Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic ImaginationA Handbook to Jesus on DVD

Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press (2007)
Paperback: 208 pages
Language English
ISBN-10: 0664230318
ISBN-13: 978-0664230319
Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 16 x 1.8 cm
Additional Resources available online

The central premise of this latest addition to the books-about-Jesus-films canon is that the move from VHS to DVD has 'radically changed the way scholars, teachers and students can use Jesus films'.¹ Digital technology has created a universal way of being able to reference a certain point in a certain film no matter which DVD player is being used.

As a result the authors Jeff Staley ("Reading with a Passion") and Richard Walsh ("Reading the Gospels in the Dark") have set about creating this guide to Jesus on DVD, which makes the best use of the new technology. Taking the 18 of the most important Jesus films available on DVD (see my earlier post for the full list) they have given a run down of all the DVD chapters, with each subdivided into a list of biblical episodes that occur in that chapter. These come complete with extensive biblical references, and precise timings, as well as a few additional comments. The book climaxes with the final chapter "A Gospels Harmony of Jesus Films on DVD" which the authors describe as the 'generative heart of our work'.² Such a work is long overdue. Whilst aspects of it have been included in the appendices of previous works (notably Tatum, and Stern, Jefford and Debona) it's great to have something to help those who regularly find themselves trying to locate a particular biblical episode from a film, and finding that it takes a lot longer than they initially imagined.

Having said all that, the book offers far more than simply a collection of data. The eighteen chapters looking at the films themselves are bookended by two which are simply titled "Watching Jesus Films" and "Teaching Jesus Films". The former (which is excellent) lists various questions relating to the different aspects of film: Camera, Editing, Set, Lighting; Story, Plot, Causation; Characters; Genre, Tone, Ideology; and Motifs and Symbols. These themes then become, loosely speaking, the basis for which the 18 films are discussed in the main section of the book.

In contrast, the penultimate chapter ("Teaching Jesus Films") subdivides its subject matter into teaching using clips, teaching using a complete film, and Christ figure films. The first section discusses notable treatments of key incidents and characters in the films they have selected: the second offers 'topical suggestions' for 'a more holistic use of Jesus films' ranging from Peasant Faith and Capitalism to Queer Concerns.³

In addition to the DVD chapter listings, each of the 18 main chapters also contains a good deal of analysis. There's an opening plot summary, discussion about the film's memorable characters and visuals, and a handful of pertinent scriptures, all before brief discussions of the film's cultural location (or genre) and the film's director.

Of course, many of these areas have already been discussed in the various other volumes on Jesus in film, which makes it all the more impressive that Staley and Walsh are able to bring to the table so many fresh, and at times fascinating, insights. The authors are particularly adept at reading film visually, which is something that has been somewhat lacking in the library of Jesus film books to date.

The book is also eminently readable, and accessible to a far wider audience than Walsh's last book. "Reading the Gospels in the Dark", was most certainly interesting, but nevertheless quite difficult reading and not always entirely convincing. Here, non-specialists will feel at home, whilst those of us who are more experienced in this area will find plenty to chew on.

As always, there are a couple of minor quibbles. Firstly, I'm surprised that for the sake of completion the authors did not include details of all the versions of these films that are currently available DVD. Whilst the chapter listing would still have to focus on only one of these releases, this would certainly have enhanced the sections on DVD extra features, and would, no doubt, prove useful to readers who are keen to acquire some of the titles they did not have beforehand.

Secondly, the plot summaries are, at times a little long, often mentioning nearly every scene. Given that there is a full scene listing at the end of each chapter, these could have been a little briefer and given space for more of the authors' own observations.

But these are minor quibbles about a book that will prove invaluable to the growing numbers of people who lecture, teach and lead discussions on cinematic portrayals of Jesus. Staley and Walsh have brought an end to the hours spent in front of video (and indeed, DVD) machines trying to find a particular clip, and I, for one, am extremely grateful!

========
1 - Staley, Jeffrey L., and Walsh, Richard, "Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD", Louisville / London, Westminster John Knox Press (2007), p.v (Preface)
2 - Staley, Jeffrey L., and Walsh, Richard, "Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD", Louisville / London, Westminster John Knox Press (2007), p.vii (Preface)
3 - Staley, Jeffrey L., and Walsh, Richard, "Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD", Louisville / London, Westminster John Knox Press (2007), p.167

Seven Forthcoming Books on the Bible and Cinema

I'm aware of seven books about cinema and the Bible being published either this year or next so I thought it would be worth me pulling all their details together into one place. I've contributed to two of them and know the other people involved, so it's an exciting time for publishing in this area. I may revise this post as time goes along and more details become apparent and hopefully I'll be able to review some of these in due course.

100 Bible Films - Matt Page
This is obviously going to be the best of those mentioned here (that's a joke) and if you can only afford one, then this is the one to go for ;-)

I'm covering what I consider the 100 most significant film adaptations of the Bible aiming for a really diverse mix of filmmakers from across 14 decades, 6 continents, with a wide range of beliefs and covering stories from across the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the deuterocanonical books. It's written in a more terse style than my rambling blog posts here and will have plenty of images as well as an appendix listing the entries by biblical character.

It's part of the BFI's "Screen Guides" series and I honestly couldn't be more excited.
Due: February 2022 [BFI]

Costuming Christ: Re-dressing First-Century ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ in Passion Dramas - Katie Turner
After a number of general books on the subject, it's good to see more specialist volumes staring to be published and so Katie's "Costuming Christ" will be most welcome. Building on her PhD thesis on the "Representation of New Testament Figures in Passion Dramas" Katie's book will look at a subject discuss less than I probably should and with the expert eye of a NT scholar. Katie's perhaps best known for her contribution to the collective volume "Jesus and Brian" called "'The Shoe is the Sign!' Costuming Brian and Dressing the First Century".
Due: 2022 [T&T Clark]

Jesus Christ Movie Star - Phil Hall
"Jesus Christ Movie Star" will explore how Jesus has been depicted by filmmakers from the beginnings of the motion picture industry in the 1890s through the digital cinema of today. Phil is a film journalist / historian who also runs the Online Movie Show podcast and has written nine other books. I sense from some of his tweets and blog posts that he'll be covering some of the less well known international films as well.
Due: May 2021 [Bear Manor Media]

Jesus, the Gospels and Cinematic Imagination (revised) - Richard Walsh and Jeffrey L. Staley
Richard is probably the greatest scholar in this area and the first edition of "Jesus, the Gospels and Cinematic Imagination" (also co-written with Jeffrey Staley) has long been one of my favourite books on the subject. However, it was written for a very different cultural context where DVD was king and before a number of recent Jesus films have been released.

Richard and Jeffrey's revision, then, is fairly wide ranging, including chapters on two of those recent releases  films, Jezile (Dornford-May, 2006) and Garth Davis' Mary Magdalene (2018) as well as revisiting Alice Guy's Vie de Jesus (1906) and Il Messia (Rossellini, 1975). Moreover there will also be more emphasis on films and film criticism and less on gospel criticism and more attention to location, actors' other roles and directors' other films. 
Due: Fall 2021
More info (publisher website)

Judas Superstar:  Judas Iscariot in Cinema - Christoph Stener
Having previously covered religious texts (vol.1), Christian art (vol.2) and dark legend / theatre / folklore / caricature (vol.3) in his series on the antisemitic iconography of Judas Iscariot,  Prof Stener arrives at cinematic depictions of Judas for volume IV.

