Wilde Salomé (2013)

I've wanted to see Al Pacino's Salomé production for many years despite not being entirely sure what it was. There were seeming two entries on IMDb that seemed relevant and while things are a little clearer there now, originally it was confusing. Was this a filmed play, or a (more standard movie); or was it a documentary. It briefly popped up on Amazon Prime so I bookmarked it to come back to. And then it disappeared. 

Fortunately, after an absence of 2 or so years (in the UK at least) it's back on Prime again to rent or buy on Amazon. So, ever trying to learn from past mistakes, I snapped it up, watched it and decided I should probably get some initial thoughts down before it disappears again.

It turns out that what you are buying is in two distinct entities run into one. Firstly there is a documentary called Wilde Salomé from 2011. This is then immediately followed by a filmed version of the play which sits part way between a filmed play and a film. I'll offer a few thoughts on the latter in a future post as it's more the typical focus of this blog, but for now here are a few thoughts on the documentary

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Wilde Salomé is a 90 minute documentary which tracks Pacino's journey in adapting Oscar Wilde's famous play Salomé. Apparently the project has been a long term passion project for Pacino and he tells his story as he tours round various key locations in Wilde's lifetime, in Ireland, the US and in the UK. We also hear from a number of other people Pacino talks to, ranging from one of Wilde's descendants and people like Bono, through to a literal man on the street outside one of Wilde's British homes who, despite being a local resident, had no idea of the location's significance prior to bumping into Al Pacino blocking the pavement there. There's also some footage from Israel/Palestine.

The travelogue footage is interspersed with extensive excerpts from the filmed version of the play, as well as lots of behind the scenes footage. Pacino trying to bring the production together, rehearsals, passionate discussions about the way a certain aspect should be handled. It emerges that there are three levels to the project which are all being produced in the same five days period: the stage play, which is being performed in from of a paying audience; a separate filmed version of the play which is being shot in the same few days, but entirely separately from the theatrical version; and the documentary itself. 

There are certainly some interesting details, particularly for those, who like me, can recall only a little about Wilde and are never sure how much of it is true and how much is fiction from productions ranging from comedies such as Blackadder Goes Forth (1989) to more serious biopics like Wilde (1997) starring Blackadder alumnus Stephen Fry.

The details of Wilde's final years, particularly those of his incarceration in a hard labour prison are pretty horrifying and the more editorial take on "Bosie", is welcome. I picture him as Jude Law, forget his father's codifying of the rules of boxing and can never recall a great deal else.

Richard Strauss's famous operatic adaptation also gets a mention here -- For some strange reason I struggle to think of Strauss's work as coming after Wilde's. He, or at least his opera, somehow seems like a much more established / accepted work in terms of the British establishment. 

While there are I'd really have liked a decent discussion of other filmed versions of the play or story. Pacino mentioned first seeing the Steven Berkhoff version in the late 1990s, and there's a little footage from that, but only regarding how it inspired him. And then there's footage from an early silent version and another adaptation shot in the Mojave desert. Fine if you want to skip the 1953 Rita Heyworth version (which not only steers clear of Wilde's play and drops the accent on the "e", but also changes Salome into a heroine who thinks she's dancing to save John the Baptist), but it would be nice to hear his thoughts on the 1922 Nazimova version or Ken Russell's The Last Dance (1988).  Actually I should get round to reviewing that one myself...

All in all, there are certainly some points of interest, and it does flesh out Pacino's filmed version of the play which follows, but it's not as interesting as might be hoped, partly because, for all Pacino's charisma and enthusiasm, there's very little discipline. Pet passions like this need reigning in and this is hard to do when the obsessive fan making the project is one of Hollywood's biggest ever stars. It's not hard to imagine -- not least seeing the direct way with which Pacino talks to his colleagues -- that no-one really stood up to him to reign him in a bit. 

But hey, I'm hardly one to talk. And just as I've enjoyed carving out a bit of space on the internet to let my pet passion ramble on untethered, then why shouldn't he? And for a making-of style documentary for a film about strong, irresistible, irrational passions, perhaps that's rather appropriate.  

