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.

===================
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.

The Canon in the Early Silent Era pt.2

In my previous entry in this series I was looking at how the stories from the Hebrew Bible that the earliest filmmakers adapted into the first silent Bible movies. The idea of canonicity naturally leads to thinking about which books of the Bible have been covered and which haven't, but there's also something of a disconnect here because few films have sought to adapt an entire book of the Bible. There are obviously those which adapt a gospel word for word (Luke 1979, Genesis 1979, Matthew 1994, Acts 1996, Gospel of John 2003 and the various entries in the Lumo Project 2014-present) then there are others which haven't gone to this extreme but whose films have been substantive adaptations of a single book (Il vangelo secondo Matteo, some of the Bible Collection films, Moses the Lawgiver to name but a few) but not word for word.

However, in general terms, complete books of the Bible have not naturally lent themselves to being film scripts. Indeed even those word for word adaptations cannot really be counted here as they are part of a specific project rather than the need to find a good plot for a film. In fact films tend to gravitate more naturally around specific character(s) than specific books. So when we think about canonicity in relation to the biblical narratives it is perhaps more helpful to think about narrative units within the Bible (which may even span the divides between specific books as some films do), rather than individual books, as is usually the basic unit which is discussed in regard to canonicity.

Which leads onto the Gospels. Aside from the few films intentionally based on a single gospel, most of the films about Jesus have harmonised the available selection of stories from the four (canonical) gospels. A few films have even widened the net here to include incidents from other, non-canonical gospels, such as The Young Messiah's use of the Gospel of Thomas. Again this is because these films tend to be about the lead character of Jesus and then filmmakers tend to pick the particular stories from the gospels which best portray their vision of Jesus. And just as I think we see certain trends in which narratives from the Hebrew Bible get made into films, I think we also see a similarly uneven pattern when it comes to which parts of the Gospels get covered and which don't. Peter T. Chattaway, for example has recently highlighted numerous narratives which "most Jesus films miss"¹ suggesting that whilst some parts of the Gospels are not really considered part of any theoretical filmic canon.

Of course many of the very earliest films were films about Jesus - most commonly about his passion - but even before the start of the 20th century, films depicting the miracles of Jesus, such as Georges Méliès' Le Christ marchant sur les flots (Christ Walking on the Water, 1899), were being released. One complicating factor in trying to discern any patterns in the release of early Jesus films is the way that many of these films were not released as complete units, but were available for exhibitors to pick and choose which parts of the story they wished to display. The situation is further complicated by the fact that many of these collections of tableaux were expanded over time, the "films" being re-released with new tableaux added in, or some of the older footage re-shot, often retaining the same mise-en-scène.

The most prominent example of this practice is the various films released by Pathé usually known by the title La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ). I've recently read more detail about the various films/releases under this title in "The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927)" (edited by David Shepherd) I'm tempted to go into more detail on the various version, but I think that's something for a later post. Suffice to say for now that it appears that the popular DVD version which is usually dated as being 1902-1905 should in fact be dated to 1907 and that in addition to these two versions there was the original release in 1899 and a final release in 1913.² With each release the number of available tableaux grew. The original 1899 version "contained sixteen tableaux; a second edition in 1902 contained thirty-two.³ By the time of the 1907 release that number had grown to 37 and this had grown again by the time of the final 1913 version to 43.⁴

All of which is a long way of saying that when it comes to looking at the idea of canonicity in relation to Bible films, it makes more sense to base such discussion on the basic unit of each "episode" or incident rather than individual books/gospels. Some of those may only appear very rarely, such as those highlighted by Peter in the link above; others appear far more commonly, such as the crucifixion.

Returning, then, to the early silent era we discover this is borne out by the films we find from this era. It is difficult to be precise with figures, particularly because many of the films from this era are presumed lost, some of those that remain are related to others from the period, and it is difficult to be certain in many cases whether the version that remains is the original version. Indeed the DVD version of the latest film from this era Christus features a resurrection scene entirely lifted from a different Jesus movie (there's a little bit on that here, including the comments).