While Stener is French, there is both French and English version available, The longer French version comes in two parts and covers 137 films over 1200 pages, but there is an abridged English version which discusses 121 films in 192 pages. He analyses each film for its respect for the Bible and qualifies its message either ecumenical or antisemitic.
Published: Feb 2021 [BoD]
More info (publisher website)

T&T Clark Handbook to Jesus and Film - Richard Walsh (ed.)
Walsh again, only this time he's editing the work of some of the best scholars in the field (and me...). There are 27 chapters broken into two sections. Part 1 covers "The Jesus Film Tradition" while part 2 looks at "Other Jesuses, Christs, Messiahs, Sons of Men…". A lot of those involved also contributed to Walsh / T&T Clark's 2018 book "Companion to the Bible and Film". This should be out already, but mine hasn't arrived yet, so I'm assuming there's been some kind of a delay. 
Due: Feb 2021 [T&T Clark]
More info (publisher website)

Edit:
Bible and Film: The Basics - Matt Rindge
I only learnt about this one after making the original post, but Matt Rindge's Bible and Film: The Basics is also due out this July. It joins the list of publication I like to call half-and-half Bible film books, following in the tradition of Baugh's "Imaging the Divine" where the author explores biblical adaptations (Bible on Film) before discussing Christ-figure, allegorical, metaphorical and thematic treatments (Bible in Film). The latter chapters "provide a hermeneutic by which readers can create their own new conversations with the manifold ways that Bible and film interact".
Due: July 2021 [Routledge]
More info (publisher website)

New Scripture Index for 'Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination'

I reviewed Staley and Walsh's 'Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination' last year and have found it invaluable ever since. So I was pleased to hear that Jeff Staley has made another resource for the book available on line - a scripture index. I can imagine that this will prove very useful.

There's also a list of humourous Jesus shorts which I've don't recall seeing before.

Forthcoming Book - Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination

This is a fairly advanced warning, but I imagine it will interest many of those who have ever found themselves flicking through a Jesus film trying to find the right scene. Richard Walsh ("Reading the Gospels in the Dark") and Jeffrey L. Staley have a new book due out in September 2007 that will make that task a whole lot easier.

"Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD", summarises eighteen Jesus films available on DVD along with chapter listing, details of extras, a look at the film's genre and socio-political setting, descriptions of the main characters and information on the director. The book concludes with "a harmony of film parallels that lists by hour, minute, and second where each gospel scene can be found on the DVDs".

A number of parts of the book are available already, with links from Jeffrey L. Staley's home pages to the contents, preface and study questions. The eighteen books to be covered in depth are:

The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ
From the Manger to the Cross
Intolerance
The King of Kings
King of Kings
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Jesus Christ Superstar
Godspell
Jesus of Nazareth
The Jesus Film
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
The Last Temptation of Christ
Jesus of Montreal
Jesus
The Miracle Maker
The Gospel of John
The Passion of the Christ

The authors raise a couple of interesting points in the preface, firstly they explain the problems of using Jesus films in the classroom:

Jesus films, however, are quite difficult to use in the classroom (and in research) because no easy tool exists for cross-referencing them with the gospels... Generally, we, like other professors, have had to watch entire films in order to find the perfect clip for a class, then note the time that the clip appeared in the film... Our handbook now resolves this problem by providing an easy-to-use list of gospel parallels that tells students and teachers the precise hour/minute/second on a given DVD that the gospel story or scene occurs. We believe that DVD

Elsewhere they make the point that DVD technology has fundamentally changed the way this kind of clip surveying can happen because not only is it possible to skip to a precise point in the film, but also, unlike video tapes, the timings are unaffected by the speed of the video player and where you start counting from.

All in all this looks like it will be an excellent resource, and hopefully it will far outstrip my Jesus Film Scene Comparison Spreadsheet, which lacks both timings and scripture references (although it does cover 30 films rather than just 18).

Please note this image is for illustration purposes only and bears no relation to the official cover

Update on Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination

Last month, I mentioned the forthcoming release of the book "Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination" by Jeff Staley and Richard Walsh. Jeffrey got back in touch last week to let me know that it's now listed at Amazon and that the cover art has been completed (see right). It should be available in September, and will be published by Westminster John Knox Press.

I won't repeat everything I discussed back then, so if you want more information follow this link, or read the other details on his homepage

Bible Films Blog Review of 2007

This blog is officially two years old in the next few days, and recently I've had a number of people surprised that I was still finding fresh material. I must say that I count myself among them! Actually that's a bit of an exaggeration. I always knew that there was plenty of material here to discuss, but at the same time I'm surprised that there has been so much news to cover. As a result I thought it might be worth concluding the year with a bit of a review.

2007 was the year that Moses really made it big at the cinema, with three different films examining material from the Book of Exodus. 50 years after The Ten Commandments performed spectacularly well at the box office Promenade Pictures' animated re-telling of the Moses story used the same name. Somewhat less reverently, David Wain's The Ten used the idea of the Ten Commandments to string together a series of sketches. Finally Penny Woodcock's Exodus was a challenging reconstruction of the story of the Exodus set in modern day Margate.But it wasn't just Moses that got in on the action there was also Corina van Eijk's Samson and Delilah, and of course Evan Almighty. The New Testament had but a single representative, the lacklustre Magdelena, Released from Shame.

Away from cinemas there were a few noteworethy productions on the TV as well. Friends and Heroes wove stories from the Bible into it's children's story of a family living in 1st century Alexandria. There was also The Liverpool Nativity. There was also a number of documentaries. The year was topped and tailed by Channel 4's night on Life of Brian which included two on The Pythons. The year's major documentary, however was James Cameron's Lost Tomb of Jesus. On a personal note I also got to see a number of other Bible films that I had waited for a while to see. Chief amongst them was Rossellini's Atti Degli Apostoli, which took 5 hours (not to mention travel time), but which I'd revisit in a flash given half a chance. I also got a first look at Cammina Cammina, Esther and the King, Golem Spirit of Exile, Story of Ruth, Noah's Ark, Silver Chalice, La Ricotta from RoGoPaG and Lance Tracey's The Cross. Perhaps my favourite find of the year, however, was the hilarious Real Old Testament.

There were also a number of new books written on the subject. January saw the release of Adele Reinhartz's flowing, and very engaging "Jesus of Hollywood". Thomas Langkau focussed on the last fifteen years in his "Filmstar Jesus Christus" in German, Stephen Lang published his broader, if slightly dull "Bible on the Big Screen", and Staley and Walsh's invaluable "Jesus, the Gospels and Cinematic Imagination". Sadly, I wasn't given the opportunity to review "Mel Gibson's Passion: The Film, the Controversy, and Its Implications", but there were two contrasting and complementary reviews from Mark Goodacre and Timothy D. Finlay

Films based on the Bible also got a mention in various other books about faith in film including Melanie Wright's "Religion and Film", Flesher and Torry's "Film and Religion", Johnston's revised "Reel Spirituality" and Jeffrey Overstreet's hugely enjoyable "Through a Screen Darkly".

