Jesus Christ, cinema star

Three years after the birth of cinema in Paris, filmmakers were already focusing on the life and death of Christ as a rich and valid cinematic subject. In a primitive and condensed several minutes, the Lumiere brothers' 1898 "Life and Passion of Jesus Christ" went on to inspire a long line of directors to visually depict the last days of Christ.

In the intervening hundred years, the story has been told on-screen as a musical, a beloved miniseries, and a proto-Marxist tale. This week, Mel Gibson takes his turn, narrowly focusing on the last 12 hours of Jesus' life, in the already controversial "The Passion of the Christ."

Each era brings its own values and technology to the fore when a Passion play, film, or program is created. Today's audiences ideally should have some grasp of the complex historical and theological issues involved in bringing the Passion to the screen, especially as some

viewers say Gibson's film has anti-Semitic overtones -- many without having seen it -- while others see the film as an emotional and inspiring view of the Passion. Along with the Lumieres' film, 1898 also brought a film production of "The Passion Play of Oberammergau," harking back to the stage performance done each decade since the original in 1634 after the plague. This would be a far cry from the most recent 2000 stage performance of the Oberammergau spectacle that uses elaborate sets and sound design for a modern audience.

The silent-film era features numerous interpretations of the Passion, including D. W. Griffith's "Intolerance" of 1916. In Griffith's film, "the Judaean" (Jesus) is victim of intolerant hypocrites of his age. A decade later, Cecil B. DeMille's silent epic "The King of Kings" helped standardize the world's conception of the New Testament. The film begins with anything but subtlety: "This is the story of JESUS of NAZARETH. . . . He Himself commanded that His message be carried to the ends of the earth." The special effects that capture the Crucifixion show DeMille at his epic best -- or worst, for today's scholars who would view this as more of an extravaganza than of spiritual or historical value.

Several decades would elapse before the momentum was picked up in the late 1950s and 1960s to make more dramatic adaptations of the Gospels. In the 1961 "King of Kings," director Nicholas Ray tries to move beyond stereotypical images of Jews and Romans and also allude to modern social and political issues, including the Holocaust and Arab-Israeli tensions. The character of Lucius, a Roman military commander serving in Palestine, is employed throughout the film, coming at last to fully understand at the Crucifixion that "Jesus is the Christ."To critics who considered the film long and tedious, Ray responded, "They're not hip enough with the times of Jesus!" "The Greatest Story Ever Told," directed by George Stevens and released in 1965, was anything but hip. It received sharply negative reviews, including a memorable one by New York magazine film critic John Simon: "God is unlucky in `The Greatest Story Ever Told.' His only begotten son turns out to be a bore."

Originally four hours and 20 minutes long, the film was later pared down to just over two hours but fared little better, despite a solemn Max von Sydow as Jesus. Telly Savalas ("Who loves you, baby?") played Pilate. Pat Boone, Charlton Heston, John Wayne, Sal Mineo, and Sidney Poitier got a chance to "act" in what was almost universally seen as a grievous offense against the Passion story, again more spectacle than gospel.

Pier Paolo Pasolini's "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" hit the screens the next year. The idea to make a Passion film came to Pasolini in October 1962 during the Pope's visit to Assisi. The filmmaker was trapped in a hotel room and had nothing better to do but read a copy of the Bible. He found the text incredibly rich and decided to bring it to the screen.

His film would be the exact opposite of the colorful, stylized epic "Greatest Story Ever Told." Pasolini here created a rough-hewn, Semitic-looking Jesus who is a strong, charismatic, and passionate preacher. The director dedicated the film to Pope John XXIII, who turned around centuries of Christian anti-Semitism with the Second Vatican Council. Tellingly, the infamous blood curse of the Jews -- "His blood be on us, and on our children" -- is heard not from the high priest Caiaphas but from a few isolated Jews. In this stark black-and-white film, Pasolini created a cinema verite version of the life and death of Jesus. With the haunting desert landscape of southern Italy and the ethereal music of Bach and Mozart, the filmmaker created one of the most successful spiritual interpretations of the biblical narrative.