Salomé (1910)

Incredibly, even before 1910 there had already been seven silent film adaptations of the story of Herodias' daughter including four release in 1908 alone.¹ The oldest of these seven, the German film Tanz de Salome dates all the way back to 1902, three years' before Strauss' famous opera was first performed. Given the opera's popularity, it's not entirely surprising that so many films about the subject were released, nor that Blackton, Capellani and Feuillade were among those to give it a go.

Nevertheless, 1910 saw the release of two more films about Salome: Herodiade a French effort by Alice Guy's former assistant, Victorin Jasset; and this Italian-based film by Ugo Falena. At the time Falena was working for Film d'Arte Italiana, which as a studio was very much back in third place behind Italy's biggest two largest film producers Cines and Ambrosio.

As should be clear from the above, the film is colourised, presumably by hand, using the stencil method. Though it won't necessarily be obvious viewing the film using the 240 pixel screen above, viewed in the right way the colour is remarkable. In particularly Salomé's red dress is striking and a fairly early example of using stencilled colour as meaning (the scarlet woman) rather than simply to make things more attractive. In particular the procession when Herod welcomes the 'proconsul' Vitellius (and the biblical films of this era loved a good procession) features various Romans wearing leopard skins where the subtlety and variation of the colour fading is remarkable. We often patronisingly think that silent film producers cared less about their products than those commanding armies of CGI artists today, but the degree of skill and care exhibited by the colouring here should put pay to that.²

The film broadly follows Wilde/Strauss' variation on the New Testament tale. Certain details such as the Baptist being held in a cistern are drawn straight from the play, but it's interesting that in contrast to the play opera the cistern is a subterranean pit opposed to an above ground structure. I'm not sure where this variation originated, but it finds its way into the 1922 Nazimova film adaptation. Two elements of the plot are also added. The first is the visit of Vitellius (presumably the future emperor, though of where he is meant to be procnsul at the time of the story is anyone's guess). The other is a moment where a serving girl spills wine on Herod and is instantly dragged off, tied to stake and stabbed to death by a group of female revellers. Salome's dance occurs immediately after this incident such that the unfortunate woman's corpse is visible throughout Salomé's dance.

The dance, such as it is, is preceded by Salomé (Vittoria Lepanto) removing her scarlet robe, to reveal seven veils tucked, rather conveniently, into her waistband and ends with the daughter of Herodias throwing herself on the floor at Herod's feet. John's head arrives on the platter, but the footage - at least in the versions I have seen - ends here, so it's unclear if Salomé kisses the Baptist's severed head or not. In addition to Lepanto, the film starred Ciro Galvani as John, Achille Vitti as Herod and Laura Orette as Herodias.

Aside from the Nazimova version of the film, seven more films centered on Salome would be released before the close of the silent era, the most famous being the now lost Salome (1918) starring Theda-Bara.³



1 - Dumont, Hervé (2009) L'antiquité au cinéma  p.374
Available online at http://www.hervedumont.ch/L_ANTIQUITE_AU_CINEMA/#/374/

2 -Readers wanting to find out a little more about colour in early silent films should read Fritzi Kramer's introduction at her Movies Silently site.

3 - Dumont ibid. pp.374-375

Salomé (1922)

Alla Nazimova was one of the leading figures of 1920s cinema, not just in her native Russia, but throughout the film-viewing world. Not only was she an actor of some repute but she also wrote, edited, produced and directed. Indeed, whilst her husband Charles Bryant was given the directing credit for Salomé, many consider that Nazimova is, at the very least, worthy of consideration as a co-director. Certainly she, in combination with her friend Natacha Rambova oversaw the film's art-direction and had a hand in the design of the costumes and sets,. The costumes and sets were based on the original drawings Aubrey Beardsley created to accompany Oscar Wilde's play.

Whilst the film lacks Strauss' music and omits most of Wilde's text, it is very much an adaptation of Wilde's 1891 play, itself drawing on numerous writers and artists stretching back from Flaubert and Moreau all the way to the New Testament. David Thomson records that Nazimova herself called it "a pantomime of the play", and there's a certain appeal to that description (624). Wilde's plot and sense of decadence are clearly at the forefront, much of the film's dialogue belongs to him, and the film retains the occasional Wilde innovation, such as calling John the Baptist 'Jokanaan'.