So all in all a surprisingly busy year and 2008 looks likely to be equally busy with a host of films in production, the pick of which looks likely to be the BBC's The Passion in partnership with HBO.

Data Visualization: How Does Pasolini Abridge Matthew's Gospel?

Click here for larger/better resolution version of the image.

Earlier in the year I was writing a chapter on Pier Paolo Pasolini's Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to Matthew, 1964) for a book due out next year hopefully about some of the films from the Arts and Faith Top 100. 

The words spoken in the film are almost entirely directly taken from Matthew's Gospel, but not all of the Gospel is included. Many sections are omitted or abbreviated. Moreover, Pasolini rearranges the text so some incidents/ speeches occur in a different place in the film. 

I made a list of which parts of the Gospels appear in various film many years ago (free download) and Jeffrey Staley and Richard Walsh produced similar but more detailed versions of this information for their 2007 book "Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination" (my review) a completely reworked version of which was published last year. 

However, I wanted to get a better feel for how Pasolini edits, abridges and rearranges the material and while those resources are useful I wanted to get something more immediate. Given my day job is creating data visualisations, I decided to have a quick go with the data about Pasolini's movie. Jeffrey and Richard were kind enough to allow me to use their research and to provide it in an electronic format. 

Preparation

My intention was to plot where the cited/dramatised incidents from the text occur in the film. In order to do this I began by tidying and making a number of amendments to their data. There was the odd error and there was one passage where the wording is used twice in the text and I felt the other verse seemed to be where Pasolini would more naturally be drawing from. I also gave a more detailed breakdown of the Sermon on The Mount and where there was only a time stamp for a section of teaching, I added in specific times. This was a challenge as Staley and Walsh had used a different release of the film than any of mine own.

Visual elements

One of the things I wanted to examine was how Pasolini handled the five main teaching blocks we find in the text. Scholars have noted how Matthew concentrates Jesus' teaching into five main blocks and for over a century it has been suggested that this is to associate Jesus and the gospel with Moses and the five books of the Torah. So I shaded these areas in grey. I probably should've mentioned that on the diagram itself, but I couldn't quite work out where to do that and, at least at the time, I was hoping to do an improved version.

From a data visualisation point of view there is one thing that is particularly unusual about this chart which is that "time" is on the y-axis, whereas nearly always time goes on the x-axis. I decided to do it this way for two reasons. Firstly, because in a sense both axes are a variation on time. The y-axis is time through the film, but really the x-axis represents time to. Perhaps we could call it time spent reading through the gospel. It's not linear or regular time, but it's not totally out of keeping with the convention.

The second reason, however, was that having plotted it both ways this felt like the more natural choice. While the time through the movie might be more regular, the text is more original. It represents a reality that exists before the film comes and rearranges it. The sense of progress is progress through the text. Similarly, I think the various attempts to plot the time sequence in Pulp Fiction (1994) fail because the people producing them don't want to break the rule that time in minutes/should be on the y-axis. But this is a case of "it depends" albeit in a situation where the convention is dominant.

Notes on style

Many of the most popular data visualisations use quite lively colours and style. When that works, it really works and it's no surprise that the ones that are able to leverage colour effectively go on to become the most popular. 

The downside of this, however, is that people think effective / good data visualization has to have lots of colour. That's not true. Indeed many dataviz experts like Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic advise us to "resist the urge to use color for the sake of being colorful" ("Storytelling with Data", p.117). 

Here, it felt like colour didn't really have a key role to play. I could perhaps emphasise one particular section, or assign different colours to the type of material, and perhaps that's a job for a future iteration of the visual, perhaps one that is being presented. 

Instead, I decided to lean in to the lack of colour. The film is of course magnificently and proudly black and white (if you have the colourised abomination you should destroy it before it burns out your eyes and shrivels your soul). Moreover regardless of the excesses appearing on screen, Pasolini kept his titles sparse and plain. 

So I stuck with black and white, or rather black and light grey. The off-white background is the same hue featured in Pasolini's opening credits, and I used the Galatia SIL font as this seemed like the closest approximation to Pasolini's original font that I could find for free. I'm weighing up doing a couple of other version of these and I'm thinking of doing those using colour and a more modern font. But here, I've essentially tried to reproduce the film's simple aesthetic. It's part of what makes the film so powerful.

Limitations

As I've mentioned above I'm still wondering about doing a more advanced version of the above. Ideally I would have liked it to be possible to hover over the dots and see the name and reference to each incident. In terms of tools I tend to use Power BI, but here I used Excel, partly because I didn't think anyone would look at it unless they already had a Power BI account and also because Power Bi doesn't let you use custom fonts. There are a couple of ways round the latter, but the former is a real deal breaker. 

Annoyingly, though, while the Excel file version of this document does allow you to see some info as a tool-tip, you can't customise it, the way you can in PowerBi. So maybe I'll return to this data if I ever get around to picking up Tableau or Deneb or R or something where I can make the interactivity show online.

The other limitation is that the quality is not as high as I'd hope. The higher quality version of this image is just over 800 by 900 pixels, but even then the dots look a little pixely in places. I also need to find somewhere to put that note about the darker grey strips being the author's five teaching blocks.

Did it work?

The main point I make about all this in the essay is that whereas Jesus has five chunks of teaching, Pasolini essentially reduces this down to two, the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7) and the Olivet discourse (Matt 23-25). However this visualisation doesn't really bear this out. While both sections feel like they take a long time, in reality they only take 5½ and 6½ minutes respectively, only 10% of the film combined. Plus while Pasolini's second discourse includes almost every word from chapter 23, he omits most of 24-25.

This move from five to two seems really clear from viewing the film, so it's arguably a bit of a failure of the graph that it doesn't really bring that out. In a future version I'd want to itemise the seven woes a bit more. That would create more presence on the chart, but I don't think it will solve the problem. I need to think a bit more about that  – it's why this visualisation won't be appearing in my chapter on it. 

That said, though, the point of the visual wasn't to reinforce a point I already felt comes through strongly in the film, it was to give me much more of a feel of how Pasolini jumps about in and abridges his source. And in that sense I think it really helps. For example, even with the briefest glance it's clear that Pasolini does not adopt a linear-but-abridged approach to the text. He moves material around. Much easier to see here than by sifting through a list of chapters and verses. I'm considering doing another one of these for The Jesus Film (1979) which takes a similar approach to Luke's gospel. I have no idea whether it jumps around or not.

There are other benefits. One point I found particularly interesting, is to see what happened to Matthew's second discourse. Pasolini essentially merges it into part of his calling of the disciples sequence. It's a clever move because he manages to not only preserve the "revolutionary" way Matthew has Jesus make a single clear proposition, but also maintain a plausible dramatic narrative in terms of Jesus' growing support. He calls his men, and teaches them, before turning up after just his baptism to a huge crowd on the top of a mountain.

It also demonstrates that Pasolini jumps back four times in the film, but for decreasing amount of time and material on each subsequent occasion. Also noticeable that the birth and Passion narratives take place in completely straight-forward fashion. It's only the ministry where some things change. But it's also arguable that what Pasolini is doing is jumping forward, rather than backwards. I might need to think a bit more about that.