Nevertheless, even treading carefully in light of the above, there are a number of observations that can be drawn. The first and rather unsurprising conclusion is that Jesus' death and birth are very much a part of this "filmic canon". Of the thirty or so films made about Jesus in the early silent era (not counting the six films about Herodias' daughter) around 18 feature the events of Jesus' Passion. The "canonical" status of this part of the story was established early on - of the eight Jesus films made in the 19th century only Georges Méliès' Le Christ marchant sur les flots (Christ Walking on the Water, 1899) was not primarily about Jesus' death.

The second is that, as a group, episodes from Jesus' ministry appear appear more frequently than the events of Jesus' passion. As mentioned above just over half of the thirty Jesus films depict Jesus' death, but twenty include at least one incident from his ministry (and that is excluding the six films about Herodias' daughter, which could also be considered to be "stories from the ministry of Jesus"). Of those twenty, only nine are films that features both Jesus' ministry and death, the majority of the rest are films made about single incidents.

A look at these single incidents is instructive in and of itself. The parable of the Prodigal Son was adapted four times. The only other parable to be covered is the Good Samaritan. Then there are the miracles which include the coin in the fish's mouth, the resurrection of Lazarus and the healing of a blind man. Lastly there are more general incidents such as Jesus' encounter with the woman of Samaria.

The films that featured both Jesus' ministry and his death tended to be longer and include several episodes from his Ministry, many of these would not appear much in the future films about Jesus' Life. The 31 films from the 1903 Lubin series The Passion Play featured episodes such as "Christ and the Disciples Plucking Corn" and "Christ Calling Zaccheus from the Tree". Several films featured Jesus meeting those from outside Judea such as the woman from Samaria (several films) and the healing of the Widow of Nain's son in the earliest remaining Jesus film The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1898).

Of course we also see other incidents cropping up that would continue to feature in a large number of films such as the woman taken in adultery, the woman who anoints Jesus' feet, the Sermon on the Mount and the feeding of the 5000.

One final point at this stage is that many of these films about Jesus do not include his resurrection. The most obvious example is From the Manger to the Cross as it is the only of the films covering both his life and death not to include these incidents, but also many of the "Passion" only films did not feel the need to include the resurrection. This is interesting as later films which excluded the resurrection were heavily criticised for doing so, even if, like Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) they were a variation of the passion play tradition.


1 - Chattaway, Peter T., "10 Obscure Gospel Moments Most Jesus Films Miss" 22nd February 2016 in Christianity Today - http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/february-web-only/10-obscure-moments-most-jesus-films-miss.html
2 - Boillat, Alain and Robert, Valentine. "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
3 - Boillat, Alain and Robert, Valentine. "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
4 - Brant, Jo-Ann. "La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (Pathé-Frères, 1913/14): Pathé’s Inclination to Tell and Maître’s Instinct to Show" in "The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927)"; ed. Shepherd, David. pp.158-178

Earliest Remaining Bible Film Now OnlineThe Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1898)

I'm currently reading David Shepherd's "The Bible on Silent Film" and have been really interested, so far, by what I've read. Silent Bible films are one of the things I've discussed throughout the 9 year history of this blog going right back to some of my earliest posts in 2006. Those posts were spurred on by the discovery of a DVD on eBay of a couple of Jesus films, which purported to go right back to 1898 and 1900 respectively. Curiously though both seemed to contain scenes that I recognised from the 1902 film La vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, 1902).