Another aspect of Wilde's work that remains is the production's atypical sexuality. Numerous sources testify to Nazimova's lesbianism or bisexual (e.g. Lambert 162), and the result of her bold choices with respect to costume and set design was to create one of the earliest pioneering works of queer cinema. With its androgynous characters, stylised costumes and phallic props, Salomé is perhaps the most camp of all biblical films - a category with no shortage of competition - and it's influence can be seen in an array of subsequent films based on the New and Old Testaments, from 1933's Lot in Sodom, through to more macho efforts such as The Passion of the Christ (2004).

The visual impact of Navimova's work is breathtaking, with avant garde, art deco, sets and strangely alien-esque costumes. Herod looks like a cross between Bacchus and a circus clown, Herodias like one of Macbeth's witches and Nazimova herself looking like she had just stepped off the set of Metropolis, itself still half a decade from completion.

But its emotional impact is no less powerful. Whilst there seems very little interest in Ulderico Marcelli's original musical arrangement, contemporary versions of the score are well and truly in abundance. Recent soundtracks such as those by Mike Frank or P. Emerson Williams or The Bad Plus have revitalised the movie bringing it new-found popularity in the modern age.Indeed it's one of the finest examples of Silent film music coming full circle: just as in the early days a movie might be accompanied by anything from a single pianist to a full-scale orchestra, depending on the size of the venue and the grandeur of the production, today live showings feature an inspiring array of accompaniments from canned music on a DVD, through small collectives, right up to 70-piece orchestras.

In a version of Salomé that I saw recently, Hayley Fohr's drone inspired score combined violin and double bass with drums and manipulated vocals to give an ethereal power to Bryant, Nazimova and Rambova's images. Paul Joyce described it as "a mix of avant rock, post-rock, electronica and trace elements of folk/country" which captures it nicely. The music gave heightened the emotional impact of the film, but it's clear from the fact that this is such a popular film to screen that this is not a two-way street. Even watching the film in silence the power of its imagery is clear.

Fohr chose to omit the film's intertitles, a decision which proved controversial with some. Watching the film again, this time with the intertitles included, I'm not convinced they move the plot on a great deal, although their design and their use of Wilde's dialogue give them a certain aesthetic pleasure. It would have been better had the missing intertitles simply been cut, rather than replaced with several seconds of black screen. Nevertheless, I'm reminded of the famous dictum of another key director of the silent era, Alfred Hitchcock: "Show, don't tell". If nothing else, Fohr's the wordless approach does underline the film's ability to convey its story and its meaning based purely on its imagery.

What lies at the heart of all this emotion are the film's themes of desire, rejection and unrequited love. Herod desire's his step daughter oblivious to the pain he is causing Herodias. But Salomé has no eyes for him, only for John, who in turn is too pure for the sultry dancer. Instead Jokanaan gazes only towards the heavens. Meanwhile two of Herod and Herodias' servants (Herodias's unnamed page and Narraboth the Syrian guard) are similarly entangled. The former has eyes only for the moon - which looms large in numerous shots - the latter keeps an overly attached eye on the princess. Salomé is oblivious to both. In a desperate attempt to keep Salomé away from the Baptist, Narraboth takes his own life, but when his body falls at Salomé's feet she barely even notices, stepping over his body to continue her attempt to win a kiss from the prophet (see above). When the princess finally gets her kiss, once Jokanaan's head has been removed from his body, it so enrages Herod that he has her immediately executed.

Sadly the film's pioneering expression of sexuality proved similarly fatal to its performance at the box office. In addition to its unconventional style, rumours that the film had "employed only homosexual actors" (Anger 163) and tales of on-set debauchery, hurt the film at a time when the industry was still suffering from the fallout from the Fatty Arbuckle scandal. Yet somehow it was this film, rather than some of Nazimova's more commercially successful films that has survived. No doubt this is partly because it became cherished by a community that was still very much living underground in the early 1920s, but perhaps it was also because, in a field where still few, if any, women are known primarily by their surname in the way that many men are, this film, more than any other expressed a purity of artistic vision and single-minded determination to make the film the way she imagined it.