Over to you

Having not only gone to the effort of producing this, I've now spent quite a while creating this blog post about it as well. So needless to say I'd love it not to be all in vain. So feel free to like and share and use if you're using it in classes. Please just keep the attribution to Staley and Walsh as well as mentioning me as its originator.

More importantly do you have any observations that come from the chart? If so, I'd love to hear them. Please put something in the comments below.

Thoughts on Pasolini's Matthew

I've been working my way through the Visual Bible Version of Matthew's Gospel, but onSunday I sat down to watch the superior, if not exactly word for word, version of The Gospel According to St. Matthew by Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1964. You can read my previous comments on this film here and listen to my review of the film at my Jesus Films Podcast. Here, I want to record a few new observations that I made in watching it on Sunday, which I don't recall being made by others anywhere else aside from some of the elements this film incorporates from the Gospel of John. Some of those (I now recall) are also mentioned in Jeffrey Staley and Richard Walsh's "Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD". Apologies if I have inadvertently borrowed from anyone else.

It's often said that one of the primary views of Jesus that we see in this film is of the back of his head as he marches round the Holy Land shouting his words of wisdom over his shoulder. So it's interesting that early on the film gives us a similar shot of Joseph. Having been visited by and angel who tells him to marry Mary, he heads back to her house to let her know and the camera follows behind him up the path.

Speaking of this path its used a few times quite effectively. Not only do we see Joseph initially leave Mary via it, and then return, but later on the adult Jesus will leave Mary by the same road, shot from the same angle, only he will not return. Pasolini rearranges the gospel order here so that this scene follows straight after Jesus claims that those who follow him are his mother and brothers. In fact the cut happens after a close up of Mary. We then see Jesus leaving and then realise that the location has also changed. Initially it appears to be from the mother and brothers scene, but then it emerges that it is a prelude to his rejection at Nazareth.

This sequence also parallels Joseph's opening actions. Joseph leaves Mary, goes to a spot in Nazareth and observes the children playing before hearing God speak through the angel. Jesus also leaves Mary in the same manner and ends up in the same distinctive part of Nazareth. There's an interlude whilst Jesus is rejected by the villagers, and instructs the Rich Young Man, but then we get the "let the little children come to me" scene. Jesus has also seen the children play.

One of the things that is usually mentioned when discussing this film is, of course, the music, but I'd not noticed before that several of the pieces of music used repeat two or three times throughout the film. One of my friends had some great observations on this, but I didn't fully get it, so I'm going to wait until he's finished his dissertation and see if he'll write something down on it. Watch this space.

Whilst Matthew's Gospel never mentions that Jesus is the cousin of John the Baptist, the film implies it. Having met with John's disciples once, he encounters them in the same place and is informed of his death. Both John's disciples and Jesus have tears on their faces at this point, which is perhaps not that visible on the small screen. Again Pasolini tweaks the order here so that Jesus' "Let the dead bury their own dead" occurs at the end of this scene. In a similar fashion Matthew's Gospel gives no indication that John son of Zebedee used to be a follower of the Baptist, but whilst the Baptist is shown preaching we see the other John by his side, as in the fourth gospel.

It also struck me, perhaps for the first time, just how Jewish the 7 woes directed at the Pharisees are. Whilst many of the things Jesus says are illustrating the wider point (that they are hypocrites) some of the examples are particularly obscure - swearing by the temple/gold of the temple, cleaning the outside of cups, and so on. The way the film abridges this section tends to emphasise the point I think.

As Jesus' death draws near, he is anointed by the woman, and it's interesting that it's Judas who voices the objection to her actions. Again this is as in John, rather than the more general "disciples" we find in Matthew, but whereas John focuses on Judas to besmirch him, here it could be read as the thing that drives Judas to betray him. Unhappy with Jesus' actions he heads straight to the Jewish leaders, who he watched very closely during their debate in Chapter 21. That said it could also be read as supporting the Johannine position, not least because of Judas' smile when he hears how much he will be paid for his work.

Lastly, again as with John's Gospel, we also see John the disciple at he foot of the cross comforting Jesus' mother. We're also given Jesus' trial before Pilate in a series of shots taken from John's point of view, intercut with extreme close ups of John's eyes.

Staley on Crucifixion in Jesus Films

Jeffrey Staley, co-author of the indispensable "Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD" has a new article out in the latest "Teaching the Bible ePub" from SBL. "The Crucifixion of Jesus in Films and in the Gospels" looks at how various films about Jesus portray the crucifixion and how that relates to what we know from the gospels and history. Like Staley's book, the paper is particularly interested in how Jesus films can be used in teaching contexts, and so fittingly he ends with a number of 'Questions for the Classroom'.

Thanks to Mark Goodacre for mentioning this.

SBL Consultation on Bible and Film

There is a new consultation at the SBL Annual Meeting on the Bible and Film. Here's the blurb courtesy of Mark Goodacre:

Bible and Film - Jeffrey Staley

Description: Focuses on the critical analysis and interpretation of Bible/Jesus films and other films incorporating biblical themes or motifs in terms of the films’ biblical and extra-biblical content, cultural and historical significance, and ideology. Secondary focus on pedagogical use of such films, and the preservation, archiving, and digitalization of rare Bible/Jesus films.

Mark will also be serving on the Steering Committee of the group. Jeffrey is the one of the authors of the excellent "Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination", and so is a good choise to head this up. I'm hoping to find out more about this and report back.

Citation Guide

I thought it would be useful to explain how and why I cite biblical references. It's a little complicated as, unless you're watching one of the films that are based solely on one gospel, filmmakers pick and choose from the differing accounts. Sometimes they harmonise the different gospels' unique perspective on a story, sometimes they clearly choose one over the others. In addition to this I don't have the time when watching these films to flip through a bible comparing gospels, whilst taking in the film at the same time - particularly if it's my first viewing. I may - in time - re-visit some of these films with a scene guide in front of me complete with references for the different version or something, but that's certainly not for now. Offer me a book deal, however, and I'll be only too willing to oblige!

So anyway, where I cite bible references they are only a guide. Where an episode exists in two or all of the synoptic gospels I'll tend to cite it from Mark even if the filmed version corresponds a little more closely with Matthew or Luke. I'm confident enough that Mark is the earliest gospel to feel that this is an acceptable convention. However, if I know that an episode is based on a specific gospel then I'll cite that.

If the story is in both Luke and Matthew, but not in Mark, then, I'll usually cite it from Matthew - again unless I know better. For what it's worth there are two reasons for this, firstly, because being named after that gospel has always given me an affinity for it, but primarily it's because I'm enough of a Q sceptic to think Luke may have used Matthew as a source. (Normally stories common to Matthew and Luke, which aren't in Mark are said to derive from Q - a hypothetical common source many scholars like to posit actually existed, but is now lost. For more on this see Mark Goodacre's "Case Against Q" site).

Stories from John are a bit easier as they tend to be unique to his gospel. However, on the rare occasions John shares stories with the "synoptic" gospels (Matthew , Mark and Luke), again, I'll tend to cite Mark unless it's obviously based on one of the others.