Two 1973 films originally produced as stage musicals -- "Godspell" and "Jesus Christ Superstar" -- capture the '70s reimagination of the story of Christ. David Greene's "Godspell" develops the camaraderie of Jesus, who wears a Superman shirt and a heart emblazoned on his forehead. The film highlights the people who are attracted to this likable, charismatic figure. Notably, the traditional Jewish court and Pilate scenes don't appear.

Norman Jewison's "Jesus Christ Superstar" favored wild sets and anachronisms. It engaged and entertained audiences, even if it didn't inform them. In 1977, Franco Zeffirelli's television miniseries "Jesus of Nazareth" became the fulfillment of a dream for the director. Like Pasolini, he was deeply moved by the Second Vatican Council's changes and set out to make a fresh new vision of the life and death of Jesus. Although on the surface the film appears to be a romanticized, soft-focus epic, it bears the print of someone keenly aware of religious sensitivities.

"The point I wanted to make was that Christ was a Jew, a prophet who grew out of the cultural, social, and historical background of the Israel of his time," Zeffirelli said at the time of the production. In the court discussion, the Jews are hotly divided. Some want to persuade Jesus to tone down his so-called "activism," while others, led by high priests Annas and Caiaphas, wish to deliver him to Pilate.

They win out. The reluctant Pilate wants nothing to do with this man, but he eventually is persuaded to crucify him. "Jesus" was made in 1979 in conjunction with the Campus Crusade for Christ. It was to serve as an educational, evangelizing vehicle throughout the world in a myriad of languages; it ends with a seven-minute appeal to follow Jesus. In keeping with the Vatican Council's changes, the film does not implicate all Jews in the execution of Christ and gives Pilate more active responsibility for his death than other Passion films.

In 1988, director Martin Scorsese made a dream project of his own: "The Last Temptation of Christ," which created quite a stir at its release. Many Christian groups saw it as blasphemous, and televangelist Jerry Falwell called for a boycott. An adaptation of the work by Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis, the film centered on Jesus' desire to be human, to marry and be a husband and father. Jesus envisions the family life he would experience if he were not destined to become the Messiah. It is Judas (Harvey Keitel) who dissuades him from this and tells him he must follow the mission of the Father. The bloodied Jesus (Willem Dafoe) dies upon the cross, fulfilling his Father's wish.

In a more contemporary version of the Passion narrative, Denys Arcand's "Jesus of Montreal" (1989) depicts a group of committed actors who follow a charismatic leader as they prepare to perform a Passion play. At the heart of the drama is Jesus' words to Pilate, which can be taken in both a human and spiritual way: "Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friends."

"Arcand reinterprets Christianity with agnostic wit," Brian D. Johnson wrote in Maclean's magazine. "Although the director penetrates to the heart of the Gospel, his hero remains a secular savior." And now Gibson steps onto the stage. His "Passion," based in part on the writings of Anne Catherine Emmerich, an 18th-century Benedictine nun, presents a literal -- and bloody -- interpretation of the last 12 hours of Jesus' life. Unlike Pasolini, but similar to Stevens and DeMille, Gibson pulls out all the stops in an epic drama whose purpose is to shock and provoke.

Gibson belongs to the Traditionalist Catholic movement, which rejects the Vatican II reforms. His film was to have included a scene in which the high priest Caiaphas utters the blood curse against the Jews and their descendants, an interpretation rejected totally by the Second Vatican Council. Under intense pressure from critics, the filmmaker eventually cut the scene. In interviews, Gibson staves off the critics by insisting that his film is true to Passion narratives. He states that it simply shows the violence involved with crucifixion.

His assertions are no doubt in earnest, but it's difficult not to wonder if now is the right moment to make such a film. There may be a time for everything under heaven, but after four decades of building more open and accepting Christian-Jewish relations, is this the film we need? At a time of spiritual turmoil in the churches, Gibson thinks it is the right moment to engage others around the Passion of Christ. Time alone will tell.