In addition to Joyce's review, readers may also like to read those by Martin Turnbull and God is in the TV.

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- Anger, Kenneth (1981 [1975]) Hollywood Babylon New York: Dell Publishing
- Joyce, Paul (2018) "Under the Moon… Salomé (1923) with Haley Fohr Ensemble, Barbican" at ithankyou. Available online at:
http://ithankyouarthur.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/under-moon-salome-1923-with-haley-fohr.html
- Lambert, Gavin (1997) Nazimova: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
- Lindsay, Richard A. (2015) Hollywood Biblical Epics: Camp Spectacle and Queer Style from the Silent Era to the Modern Day, Santa Barbara, California/Denver, Colorado: Praeger.
- Theophano, Teresa (2002) "Film Actors: Lesbian" at glbtq.com. Available online at
http://www.glbtqarchive.com/arts/film_actors_lesbian_A.pdf
- Thomson, David (2002) The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, LONDON (Little Brown), Fourth Edition.

Salome (1953)

Salome (1953) was the last biblical epic to be made before the advent of widescreen later that same year, and it remains a fine example of what could be achieved with the academy aspect ratio, not least because of director of photography Charles Lang's compositions and striking use of technicolor. Yet for all that, it's a film that is easily, and indeed often, sneered at. For many, it seems it has become the poster-child for all that is 'wrong' with biblical epics: the camp; the excess; the fake piety; cheesy dialogue and bad acting; not to mention a plot that bears little resemblance to the scant source material. Yet on closer inspection it is a different film, a better film, than its reputation suggests.

It's true that, in contrast to many biblical epics, Salome seems to rather relish the lowness of its brow, in particular the elements of camp. Alan Badel portrays John the Baptist in super serious fashion, his clipped English accent and wide-eyed staring into the distance, contrasting with his camel-hair costume like Jeeves in leopard skin. In contrast Charles Laughton dusts off his performance as Nero in Sign of the Cross (1932) and "plays Herod like a giant, randy eunuch" (Lindsay, 107). And then there's the earnestness with which Rita Hayworth, once the forces sweetheart, plays a character fifteen years her junior.

Hayworth's role is particularly interesting. Tragically, as a star she is beginning to be remembered less for her movies than for her posters. Even amongst serious film students, the pivotal role of posters of her in The Bicycle Theives (1948) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994) seems to be overtaking her fine performances in films such as Gilda (1946) and The Lady From Shangai (1947).

Whilst it's true that at 35 she was perhaps a little too old to play a coming of age princess, it's certainly no worse than Henry Winkler playing "The Fonz" at almost forty, or, more recently, 31 year old Andrew Garfield playing the teenager Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014). Indeed with this role there was even historical precedence; Alla Nazimova was 43 when she played the eponymous role in the 1922 version of the story. In contrast to all of those actors, Hayworth appeared fresh-faced and bright-eyed and was perhaps 'never lovelier', than as the princess who finds her homeland has more to offer her than Rome. Sadly Hayworth's career never really recovered from the film's critical mauling, though she continued working for another twenty years.

Salome also had a similar affect on director William Dieterle's career. One of many Jewish directors to flee 1920s Germany, his career never reached the peaks of Robert Siodmak or Billy Wilder, even though his 1937 film The Life of Emile Zola won the Academy Award for best film. After Salome he produced only a few more films over a twenty-year period, eventually returning to his native country in the late 1950s.

Yet the film was not the financial disaster all this suggests, going on gross $137 million at the box office. The film's success was, in part, down to a controversial billboard campaign featuring the Salome's love interest Claudius (Stewart Granger) leaning over a scantily clad Hayworth. The city council in Los Angeles claimed to have received "over 150 letters of protest" about the posters and so forced them to be taken down (Variety 1953a), although the subsequent court case was dismissed, finding that "(p)ublic morals were not shocked" (Variety 1953b). The controversy and resulting publicity only appears to have piqued interest at the box office, to the extent that in May 1953 Columbia were reportedly thinking of casting Hayworth in another biblical picture this time about Mary Magdalene (Variety 1953c).