Episodes not found in the Bible, or another recognised ancient text, are designated as extra-biblical episodes (EBE). More recently I've described these as well as noting their existence.

OK - it's a bit messy, and my apologies for that, but I'm on a tight time scale here, and even withh all the time in the world it's not 100% obvious with some episodes. By the way, thanks to Bible Gateway and Five Gospel Parallels for making this task a lot easier.

A superior version of these guides is available for 18 of the major Jesus films in Staley and Walsh's "Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination"

(Last updated 6th May 2011)

Golgotha (Ecce Homo, 1935)

During the Hundred Years War, the English soldiers, confronted with a French pope coined the (not-technically-accurate) chant "The Pope is French, but Jesus is English".1 Those who rallied to that particular call would no doubt have been horrified to find that the first words Jesus spoke from the silver screen were, in fact, in French. 

Eight years after Cecil B. DeMille’s definitive silent film about the life of Christ, The King of Kings, Julien Duvivier brought Jesus back to cinema screens. The difference between the two films, however, is far greater than mere language. The King of Kings typifies the stagey pseudo-piety that has typified most American cinematic Christs, whereas Golgotha like Pasolini’s more widely known Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (Gospel According to Matthew) captures something deeper, mysterious and more spiritual with its simpler feel.

That is not to say that Golgotha has not been done a grand scale. The opening scenes of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem are as vast as anything Hollywood has had to offer us; but the scene also typifies the difference. Jesus is almost entirely absent from it. Yet, even without subtitles or a knowledge of French it is clear what is happening. Duvivier teases the audience showing the hustle and bustle of the crowd, the Pharisee’s discussing what has been going on, the action at a distance, and even a shot of the crowd from Jesus’s point of view as he passes through, but delaying showing us Christ himself.2 It is an fascinating device, drawing the audience into the story, and making them part of a crowd that is straining to see Jesus.3

When Jesus (played by Robert Le Vigan) finally does appear, over ten minutes into the film, it is at a distance, and shot from a low angle. He is almost obscured by his disciples, and there is a moment of confusion as to whether this is really he. The effect is to give the viewer the impression of actually being there, and discovering Jesus for the first time. Caught in the crowd, nudging ineffectively towards the action to catch a glimpse of the man everyone is chattering about. Eventually you can make out his distant figure moments before he disappears through the temple doors.

Inside the temple Duvivier delivers the finest sequence in the entire film, and one of the most memorable scenes in any Jesus film to date, as Jesus drives out the money-changers. The sequence starts with several, quick, shots intercut in a way reminiscent of Hitchcock’s legendary shower scene in the later Psycho. The first shot prefigures the action to come as coins swept off an off-screen table crash onto the floor and scatter. It is quickly followed by swift series of action and reaction shots. The sequence culminates in a single long take, over 30 seconds long which is the most impressive of them all. The camera tracks through the palisades of the temple in Jesus’s wake, straining to catch up with him as he zigzags from stall to stall. However, the shot isn’t focussed on filming Jesus so much as capturing the moment. In fact, as the camera weaves its way around, Jesus is only occasionally in shot. The result of this shot is that it captures the action, and chaos of the incident, in a way that no other Jesus film, either before or after, has quite managed. Considering this scene was created 6 years before Wells supposedly revolutionised camerawork with Citizen Kane, it is all the more remarkable. It also, albeit unintentionally, created documentary style footage, years before the documentary genre would be invented.

Like Jesus Christ Superstar, and to a greater extent the most recent Jesus film - Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ - Golgotha returns to the roots of the Jesus film genre and focuses on the immediate events leading up to Jesus’s death. Hence the majority of the dialogue focuses on the political machinations both within the Sanhedrin, and between the Jewish leaders and Pilate. The centrepiece of the film is arguably the conversation between Pilate (played by French star Jean Gabin) and Jesus, culminating in the former declaring "Ecce Homo" (behold the man), which was actually the original title for the film.4

What is surprising is that despite this being the first Jesus film with sound, Duvivier focuses on these conversations, many of them fictional, and ignores nearly all of Jesus’s teaching. There are three main exceptions however. The first is at the culmination of the cleansing of the temple scene where Jesus offers his usual synoptic epitaph to the baying crowd. The action moves back to the disapproving Pharisees and follows their discussion, before cutting back to Jesus in mid-flow. We hear the well known dictum "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." (Mark 12:17 and parallels) but miss the first part of the confrontation. This is arguably the most interesting of the three pieces of "teaching" that are encountered as the third piece, Jesus words during the Last Supper, is rendered fairly unimaginatively.

What is curious about the tax question scene is the way it pre-supposes audience acquaintance with the story, and then uses that to give the impression of real time. More importantly, it also illustrates that which we are told is happening – that the question is being set as a trap under the watchful eye of the squabbling Jewish Leaders. It also causes the viewer to interact with what is presented, and fill in the gaps in a way that few Jesus films do – stimulating the imagination, rather than laying it all on a plate for a passive audience.

This technique is also another method of Duvivier emphasising the mystery around Jesus, and as a whole his divinity is presented very well. As noted above this starts with the mystery around his entry into Jerusalem – not only the way it is filmed but that the scene where Jesus is hailed as a king forms one of the bookends for the film. It sets the tone of this man being someone special. The vast crowd adds to the effect. Perhaps the most obvious device used is the miraculous events that are included. By restricting itself to the events of Passion Week the screenplay truncates a good source of the accounts of miraculous happenings around the life of Christ. Given how other films have included these and converted them into kitsch set pieces then this may very well be deliberate.

Instead of these grand spectacles Duvivier again presents three beautifully understated events, but invests them with a deep sense of transcendence. Incredibly, the first does not occur right up until Jesus’s arrest. Even then Duvivier shuns the more crowd pleasing healing of Malchus’s ear in favour of the obscure words of John 18:6. As Jesus identifies himself as the man the soldiers seek he simply says "I am he". John then records that as he did so the soldiers "drew back and fell to the ground" (RSV). As far as I am aware, in over 100 years of films about the life of Christ, no other film has shown this incident. Even the recent word for word version of The Gospel of John (2003), inexplicably left the soldiers standing despite the narrator reading out those very words. By contrast Duvivier shows a range of responses, with some soldiers falling, and others remaining upright, but he films it so astonishingly that it somehow captures the truly phenomenal nature of such an event.

Once he has been arrested Jesus is as usual passed from pillar to post, in a fashion that is broadly similar to many of the other depictions of Jesus’s death. There are however a number of places where the way Golgotha has been filmed really stands out. In particular, with The Passion of the Christ still on the cultural horizon there are a number of places where the comparison between it and Golgotha are especially interesting.

One of the flaws with The Passion of the Christ was that it failed to round out the Roman soldiers who sadistically inflicted so much suffering during the films two hours. Despite a shorter run time, Golgothaimparts the relevant scenes with a far greater degree of realism than The Passion, capturing, as it does, the sadism, but also the underlying insecurity, that drives such bullying. Harry Baur’s Herod typifies the approach. Herod’s ruthless mocking is interspersed by subtler indications that he is desperately trying to gain the approval of his all-too-pliant courtiers.

