tax collector persuades Zacchaeus of the benefits of that particular profession, namely that there is money and power to be gained. When his guests leave, Zacchaeus enlists and a quick montage shows us him accruing considerable wealth.

It’s clear though that his perceived rejection by his fellow townspeople, and his subsequent power and wealth have changed him such that whereas initially he was the kind of man who might be compassionate towards strangers in town, he is now motivated almost solely by profit. So it is that we arrive at the story from Luke’s Gospel.

Later on Cathedral Films’ offerings tended to adopt a more straightforward, point and shoot methodology, perhaps as the pressures of covering so much material in such a short period of time took precedence over more artistic concerns. Here however there are several notable shots and it’s not inconceivable that these were due, in part, to cinematographer John Alton who went on to greater things in Elmer Gantry and Robert Siodmak’s classic Film Noir The Killers (1946).

Perhaps it’s just the era, or the black and white photography, but it’s the Noir film that seems more closely related to Alton’s work here, particularly the interiors of Zacchaeus’ house, which is shot from a variety of high and low angles. There’s also interesting use of light, not least the film’s most discussed shot (below), where backlighting forms a halo effect around Jesus’ head.

Significantly our first shot of Jesus is taken from over Zacchaeus’ shoulder (below), not quite a point-of-view shot, but certainly suggestive of such. Jesus is a small figure in the background, distant, remote and cut off from the film’s eponymous anti-hero. The audience is then privileged with closer shots of Jesus as we see him interact with some of the townspeople. There are blessings of children, and perhaps the suggestion of a healing.

Here as well we’re given a brief sample of Jesus’ teaching, all of which comes from the Gospel of Matthew rather than Luke. In the main it’s Matthew 5:43-48 (shown as intertitles in the cine release version), but the final line is Matt 5:20: "...except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."

It's not entirely clear why the filmmakers decided that, of all the words of Jesus available to them, it was these that should be chosen here. The "love your enemies" passage from Matt 5:43-48 is conceivably the kind of thing that Jesus might have thought Zacchaeus's neighbours needed to hear, but did they think their audience needed to hear it as well? Given that this film was released the year after the United States entered the Second World War, it's hard not to think of that conflict in the background. And what of the use of Matt 5:20? To end on this passage - and to graft it onto a passage where it doesn't belong, in a story that neither passage belongs in suggests some kind of message intended for the audience.

It's not long however, Zacchaeus gets to meet Jesus. From a theological angle it’s perhaps significant that this is very much a film about Jesus finding the sinner and not the other way round. Indeed the film brings out some of the more available metaphors in the story which are easily overlooked solely by reading it. Zacchaeus isolated and to, an extent, tangled in the tree. It’s reminiscent of Absalom and also of the tree in the Garden of Eden: neither connection had really struck me before.

Jesus enters Zacchaeus's house and things largely proceed in line with the account in Luke 19:1-10, but there are more interesting ideas visually, not least the shot of one of the women of the house washing Jesus' feet. Zaccheus' wife had not been convinced about his career change, but was largely absent from the montage that charted his rise to power, but here she (?) takes the first active role in responding to Jesus, unwittingly aligning herself with the "woman of sinful life" from Luke 7.

The moment of Zaachaeus' conversion is also portrayed interestingly, with a double exposure of his face overlaying a montaged flashback of earlier scenes in the film. Looking back it's easy to smirk at this shot which seems a quite dated by today's standards, but it's easy to forget that this film was made just a few months after the release of Citizen Kane, and only 12 years after Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera, of which it's most reminiscent.

However, arguably the film's most satisfactory shot comes right near the end, as Zacchaeus leaves his house to return his ill-gotten gains to his victims. The moment (see below) is shot from inside the house, over the shoulder of Jesus who stands in the doorway. Zaccheus gradually diminishes as he moves towards the townspeople, gradually merging with them and so bringing the attention back towards his new Lord. It pairs perfectly with the shot over Zacchaeus's shoulder earlier in the film, suggesting both unity and, perhaps, substitution, with its connotations of atonement. It's a fitting end for a production that uses strong visual ideas and good filmmaking technique to elevate it above its humble origins.