Dating that film is a difficult enough challenge. The earliest date for it seems to be 1902, but I've also heard 1905 and even 1908 cited (by Campbell & Pitts and Kinnard & Davis respectively) before. What I later learned was that Pathé used to put the various scenes together in a catalogue from which cinemas wishing to display them could pick and choose. The first tranche of scenes were released in 1902, but the catalogue was expanded over time with significant developments in 1905 and 1908. Indeed according to Kinnard and Davis, another version of this film emerged in 1914 under the title The Life of our Saviour and it seems that a version including some colour was also re-released in 1915 as both the titles Son of Man and Jesus of Nazareth and yet again in 1921 as Behold the Man!. That must have been a little bit like your friend inviting you around to play a great new video game they've just bought only to be presented with the original table tennis. The plot thickens still further because at some point someone took it upon themselves to get it hand-coloured (apocryphally by nuns) and it is this coloured footage that appears on the first commercially available DVD of the film.

Shepherd's book doesn't solve all the questions that arise from this DVD, but in trawling through ancient copies of early cinema publications he is able to make a convincing case that the first Bible film was by Léar (a.k.a. Albert Kirchner) in 1897, simply called La Passion du Christ. It along with the other Jesus film from that year, The Horitz Passion Play are now both presumed lost. Similarly absent is Siegmund Lubin's 1898 The Passion Play and those three films are more or less joined in obscurity by The Passion Play of Oberammergau save from a 35mm fragment last seen in the George Eastman House archives by Kinnard and Davis.

Which means that, according to Shepherd, the oldest extant Jesus film is the other film from 1898 The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ by George Hatot and the Lumières. Best of all is the news that the remaining footage of this film is available to watch and/or download for free from America's Library of Congress. Since they even allow you to embed it, I thought I'd break the habit of a lifetime and do just that, so here it is in all its glory:

Where does this leave the claims of the film I have on DVD? Well, as I noted at the time,

"a number of different actors are used in The Life of Christ. This and the fact that the style of the intertitles changes from those identical to The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, to others that look older, and less sophisticated, suggests that this film (and possibly The Death of Christ) are composites"

But whereas then I thought this might have been the initial footage of Pathé's later The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, now I think it's various bits of film that someone has wrapped up altogether, in a similar fashion to the way someone has spliced together La vie de Moïse and The Life of Moses in the version in the Joye collection and indeed as they have combined other footage on the same DVD of a a couple of David films. And whilst I suspect some of the footage goes back to the same 1898 film, I'm not sure I trust the 1898 on the title card. After all, it's so prominent it feels a bit too much like the kind of selling point that someone would only conjure up sometime later.

I'll discuss the actual film at a later date, but note for now how the shadows from the cross fall across the back wall rather than fall across the ground as might be expected.

Nativity Scenes Revisited - Part 2:Life and Passion of Jesus Christ

Having started with Pasolini's nativity scene a few days ago, I thought we'd go back to the beginning and look at The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. My kids have watched silent films before, mainly Buster Keaton, so it wasn't so much of an education. That said the real advantage for them of watching this film was that it kind of predates intertitles, or rather it still has title cards, but not the cards which tell you what the characters are saying. In many ways this is very good for young kids who know the story, but wouldn't necessarily grasp the dialogue, and it helps me talk get used to the idea of interpreting film, and thinking about what they watch.

The other thing it gave me the chance to talk to them about was the fact that moving images are in fact a series of still images. I didn't go too far with this one, but as Nina asked some very interesting questions about the black and white to colour process here, it was a good chance to talk about hand colouring and how laborious that was because it was frame by frame and so on.

To my mind it"s still rather unclear about which parts of this film emerged when. In the early days the content of this film wasn't fixed in the way that is universal today. There was a catalogue of the available tableaux (scenes) that distributors/theatre owners could choose from, so the content of this film was fluid from the start, which explains why there are so many versions of this film available today, in very different cuts, some scenes hand coloured by nuns, some not, and so on. And this film appears to have been doing the rounds for a long time. Parts of the material appear to date from the nineteenth century, one widely available version of the film with a few sound effects dates from 1933 (I seem to recall. Don't quote me on that).