Duvivier also uses these scenes to commentate on the very real political events of that time. As the soldiers beat and ridicule Christ one of them mockingly salutes him with his arm fully aloft in a manner clearly reminiscent of the fascist and Nazi salutes. Golgotha was released in 1935 during the rise of Nazism, (the very month in fact that the notorious Nuremberg Laws were enacted). The following year the world would fawningly ignore the regime’s explicit racism and attend the Olympic games it staged as a monument to it’s own self-importance. Given all this then, such a salute could not have failed to go unnoticed and as such it offered a powerful critique of the Nazi movement. Historically speaking, the beating of Jesus has been a universally condemned act, even though Jesus’s Jewishness has largely been toned down to allow that to happen. The film plays on this by comparing the condemned Romans with the celebrated Nazis; beating and bullying Jesus, a Jewish man. Such interplay exposing the hypocrisy of the tacit approval of anti-Semitism which would continue for several years unchecked along the road to the holocaust. Too often Bible films have pandered to political ideologies. (DeMille’s pseudo-midrashic reworking of The Ten Commandments into a story that supported the US stance in the Cold War being only one example among many). Golgotha on the other hand (dangerously) challenges an ideology in such a way that it embodies the risky and prophetic spirit of its central character.

The film makes the effort, however, to show a range of reactions to Jesus’s torture. Whilst many in the crowd stand by to enjoy watching him whipped, it causes one onlooker to faint. Again, there is an interesting comparison to The Passion here. Golgotha shows the horror of it through the reaction of someone we can sympathise with, rather than the more "in your face" approach of Mel Gibson. Duvivier also shows the mixed reaction of the people to Jesus on the via dolorosa. Hassled both by the children throwing small stones at him and the sick who press for healing even as he stumbles towards the cross. Once there he is crucified, dies and is buried. The viewer is shown the sealing of the tomb from the inside, thus ending the main segment of the passion story as the film began – from Jesus’s point of view5

Over the years, the resurrection has proved to be one of the most difficult scenes for filmmakers to portray, with most of the literal depictions sliding into kitsch. As a result some filmmakers have opted either to portray it more cinematically (such as Martin Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ),6 or to replace the biblical episodes with extrabiblical scenes (The Passion of the Christ), or to leave it out completely (From the Manger to the Cross).

As with the earlier scene in Gethsemane, Duvivier manages to get it just right, skilfully combining the early accounts in Luke (the woman at the tomb, and the road to Emmaus) with the later events in John (appearance amongst the disciples, Thomas, and Peter’s restoration). In so doing, the viewer is given a unique position, having neither seen the risen Jesus like the majority of the disciples, but being too familiar with the story to be in any doubt about the truth behind their testimony (from a narrative point of view at least). Yet there is also something special about the first appearance of the risen Jesus as he materialises in the middle of the upper room. It is simple and effective, yet it also manages to capture the otherness of it.

It is a fitting end to the work, embodying as it does, the way Duvivier combines the ordinary with the extra-ordinary throughout the film. By downplaying the moments where many other Jesus films have opted to turn up the spectacle, he has invested them with a believability which touches the reality of the world in which we live.

--------
1 - This line was in fact incorporated into the 2001 film A Knight’s Tale, which is set in the time of the crusades, although the comment is relegated to pre-joust banter.
2 This appears to be the first time that this device would be used to give Jesus’s point of view. Although it could be argued that The Greatest Commandment (1941) also uses this technique, the point of view shot in a film about Jesus (and it’s accompanying encouragement to see things as Jesus did) would not re-surface until much later – See Peter T. Chattaway 'Come and See: How Movies Encourage Us to Look at (and with) Jesus' inRe-Viewing The Passion: Mel Gibson's Film and Its Critics S. Brent Plate (Editor), Palgrave, Macmillan, 2004
3 Incidentally DeMille also delays showing us Jesus, and he makes us wait considerably longer. The similarities, however, are fairly superficial.
4 In fact, it appears that the film’s original release title was Ecce Homo, only being changed to Golgotha after it’s American release.
5 This also compares interestingly with The Passion of the Christ where we are seen the tomb opening from inside the tomb.
6 Unfortunately, some overly literal viewers have failed to grasp what Scorsese sort to do with his ending, and have accused him of leaving the resurrection out altogether.

The Chosen: The Shepherd (2017)

According to Peter Chattaway, a special cinematic episode of The Chosen was the highest ranking new release at the American box office last weekend. Christmas with The Chosen: The Messengers charted 4th in the overall box office, but the top 3 were all new releases. Given the series' unusual distribution method, that's not just news for Bible film fans, but also for those tracking the changing relationship between streaming and cinemas.

Sadly, it's not screening in the UK and I don't appear to be on the publicist's radar, so I thought I would continue my series on The Chosen by reviewing the show's pilot, which was also about the Nativity. As Peter discussed in an interview with the series' producer Derral Eves, while both instalments cover the original Christmas story, they do so from different angles meaning neither steps on the other's turf. From the look of the trailer, this 5-minute clip and Peter's review, the new film will be much more focused on Mary and Joseph, and (presumably) the angels that appeared to them.

But as the title of The Shepherd (2019) suggests, the pilot primarily revolves around one of the shepherds who goes to visit Jesus and interestingly while "The Messengers" are the titular characters in the new film, they are not even seen on screen in this one. Given that the film was working on a very low budget that was probably a decision made for budgetary reasons more than artistic ones, but it works well. For me, angelic appearances, be they from The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1907), The Nativity Story (2006) or even Netflix's Midnight Mass (2021), never really work. Aside from the sheer over-literalness of them, they also bypass the imagination, and the viewer then has a brief moment to focuses intensely on the film-makers' visual interpretation, before the angels disappear again. 

So The Shepherd's approach, which is similar to that of other Jesus series such as 1977's Jesus of Nazareth, is to shine a light on the faces of those receiving the message, but to keep the angels themselves off camera. It works well artistically, keeping the focus on the shepherds and their reactions. Moreover the actual words the angel(s) speak(s) are inaudible. This actually nicely encapsulates the film's overall approach. Much of the central focus of the biblical account, and particularly the words that are spoken, are moved to one side. Instead the focus is on the wider context. Likewise Luke's words which set the context for his gospel, are replaced by the filmmakers own textual introduction

Given that so far I've only seen two episodes of the series and this pilot (not to mention that there is a whole third series coming which nobody has seen yet), I'm a little cautious about extending my observations. Nevertheless this seems like it sums up the series (so far). The Chosen is about providing a a broader, or palpable context for the Gospels. It will be interesting to see how this extends as Jesus' role becomes more significant. It could also make for an interesting comparison with the Brazilian telenovelas, also the product of evangelical filmmakers, and also adding a lot of additional context around the original stories).

The angels sequence doesn't occur until the halfway point of this twenty-four minute episode. The initial focus is on the eponymous shepherd (Simōn), who appears to have reduced mobility in his left leg. He and his colleagues are heading towards Bethlehem. The film cuts towards an interior of a synagogue where a service is taking place and eventually it becomes clear that these men are not only absent from the service, but unwelcome.