However, contrary to what the controversy suggests, the film's real surprise, was the way it tried to redeem Salome and, by extension, Hayworth's image. In contrast to the marketing images of Salome, in her opening scenes she appears clad in a virginal white gown, dancing an innocent, rather than seductive, dance. It's interesting that whereas the filmmakers were taken to court but ultimately vindicated over the use of Hayworth's image, in the film Salome herself is exiled without any kind of trial or due process, an innocent victim.

This portrayal as Salome as a misunderstood innocent continues throughout the film. Forced out primarily on the grounds of "being a barbarian", her only real crime throughout the film is taht she is initially a little put out at her mistreatment. The male characters, and indeed, her own mother, consistently judge her based on little more than her appearance: Caesar banishes her, Pilate assumes she will be trouble, Herod lusts after her, the Baptist condemns her (or at least her family) and her mother deceives and uses her. Ultimately even the audience's primary expectation - that Salome will dance to condemn John the Baptist - is proven to be false. In a revision of the basic plot breathtakingly out of keeping with the traditional story, Salome dances not to condemn John, but to save him. Ultimately, John dies not because Salome is too corrupted, but because she proves to be too innocent, outwitted by her mother's machinations.

It's difficult to know what to make of the film's revisionist take on the story. Previous film adaptations, such as the 1922 silent Salomé, tended to take their lead from Oscar Wilde's 1891 play (and, to a lesser extent, Strauss's 1905 opera). Wilde provides a different motive for Herodias' daughter to the biblical story, where Herodias encourages her daughter to ask for the Baptist's head to silence his criticism of her affair with Herod. In Wilde's play, Salomé falls in love with John, but when he rejects her advances, she turns on him and dances for Herod in order to exact her revenge. However when finally presented with the Baptist's severed head, her old feelings return and she kisses it, an act that so appals Herod that he has her killed. Wilde's Salome, then, is presented as the archetypal femme fatale: attractive, lustful, capable of furious anger such that the cycle of the story can only be completed by her death. In other words it's a noir plot where a women is punished for her failure to conform.

Of course, aside from her posters, Hayworth is best remembered for her role in Gilda (1946) a typical film noir where she plays a typical femme fatale. It's not hard to imagine, then, that audiences expected her to undergo a similar comeuppance. Yet instead of a biblical Gilda they get treated to an innocent Hayworth who only agrees to use her sexuality when pressured by various characters, and for the noble cause of saving John. Thus whilst Forshey is correct to note that the curious revision of the plot still manages to appeal "simultaneously to the religious sensibilities and the prurience of the audience", it was surely not in the manner in which they were expecting. This is no doubt why even though the famous dance of the seven veils scene is more or less as might be expected, it ultimately feels out of keeping with the rest of the film.

Commentators on the Bible on film have tended to judge the film harshly for this very reason. For Babington and Evans the "wildly inventive" narrative is the result of "deformation piled upon deformation...producing an exhibition of the sub-genre's intrinsic interests, motifs and themes, though at the cost of historical plausibility" (186). Be that as it may, the revisionist plot does join together particular biblical details in an interesting fashion. The gospel accounts of John the Baptist's death never mention Salome by name - that detail is left to Josephus. Yet the name Salome does occur in Mark 15:40 and 16:1 as one of the women at the crucifixion and the empty tomb. This is usually taken to be an entirely different woman, as is perhaps likely, but there's a certain poetry to the theory that the daughter of Herodias did somehow become one of the followers of Jesus, possibly even one of the women of means who supported him.

Whilst the film doesn't explicitly make this claim, the final shot we see of Salome is her, again dressed in white, stood next to Claudius and listening to Jesus deliver the Sermon on the Mount. Christ's face is not shown, only his back is visible, both here, and in an earlier scene where he restores a man's sight (where we get a close up of his hand). As is typical for the Roman-Christian epic, we're left to infer the rest.