One of the reasons I mention that is because whilst the date of this film is usually cited as around 1905 (give or take a few years) some of the techniques are quite advanced. Take for example the faded in appearance of the angel to Mary. My knowledge of early techniques is limited to things like double exposures, shielding and so on, but I don't know how exactly they get the angel to fade in so smoothly. Feel free to fill me in below!

Likewise when the wise men (who have previously been filmed using a blue filter) arrive in the stable (hand coloured), there is a certain amount of camera panning here (very rare in its day, perhaps one of the earliest example?) and for a while it's unclear how the two colour styles are going to resolved. In the end the right hand side of the screen is filtered blue whilst the coloured characters against the black and white background are on the left. It's an ugly shot, but it's fascinating seeing the filmmakers wrestle with these questions, develop processes, and develop solutions, even if they are not entirely satisfactory a hundred years later. It breaks our visual code, but was, in a way, part of creating such a visual code to begin with.

I was also reminded in watching these scenes about something I've been meaning to say since seeing this film in a proper cinema a couple of years ago: Pathé have placed their logo on a number of the film's sets. I'm not sure whether this was merely crass advertising, or some form of early copyright (meaning that either the film, or the sets could be easily identified in case someone tried to use them without permission), but it seems Incredibly crass here. Less noticeable on the small screen, but certainly obtrusive when seen in a cinema,

I mentioned a few years back how this film misses out the innkeeper, and this scene retains a good deal of interest. For one thing when a couple with a donkey arrive on the scene right at the start many will expect that they are Mary and Joseph, but in fact they are just two of the extras who disappear off screen moments later. The arrival of the real Mary and Joseph is heralded by the clearing of the set, but their arrival on foot strikes a real contrast with the bedonkeyed couple that have preceded them. It also adds a sense of unease. Is that Mary and Joseph or just someone else?

There's also a nice piece of paralleling between the shepherd scene and the Ascension. Both feature a horizontally split screen to reveal heaven above and earth below, and whereas in this scene the good news is coming from heaven, later the subject of that good news will be making the return trip.

"No Room at the Inn"

I've just been watching a snippet from The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ and something stood out to me that I'd not noticed before. Most dramatised versions of Jesus's birth, from our first experiences in school nativity plays through to multi-million dollar Hollywood movies, feature a moment with an innkeeper. "Sorry, there is no room at the inn" he says before tentatively offering Mary and Joseph his stable.

Whilst Hollywood may have dramatised this moment a little more effectively than the average nativity play, it's still, essentially, the same idea only with better costumes and (sometimes only marginally) better acting. This becomes particularly obvious when we view the original text from Luke 2:7 which simply says "and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn". There's no mention of the innkeeper, certainly no connection between the owner of what appears to be Bethlehem's only inn and the location of the manger.

So I was interested to note that in The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ it's not the innkeeper who suggest the stable, but some seemingly unconnected little girl on the street (pictured above). Which makes me wonder, was Life and Passion boldly subverting tradition in favour of fidelity to the original text? Or is it just that the tradition of the innkeeper was not as widely established 100 years ago as it is today? Given the film's pageant-like feel and it's reliance on traditional imagery the latter seems more likely. If so, it's interesting to see how quickly something can become so ingrained on the public consciousness.

Podcast: Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1905)

My latest Jesus film podcast on Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. It's the tenth talk that I've done. The other nine (Jesus of Nazareth, Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Jesus of Montreal, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Miracle Maker, Il Messia, King of Kings and Last Temptation of Christ are all available to download.

It's been a while since I wrote about this film so it was good to revisit it again.