This also brings out another theme that seems to be a feature of the series – the opposition between establishment or official Judaism, perhaps we could even read mainstream Judaism, and the Jesus movement. Naturally, the words being read from the scriptures are Micah 5:2-4 "But you Bethlehem... from you shall come forth one who will be ruler over Israel". 

This theme is also developed in a parallel, intercut, scene. Arriving in the village, Simōn approaches a pharisee (or at least a man dressed as pharisees tend to be in Jesus films) who seems to be buying spotless" lambs for sacrifice. The shepherd calls him teacher, quizzes him about the messiah and even challenges his answer about the messiah being "a great military leader" by citing another scholar. The 'pharisee' is outraged at his audacity and sends him on his way.*

Simōn's shepherd colleagues leave him behind meanwhile the readings inside the synagogue have moved onto Isaiah 9:2 "he people who walked in darkness Have seen a great light". (This does make me wonder what he's missing. Is there a Christingle service going on in there?) The shepherd pokes his head through the door but is shoo-ed away before he can find out.

But then just as he leaves he meets Mary on a donkey, and Joseph. he gives them directions to a well and, Ben-Hur style he offers them a swig from his canteen. Joseph asks about accommodation and mentions that they are from Nazareth. Simōn starts replying with "You know they say 'Nothing good can come from...'" but Joseph interrupts abruptly with "I know what they say about Nazareth". 

It's a nice scene, built on the foundations of  all those 'coincidental' meetings from so many biblical films in the past, a good way to ensure the film remains Simōn's story, told from his perspective, but also to showcase what the film-makers can do with the biblical characters. Again it's this pattern of liberating them from the biblical text to make them more rounded, but necessarily therefore more 'fictional', characters.

There follows a montage of sorts with Simōn making his own way back to camp accompanied by prophetic scriptures from the synagogue still ringing out; while his colleagues laugh and joke by a fire. Again it's providing this wider context for the story. Indeed, there's essentially a 'world building' that is at the core of The Chosen which greatly expands on a context for the Gospels, without featuring much of the biblical text, (though Peter notes that the new film is the first Jesus film – aside from the 1979 word-for-word version of Luke – to actually include all of the text of the Magnificat).

Given the focus on Simōn it's surprising that when the angels finally appear, they appear more to his three colleagues than Simōn himself. Whereas they stand in the blinding glow of the light, he is apparently further away. He still seems to hear and understand, but without the full visitation experience. Perhaps this is meant to signify that his meeting with Mary and Joseph was of greater significance, or that he possessed such inherent true faith that he did not need to see a flashy miracle. Either way as he starts running to the stable, his leg is healed and he discards his crutch.

The scene inside the stable is largely wordless and, but for the over-use of slow motion, fairly brief, but as the shepherds depart we do see something that is relatively rare even in Nativity films – the shepherds telling other people in the village about their experience, including a Roman soldier. This is accompanied by a voice-over reciting Isaiah 9:6-7 ("Unto us a child is born...").

However, there's a final encounter with the marketplace pharisee from earlier who asks Simōn is he has "found a spotless lamb for sacrifice". Of course, this is meant to be ironic because Simōn has just "found" Jesus, the sacrificial lamb of God (geddit?). Simōn thinks about it, smiles to himself (as if he understands the scriptwriters joke) and there's a cut to black for the end of the show, which I kind of like.

It's a brief vignette, yet one which even at under 19 minutes feels a little bit stretched out. Given the short amount of material that is being adapted it could have been shorter and taughter, but that doesn't detract from fairly good production values, some nice compositions, and a good central performance. And the writer, director and actor work well together to produce a fairly well rounded character. As a first look of The Chosen, it's not a bad introduction and quite a good way to taek15-20 minutes out to think about the original Christmas story and it's interesting too to see how much things move on between this and the first episode proper of the series.

Nit-picker's Corner

These are some details for my fellow pedants, but I don't consider them to have the same importance with the above...

As with the first episode there's an opening series of titles which here assert that this is "based on the true story from Luke's Gospel". I discussed my thoughts on that in my coverage of the first episode, but here it also adds that "the prophets of Israel had been silent for 400 years". That number is oddly specific for something that is so debatable. Israel (as opposed to Judah) had been disbanded following Tiglath-Pilesar's sacking of the kingdom around 722BC. Judah's prophet's continued and Malachi is usually dated to the decades before 400BC, but many scholars date the book of the prophet Daniel to much, much later (around 150BC). That's not a popular view in the evangelical world from which this film has arisen, but even in those circles it is voiced occasionally.

The prophecies whispered of a coming messiah who would save God's people

*I find this scene problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly ever since reading Katie Turner's thesis about costumes in Jesus films I find the ahistorical visual othering of the pharisees even more troubling than I did before. But this is a low budget production so it's perhaps unrealistic to expect it to do anything beyond mirroring the conventions of the genre. Secondly if this man is a pharisee why is he not only absent from synagogue, but working on the Sabbath? And I'm curious as to how this market location in Bethlehem relates to the site of animal sacrifice in Jerusalem. I imagine that if the numbers of sheep used in the temple were considerable they would have had to be sourced from further afield, but then the pharisee would then surely need someone to help him get them there, such as, well, a shepherd. Lastly, based on my limited understanding, the kind of back-and-forth debate the shepherd attempts to engage in is a common Jewish approach to the scriptures, so it seems odd that the pharisee would be outraged. But perhaps this is the film-makers point, that Judaism in Jesus' time had lost its way.

Like I say these are minor thoughts that come to me, not really substantial criticisms of the film, but I know they will be of interest to some people who read this blog so I thought I may as well share them.

Genesis Films

This is an article I wrote for the Open Heaven Church website back in the days before this blog really existed. It's likely that the article will disappear from that site shortly, so I thought I ought to repost it before it disappeared forever.
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Of all the events narrated in the Bible, perhaps the hardest to picture, let alone understand, are those in Genesis. Whilst there have been several attempts by filmmakers to capture these formative events on celluloid, their most productive time was actually back in the silent period. The most comprehensive lists cite around 20 films on the various stories made during the silent period, and a further six in the first 10 years of the “talkie” period. By contrast, the past 70 years have only produced a similar number.

The first film made about a story in Genesis was the French film Joseph Vendu Par Ses Frères (Joseph Sold by his Brothers) made in 1904. Other notable films in this early period included 1928 silent version of Noah’s Ark (where allegedly some people actually died filming the spectacular flood scene[1]), and The Green Pastures (1936) a child’s daydreamed version of the stories she is hearing in Sunday School.

The Green Pastures was probably the first film to portray God, and certainly the first to portray him as a black man. Unsurprisingly the Ku Klux Klan were outraged and protested causing many theatre owners to refuse to show it. The Genesis scenes, being seen through a child’s imagination make no attempt to be realistic, but their gentle humour, and basic simplicity give the film a spiritual authenticity that is absent from the majority of these films.

Perhaps the best known Genesis film was made by John Huston in 1966. The Bible looked at the first 22 chapters of Genesis, starting with a wonderfully filmed creation sequence (voiced by Huston himself), and progressing through to Abraham and Isaac. The Bible was made at the end of the golden era of the biblical epic, and wisely avoids making this into a spectacular but camp, bathrobe drama. Instead its dark lighting gives much of the film a strange sense of the dawn of time, and the primitive nature of the cultures involved.