I can't help wondering, however, if the reason the subversion of the original story is so notorious is not so much because it diverges from the Bible - it would hardly be the first epic to be guilty of that - but because they've failed to properly smooth out the plot around the edges of the transplant. In particular, it's not really clear how come Granger's Claudius shifts from being banned from returning to Galilee in one scene, to turning up there hoping to save the day in the next. Nor is it clear why, when he does arrive, he's unable to do so. I imagine there's a cutting room floor somewhere that could tell a tale, but without scenes explaining this, the ending comes across as a bit of a mess.

Ultimately, though, I still can't decide about Salome. Is it a cynically exploitative take on the story made in the knowledge that, provided they could keep the censors at bay, the prospect of Rita Hayworth stripping off would prove to be box office gold? Or is it bold revision of the traditional story which not only attempts to rehabilitate the biblical character, but also the star that played her. Either way it provides an opportunity to revisit the biblical story in the light of the #MeToo movement. A girl of unknown age coerced into trading her body. If that's not a metaphor for the Hollywood of yesteryear, I don't know what is.

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-Babington, Bruce, and Peter William Evans. (1993), Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
-Forshey, Gerald E. (1992) American Religious and Biblical Spectaculars Westport CT: Praeger
-Lindsay, Richard A. (2015) Hollywood Biblical Epics: Camp Spectacle and Queer Style from the Silent Era to the Modern Day, Santa Barbara, California/Denver, Colorado: Praeger.
Variety (1953a) "Rita Shows Too Much ‘Salome’ to Suit LA." May 5 
Variety (1953b) "Solon’s Not Hot ‘Salome’" May 19 
Variety (1953c) "Widescreen, Stereo Sound For Coronation Tinter" May 26

Visual Bible's Matthew:Ch.14-15

(From a series of posts working through the Visual Bible's Matthew).
The second half of Matthew's Gospel picks up on the story of John the Baptist. The daughter of Herodias performs a particularly unsexy dance (only Ray's King of Kings manages to find any hint of eroticism in this moment as far as I recall) and soon enough John's head is served up on a platter. This is depicted (as above) fairly gruesomely, which I think is actually to the filmmakers credit. It's a shocking act, yet often it's under emphasised. And thankfully it went, um, over my kids heads. (Daddy hadn't expected it to be so graphically depicted). The film takes its time to show the impact this event had on Jesus. Marchiano does some great work here. Denied any words to express his grief, he manages to convey it all with his body without falling prey to hamming it up.

The South African influence on the production comes to the fore in these two chapters as well. Herodias's daughter asks for the "hid of John the Biptist on a Plitter", and a couple of the disciples deliver their lines with a similar inflexion, most notably Simon Peter. This is a relatively strange experience. As with English accents, South African accents only seem to surface in most films if someone is a baddie (with the possible example of Patsy Kensit in Lethal Weapon 2, and hers is put on). Here they are both the baddies (as with Salome), but also the goodies. It's nice to see a bit of balance, even if it takes a bit of getting used to. Chief amongst the South African actors is Simon Peter. Unfortunately his performance throughout the film, and particularly in these two chapters, is very poor and the accent only seems to highlight the fact. To make matters worse, Peter is often given the generic lines which the text records only as being spoken by "the disciples".

Next up is the feeding of the 5000 which seems to mirror the crowds gathering to listen to the Sermon on the Mount in the first half of the gospel. Twice the passage demonstrates some of the difficulties in reproducing an 'action' section of the text word for word. A disciple, bringing a basket containing the loaves and fish has to bump Jesus with it to get his attention (which I can't help feeling could have been avoided) and then when the gospel says "he directed the people to sit down" he has to rely solely on gestures whereas in reality you would expect at least some words to be used even if they were inaudible.

I don't have much to say about the walking on water scene. The effects are reasonably good for a low budget movie, but Simon Peter's acting somewhat spoils things.

Chapter 15 starts with debate about what is clean and unclean with Jesus and the disciples working in the field. Jesus is stripped to the waist, which is a bold and unusual move. It works well, emphasising the humanity of Jesus in a usually unexplored fashion. It mirrors the opening of Last Temptation I suppose, but it's somewhat more striking here, perhaps because this is a more conventional Jesus, but perhaps because Jesus is outside. Of course nearly all Jesus films end up with a largely naked Jesus, but then it is, once again, within traditional parameters, and emphasises his status as a victim. Here it is presenting Jesus as normal in a way which is somehow vaguely shocking. It even stood out to my 4 year old. "Why does Jesus not have any clothes on Daddy?"