The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1902-5)

Having discussed what I can only conclude are two forerunners to this film last week, I thought now would be as good a time as any to comment on the film that is the best known version of much of this material - The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. In 1995 it was one of the 45 films included on the Vatican Film list, and was released on DVD, along with From the Manger to the Cross (1912) in 2003. The text included on that DVD is as follows:

La Vie Et La Passion De Jesus-Christ, N.S. was begun in 1902 by Ferdinand Zecca (1964-1947) for Pathé Frères in Paris, then the most important film company in the world. Zecca made 18 carefully costumed and staged tableaux against painted back-drops which are clearly influenced by the famous Biblical woodcuts of Gustave Dore (1866). In 1903, Pathé Frères developed a sophisticated system for applying up to four colors to each film print by a stencil process; that year and in 1904, ten new tableaux were added to the film. Finally, in 1905, Zecca's collaborator, Lucien Nonguet, added three final scenes, and the resulting color film of 31 tableaux with a running time of 44 minutes became the most impressive of its kind and one of the first long films in the world. Presented by missionaries and itinerant showmen from Indiana to Indochina, it helped establish the popular iconography of the Divine story. This edition is restored from two excellent 35mm original prints and presents The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ as it looked a century ago.

What's most noticeable about this film is how unsophisticated the camera work is as Peter T Chattaway notes in his chapter in "Re-Viewing the Passion" (reproduced at Christianity Today):

Nearly every shot is a simple tableau in which the camera stands still and observes the entire stage, as it were, while the actors move about within the frame. The few exceptions to this format stand out precisely because they are so rare.

The following scenes are shown (citation guide)

Annunciation - (Luke 1:26-38)
Birth - (Luke 2:1-7)
Shepherds - (Luke 2:8-18)
Star & Wise Men - (Matt 2:1, 10-12)
Massacre of the Innocents - (Matt 2:16)
Flight to Egypt - (Matt 2:13-15)
Boy Jesus in the Temple - (Luke 2:40-52)
Baptism - (Mark 1:6-11)
Wedding at Cana - (John 2:1-11)
Mary Anoints Jesus - (Mark 14:3-9)
Samaritan Woman - (John 4:4-29)
Jairus' Daughter - (Mark 5:22-24,35-43)
Walking on Water - (Mark 6:47-48)
Catch of Fish - (Luke 5:1-6)
Lazarus raised - (John 11)
Transfiguration - (Mark 9:2-8)
Triumphal Entry - (Mark 11:1-10)
Clearing the Temple - (Mark 11:15-19)
Last Supper - (Mark 14:16-25
Gethsemane - (Mark 14:32-42)
Trial before Caiaphas - (Luke 22:66-71)
Peter's denial - (Mark 14:66-72)
Trial before Pilate - (Mark 15:1-15a)
Scourging & Mocking - (Mark 15b:15-20a)
Crowds Condemn Jesus - (John 19:5-16)
Road to the cross - (Mark 15:20b-22)
(Veronica) - (Tradition)
Crucifixion - (Mark 15:22-33)
Death of Jesus - (John 19:30,34)
(Actual Resurrection)
Empty Tomb - (Mark 16:1-8)
Acension - (Luke 24:50-53)

A Few Notes:
As far as I can recall, this is the only film about Jesus that chooses to show the Transfiguration. There are two others which also do, The Visual Bible's Matthew, and the Genesis Project's Luke (which was condensed into the Jesus film, both of which had to cover the as they were filming the whole gospel. That said the former film avoids showing it anyway - simply showing the narrator (if I remember correctly). The latter film, however, didn't have to include that episode in the cut down film Jesus, but still does.

Since this has been professionally released the quality of the print is much better than the other films, but even so it appears that it has been restored to something of it's former glory - there is a real crispness to the images we see here.

Another scene that is usually ignored is the Woman of Samaria. Other than this film and it's siblings (I should mention that this film was shot for shot re-made in 1914/1915 with a couple of extra scenes, and extra intertitles and released as Son of Man) the woman of Samaria story is only included in Il Messia (Rosellini - 1975), and the Visual Bible's Gospel of John (2003). Again in the case of the latter film the scene had to be shot. This story is a popular text for preaching, and so it's strange that it is generally ignored in film.