At the same time the literalism of the presentation will both find favour with those who take a more literal understanding of the “how” questions of creation, whilst also giving it the air of archetypal myth that adopt a more symbolic interpretation.

The Bible was the last Hollywood film based on the Old Testament for over 30 years, with the exception of Richard Gere’s 1985 turn as King David, (replete with his undignified monkey dancing in front of a returning Ark of the Covenant). Instead most bible films began to be made for the TV and the church market. Typical of this was the late seventies “Greatest Heroes of the Bible” series, which included the stories of Noah, The Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham, Joseph. Around the same time the American organisation Campus Crusade (who made the 1979 Jesus film) made Genesis. This was a word for word, bland narration of the whole book accompanied by fairly uninspiring images which lasted for four long hours. It’s biggest plus point was it’s use of Middle Eastern actors, but it’s no surprise that none of them subsequently became the new Omar Sharif.

The eighties were a dry old time for cinematic versions of the book. Only the intriguingly titled Italian film Adam and Eve: The First Love Story and Mrinal Sen’s Hindi adaptation of the first five chapters were even made.

The nineties were a different matter. With Phil Collin’s namesake rock band out of the way, the bible’s opening tome was back in business. Whilst there were many Genesis movies made over that decade the majority were made by the Italian-American based company Lux Vide. Lux Vide put together 11 Old Testament stories as part of their “Bible Collection”, which also includes three New Testament films Jesus, Paul and The Apocalypse (my review), as well as four largely fictional spin offs, (each loosely based on a marginal New Testament character). Four of the Old Testament episodes were based on the events in Genesis - Creation and Flood, Abraham, Jacob and Joseph, and all four have their points of interest. Abraham, Jacob and Joseph frequently pierce the Sunday School cocoon that surrounds many tellings of these stories, both in cinema and other media, by including stories such as The Rape of Dinah, and Judah and Tamar that are so awkward, real, embarrassing and controversial that they are usually excluded completely. And the performances of Richard Harris, Sean Bean and Ben Kingsley respectively are usually worth watching in their own right.

Of the four, Genesis: Creation and Flood (1994) is possibly the jewel in the crown. Certainly it is strikingly different from the more traditional and straightforward tellings of the story that the other films give us. Instead of attempting to emulate the pattern of the earlier The Bible, or of the other films in the series, Genesis: Creation and Flood sets it’s own course. Covering the first eight and half chapters the film shows us the stories through the eyes of an old man telling his grandson the history of his people. Paul Schofield narrates in all but a few passages, only occasionally interrupted by a female counterpart.

The narration is accompanied by a striking series of images, occasionally interspersed by shots of Grandfather and the child, and other members of their family. It is an unusual effect. As Peter T Chattaway notes how normally you would be able to “follow any film's basic narrative thrust with the sound turned off… Genesis would fail that test”.[2]  In other words the narration shapes how the images are perceived. In a sense, this is like the act of creation itself, bringing form and order to the otherwise chaotic and unintelligible. The slow pacing of the film also gives it a meditative feel, enabling the audience to let the images wash over them whilst highlighting the words that drive them, and bring them meaning. This relaxed pace also brings a level of internal calm and thus transports the viewer to another time and another place far more effectively.

Ultimately then Creation and Flood is far more poetic than any of it’s predecessors, and it is ironic that a film which is essentially driven by such a narrative and literary work is ultimately so unliterary and poetic as a final product. It’s also interesting how the stress here on the story being passed down from generation to generation reflects the oral tradition that preceded and underlies the written text we have today.

Another film that takes this community narrative approach was a made for TV movie In the Beginning (2000). Martin Landau headed up a strong cast, playing Abraham; just four years after he had played Abraham’s grandson Jacob in the aforementioned Joseph. At over three hours, In the Beginning had plenty of time to cram in a number of these stories, and as a result, it could afford to continue well into Exodus. The creation scene here is also told by way of a flashback, but the sequence is so overloaded with explosive special effects, and cheap modern documentary footage it completely strips the event of its mystery and gravitas.

The end of the millennium brought with it a flood of biblical stories, and Genesis films were no exception. Chief amongst the offenders was another TV movie Noah’s Ark (1999), which was almost as unwelcome as the events it depicts. It is difficult to imagine what motivated the production of this film. Its attempt to weave futuristic elements into a pre-historic myth backfires more spectacularly than a seventies Robin Reliant. The bizarre futuristic elements evoke Kevin Costner’s mega flop Waterworld. Had that film been a success this at least could be called a cheap cash in, but as it was a commercial disaster that cannot have been the driving factor. Similarly terrible is the ludicrous attempt to pass off its idiotic amalgamation of the stories of Lot and Noah with the ridiculous off-hand comment “by the time they finish the story of Sodom and Gomorrah they will probably say we weren't even there."

The only potential merit of the film is that it solves the debate on God’s foreknowledge for ever. Noah’s Ark is so bad that if God had known the flood would spawn this stinker, he may have opted for another method of world destruction, (or at least have made sure that this was destroyed along with everything else). Frankly, it deserves every “wooden acting” joke that critics can throw at it.

Another poorly executed Genesis film is the straight to video Prince of Egypt  prequel   Joseph King of Dreams. The film does have some good points, notably the dream sequences which certainly benefit from a more creative and more expressive medium. However, the tiresome songs quickly become so dull that ultimately you begin to wonder if a spell in prison like Joseph’s might be far preferable.

Perhaps the best Genesis film of recent years (and of all time) is Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s La Genèse(1998). Sissoko’s film tells the story of Abraham’s family from an African perspective, and as a result, it is recorded in the Bambara language of Mali, spoken by only few million people. As a result La Genèse understands the nomadic tribal context in which these stories are set, far better than any number of  Hollywood films, and brings with it a number of fascinating insights.

It also refuses to lionise its protagonists, and emphasises just how dysfunctional this family was at times. Too often these characters have been stripped of their humanity, and shown simply as one dimensional heroes. La Genèse gives a more realistic picture which honours the God who uses such ordinary, broken unreliable people to further his will, and offers us hope that he can use us as well.

La Genèse is also beautifully filmed capturing the wonderful landscapes, and capturing something of the empty space that typified the world several thousand years ago. Nevertheless, at times the film is very stark and brutal in what it captures – starring unflinchingly at some of the more earthy elements of the story.

It’s the ability of this film to bring a new angle to well known and familiar stories that makes it so valuable. There have been many films on the various Genesis stories, but only a handful bring something insightful, interesting or challenging. Of these three stand out in particular. The Bible (1966) simultaneously shuns the worst excesses of the 50s and 60s Biblical Epics whilst subverting some of the genre’s standard features. La Genèse (1998) brings the tribal context to the fore, exploring the stories with an authenticity that is largely absent otherwise. Finally, Genesis: Creation and Flood (1994), offers us the chance to reflect on scripture anew as it draws attention to the poetic nature of the text.  

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[1] Various reports of this, the best online can be found at www.jimusnr.com/Noahsark.html

[2] www.canadianchristianity.com/cgi-bin/bc.cgi?bc/bccn/0501/artvideos