We then get one of the more difficult incidents in the gospel - the request of the Canaanite woman. I've used this clip before for something but I'm not quite sure for what. The significance is that whilst the woman still cannot quite see him, Jesus indicates to one of the disciples (and therefore us) that what he is saying is not quite for real. Several commentators suggest at this point that Jesus is being ironic or questioning the perceive opinion in some way, so this seems to be the interpretation that is driving this portrayal. Personally it seems a weak theory, although the portrayal itself is quite strong. Marchiano makes the point well, but the actress playing the woman delivers a very moving performance in just a few lines. It's perhaps the most moving part of the film so far, which just goes to show how much of a difference good acting can make even in a low budget film.

The section ends with the feeding of the 4000. I don't really have any particular comments on how the filmmakers portray this, other than that it stresses my confusion as to why this story is included given that Jesus has just feed an even greater number. Even if the ordering were reversed it would make some sense (with the greater miracle following the lesser giving a sense of Jesus' ministry getting more significant). It's there in Mark as well. If this were the Pentateuch then I'd be tempted to suggest it's just different versions of the same story coming through in different ones of Mark's sources. But given John's (admittedly later) boast about the wealth of Jesus material, and Mark's desire to tell the story quickly, even if there were two different events this second one seems somewhat surplus to requirements. Does anyone have any ideas on this?

Gallo Remakes Salome - Johnny 316

Happy New Year! Whilst I was away enjoying Christmas, Peter Chattaway posted Variety's review of Johnny 316. It's actually a film that had completely passed me by until now, but it seems that it's a modernised version of Oscar Wilde's play 'Salome'.

The official website describes it thus:

A modernized version of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Salome', JOHNNY 316, directed by Erick Ifergan, unfurls in the boulevards of Hollywood, California. Vincent Gallo plays a penniless street preacher who spends his days giving out pamphlets and spreading the word of God. One day, he meets Sarah, played by Nina Brosh, a beautiful bereft hairdresser who lost her job. For Sarah, it is love at first sight. She follows the preacher home and tries to seduce him.

Despite his deep attraction to her, he pushes her away. Oblivious to his rejection, Sarah continues to pursue the preacher, convinced that she can win him over. Poetic and violent, this impossible love story explores the themes of spirituality, intimacy and loss, set against the backdrop of the harsh unforgiving reality of the streets.

Despite a score of 8.4 on the IMDb at the moment, the Variety reviewer is fairly unimpressed:

This "Sally" never dances, but she does meander the boulevard in a movie that similarly wanders and never finds a groove, tone or point of view. The rather inspired central idea of Gallo as a modern-day John the Baptist goes undeveloped, with a ton of pretense in its wake.
[snip]
...long, lingering shots (often in hyper closeup) of Gallo's Johnny calmly preaching are not so fluidly intercut with similarly claustrophobic shots of Sally impatiently dealing with her infirm mother (Louise Fletcher)before going to her job at a Hollywood Boulevard hair salon. The same effects and devices that can work well for brief music videos... undermine scene after scene in Ifergan's film,
[snip]
A slightly younger Gallo convincingly summons a spiritual and peaceful guy (in an ice cream suit), in what amounts to a solo performance. By contrast, Brosh looks out of her element.

Music cues are all over the map, from Bach cello suites and Tom Waits ballads to free jazz and a Nick Cave closer. Telecine print screened was below average, taking away from what appears to be intense cinematography by Toby Irwin.

It seems the film was originally shot in 1998, but reworked with new footage and completed in 2006. It has also changed it's name from Hollywood Salome to Johnny 316. The new title is surely some kind of reference to John 3:16 (perhaps amongst other things), which is unusual given that particular verse is unrelated to John the Baptist, and is from the gospel which, not only pays him the least attention, but, like Luke, doesn't actually mention how he came to his end.