Sadly despite this film having been widely available in the last few years there is relatively little comment available on it. The best review I've come across is by Steven D Greydanus. He says so many things so well that rather than repeat them all again, only less eloquently, it's better if I just link to his review at Decent Films. In addition to his discussion of the film linked to above, Peter T Chattaway also comments on the film at Canadian Christianity. The three of us also talk briefly about the film at Arts and Faith (there was a longer thread on the old forum, but sadly that appears to be lost). Finally, Mike Hernstein of the Flickerings festival discusses it as part of his excellent Survey of Jesus films - probably the best collection of comments on Jesus films on the web to date.

Death of Christ (c.1900)

Following on from the last two days' posts where I have been looking at a couple of very early Jesus films, I wanted to post today, in more detail on the second of these The Death of Christ. It was hard enough trying to date The Life of Christ, but at least it provided a date to be sceptical about! With this film I would place it at around the same time, maybe even slightly earlier than The Life of Christ, but I wouldn't place it any early than the date claimed at the start of the Life of Christ. Anyway - the full discussion of that was two days ago.

This film is actually more interesting to right about than the earlier one since whereas that film largely contained material that was incorporated into The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. Whilst this film is shorter (only 10 minutes long), most of the material is original to this film. First things first the scenes guide with scripture citations.

Last Supper (start of) - (Mark 14:16-17)
*Gethsemane - (Mark 14:32-42)
*Arrest of Jesus - (Mark 14:43-46)
*Trial before Pilate - (Mark 15:1-14)
*Scourging & Mocking - (Mark 15:15-20)
*Presented before the People - (Matt 27:24-26)
Road to the cross - (Luke 23:26-28)
*Crucifixion - (Mark 15:22-33)
*Death of Jesus - (John 19:30,34)
*Resurrection - (Mark 16:1-8)
Ascension - (Luke 24:50-53)

A Few Notes
*These scenes are different from those in The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, although in many cases they have strongly influenced that film, with it being really clear that it re-filmed some scenes almost exactly the same, with only minor "improvements". A good example of this is the trial of Jesus in front of Pilate where in this film it is not very clear that Barabbas is present, whereas in the later The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ Barabbas is far more distinct. The shot is very similar in most other respects.

Only three scenes then are used in The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. Firstly, the last supper, where the scant footage shown here is actually that which immediately preceds the longer scene in The Life and Passion. Next is the road to the cross scene, and finally, the ascension scene. These last two scenes are actually in all three films. The latter scene is far more complex than any of the other scenes in this film, and has been reasonably well done so it is not surprising that no-one went to the trouble fo re-filming it.

Two further points. Firstly, in comparing the scenes here with the Life of Christ, I noticed that that film seems to jump from the money-changers scene straight to Jesus's trail. Even for viewers who know the story this is a strange move. It does make me wonder if some of the material here was at one stage part of that film.

Secondly, of all three of these early films I think this is my favourite. This is partly because it is the least coloured, and the technique is a bit of a distraction, it's partly because it contains one really great scene - that in the Garden of Gethsemane, as well as being the source, I assume, for the innovative ascension scene. I also like the depiction of the scourging in contrast to The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. Here Jesus offers some resistance, there Jesus almost seems to volunteer for it. I wonder if this was the main reason that this scene was re-filmed as except for a difference in background it is more or less the same. I also much refer the resurrection scene. It's one of the hardest things to film, and film-makers have used a variety of approaches. This is one of the best. Fairly literal, and yet not sensational, kitschy, or cheesy. That said it doesn't really rely on any of the gospels (non of which describe the actual resurrection), and perhaps is most similar to Mel Gibson's version, but it's far more simple, and effective, and not nearly so pleased with itself.

All in all, I'm glad I've uncovered this early classic. Jesus films for the next 110 years have swung between the kitsch and the more profound, and I'm glad that at least one of the very earliest Jesus films falls into the latter category.

Matt

Life of Christ (1898)

Yesterday's entry looked at the problems of dating some early films picked up on eBay. Today's post will look at the first of those (as it arrived on the disc), The Life of Christ, purporting to be from 1898. The film is just 14:23 minutes long, and none of the actors' names are given. Here's the scene order (as ever, scripture citations are in the normal format.)

Angels and Joseph's Dream - Matt 2:13-14
Escape to Egypt - Matt 2:15
*The Boy Jesus and the Doctors - Luke 2:40-52
Baptism - Mark 1:6-11
*Woman at Samaria - John 4:4-29
†Feeding 5000 with Fish and Bread - Mark 6:30-44
Christ Walks on Water - Mark 6:47-48
*Entering into Jerusalem - Mark 11:1-10
*Driving out the Money Changers - Mark 11:15-19
Trial before Pilate - Mark 15:1-15
*Ecce Homo - John 19:5
(Veronica) - Tradition
Road to the cross - Luke 23:26-28
Crucifixion - Mark 15:22-33
Death of Jesus - John 19:30,34
Resurrection - Mark 16:1-8
Acension - Luke 24:50-53

A Few Notes:
†This scene (the feeding of the 5000, or the "Fish and Bread" as the intertitles call it is the only one in the film without parallel in The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. That said...

*Scenes marked with a * are different from those in The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, even if the later film copies / improves upon them. Sometimes the details are fairly minor (e.g. different actors or backgrounds), at other times the whole composition of the shot is fundamentally different.

Four scenes use camera trickery - essentially double exposure. The two appearances by angels in the first two scenes both use this technique fairly simply, but the resurrection scene, where Jesus floats out of his grave, and "Christ Walks on Water" are both a bit more sophisticated. The later is possibly significant as renown camera trickery pioneer George Méliès released a film in 1899 called Christ Walks on Water. This was thought to be the first part of the bible to be shown on camera outside of Jesus's Passion. Part of me wonders if this scene (later incorporated into The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ) was Méliès's original, and whether this effects the potential dating of this film.

The film starts in a strange place as well, not showing the nativity or any of the events leading up to it, but starting after the departure of the wise men as Joseph is about to have the dream that instructs him to take his family to Egypt. Having thought about the dating of the film more since yesterday, this was one piece of evidence I didn't really consider enough.


As with The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ this film was shot in black and white, but a number of scenes have been hand coloured. In addition some scenes stencil on extra details, most notably the Holy Spirit stenciled on as a dove in the baptism scene (see left) and the ascension scene.


In terms of episodes that rarely make Jesus films, obviously this film has nearly all of it's material in common with The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. Even so, both films show the Ascension in an unusual way, and in fact, depictions of this are rare in themself. The scene with the woman of Samaria is also fairly rare in film version of Jesus's life, which is unusual as it gives us a rare three dimensional female role. Directors are usually keen on such roles, note for example one of the most frequently filmed scenes outside of his Passion - the woman taken in adultery.

Finally, one comment that is often made about The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ is worth repeating here. As this was filmed in the very early days of cinema, it's very obvious from this film that even the most basic aspects of moviemaking have yet to be discovered. For example, the camera is always static, and the acting takes place in front of it - this works similarly to watching a play. In a similar vein, nearly all the action takes place in the middle distance. There are a couple of exceptions in this film, and these may have been the first films to pioneer these new techniques. The first is the Ecce Homo moment. The camera get that bit closer to Jesus, just showing his upper half as he stands in front of the words "Ecce Homo" behind him. The second is a shot of Veronica, after she has wiped his face. The camera cuts to a shot of her holding her cloth, close enough for the viewer to see she has a perfect image of Jesus's face upon it.

This film will probably be available from this seller on eBay as part of a compilation DVD Early Religious Films.

Matt

The Early Jesus Film Synoptic Problem

I won a DVD of "Early Religious Films" on eBay, and they arrived yesterday (in less than a week - from Canada). The information on the auction page claimed that it contained 3 films from the 1890s and 1900s, Life of Christ, Death of Christ, and David and Saul. Information about this period in cinema history is fairly unreliable so I was fairly sceptical as to what it might produce.

Having watched both of the Jesus films I'm still not sure what to make of them. I'm going to discuss each film individually as we go through the week. The hardest task before me however is trying to work out the date of these films.

Before the internet, there were two major sources of reference information on Films about Jesus, "Divine Images" by Roy Kinnard and Tim Davis, and "The Bible on Film: A Checklist 1897-1980" by Richard H. Campbell and Michael R. Pitts. However, neither of these films mention a Jesus film, made by Pathé before The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, listed as 1905. The opening shot of this film is shown below:


It seems unlikely that this might have been faked, particularly as it appears that all three films appear on a video entitled "A History of Color in Silent Films" which covers Pathé films from 1898 onwards, and The Life of Christ is the first.

A third piece of the puzzle is the relationship between this film and The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. This film was given a wide release on DVD a few years ago, and the packaging claimed parts of it were released in 1902 with extra scenes and colouring being added with subsequent re-releases in he years up to 1905. This contradicts the testimonies of both both "The Bible on Film", and "Divine Images". Both of which list Pathé's first film of this title being released in 1905 and another longer film of the same title being released in 1908, with a colourised version being produced in 1914, when reviewers, who were seemingly unaware of its antiquity, slated it for poor production.

The relevance of this becomes apparent from the first scene of The Life of Christ which is identical to a scene in The Life and Passion, in fact, as the film continues, it appears that most of The Life of Christ was reproduced in The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. Something of a Jesus film synoptic problem. That said there are some scenes which are different - either the same scene shot very differently, or similarly but in a different location, or with different actors, whereas some are entirely absent in The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. Other scenes are less extravagantly coloured than the ones from that film. Significantly all of the scenes that look like they have been re-shot are significantly better in The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ.

On the other hand, most of the material from The Death of Christ is original, although even it utilises some of the same material that is later incorporated into The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ. Here though the quality of the film (from an aesthetic point of view) is lower, suggesting that this is the oldest of the three films. In several places where one of the later films improves upon one of the earlier two films, one of its "improvements" is to add special effects. For example the resurrection scene in "The Death of Christ", is less technical, but also far less gaudy than the way Jesus hovers out of the tomb in both of the later films.

So the three films are clearly related, and it would be logical to suggest that The Death of Christ, is the eldest film (particularly given that most of the very first Jesus films were passion plays). However, things are not quite that simple. Firstly, it appears that a number of different actors are used in The Life of Christ. This and the fact that the style of the intertitles changes from those identical to The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, to others that look older, and less sophisticated, suggests that this film (and possibly The Death of Christ) are composites.

NT scholars will be relieved to hear that my hypothesis isn't that there was a fourth hypothetical Jesus film now lost which the two later films copied parts of and incorporated! My best guess is that the earliest parts of these films do date from 1898, but that the longer Life of Christ film didn't reach this hotch-potched form until 1902. It subsequently was expanded to 2 reels and tidied up a bit in 1905 and released as The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, and similarly was expanded again to 3 reels in 1908 and re-released under the same title. This means that Campbell, Pitts, Kinnard and Davis come away with some credit, as do the packagers of the The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, but none of them get things wholly correct. This leaves a number of gaps unfillled, not least the varying intertitles (which would be easier to fix and more noticeable than changing Jesus), and questions as to what point the film got hand coloured (the books say not until 1914, but all the other evidence points the other way).

If anyone knows more about these films, please do post some comments. Alternatively, if you would like to get hold of these films and decide for yourself The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ is widely available and I get the impression that the others will up on eBay again soon (or can be bought on VHS from the link above).

Matt