The Gospel According to St. Matthew (film) Italian biographical drama film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew (film)
| The Gospel According to Matthew | |
|---|---|
Original Italian release poster
| |
| Directed by | Pier Paolo Pasolini |
| Produced by | Alfredo Bini |
| Written by | Pier Paolo Pasolini |
| Based on | Gospel of Matthew |
| Starring | Enrique Irazoqui |
| Music by | Luis Enríquez Bacalov Uncredited: Carlo Rustichelli |
| Cinematography | Tonino Delli Colli |
| Edited by | Nino Baragli |
Production
company |
Arco Film
Lux Compagnie Cinématographique de France |
| Distributed by | Titanus Distribuzione |
Release date
|
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Running time
| 137 minutes[1] |
| Country | Italy France |
| Language | Italian |
The Gospel According to Matthew (Italian: Il vangelo secondo Matteo) is a 1964 Italian biographical drama film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It is a cinematic rendition of the story of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of Saint Matthew, from the Nativity through the Resurrection. In 2015, the Vatican City newspaper L'Osservatore Romano called it the best film on Christ ever made.[2]
The dialogue is taken directly from the Gospel of Matthew, as Pasolini felt that "images could never reach the poetic heights of the text."[3] He reportedly chose Matthew's Gospel over the others because he had decided that "John was too mystical, Mark too vulgar, and Luke too sentimental."[4]
Contents
Plot[edit]
In Galilee during the Roman Empire, Jesus of Nazareth travels around the country with his disciples, healing the blind, raising the dead, exorcising demons and proclaiming the arrival of the Kingdom of God and the salvation of Israel. He claims to be the Son of God and so, therefore, the prophesied Messiah of Israel, which brings him into direct confrontation with the Jewish temple leaders. He is arrested, handed over to the Romans and charged with sedition against the Roman state of which he is declared innocent by the Roman governor of Palestine, but is, nevertheless, still crucified at the behest of the Temple leaders anyway. He rises from the dead after three days.
Cast[edit]
- Enrique Irazoqui as Christ
- Enrico Maria Salerno as Christ's voice
- Margherita Caruso as Mary (younger)
- Susanna Pasolini as older Mary
- Marcello Morante as Joseph
- Gianni Bonagura as Joseph's voice
- Mario Socrate as John the Baptist
- Pino Locchi as John's voice
- Settimio Di Porto as Peter
- Alfonso Gatto as Andrew
- Luigi Barbini as James
- Giacomo Morante as John
- Giorgio Agamben as Phillip
- Guido Cerretani as Bartholomew
- Rosario Migale as Thomas
- Ferruccio Nuzzo as Matthew
- Marcello Galdini as James, son of Alphaeus
- Elio Spaziani as Thaddaeus
- Enzo Siciliano as Simon
- Otello Sestili as Judas Iscariot
- Rodolfo Wilcock as Caiaphas
- Alessandro Clerici as Pontius Pilate
- Amerigo Bevilacqua as Herod the Great
- Francesco Leonetti as Herod Antipas
- Franca Cupane as Herodias
- Paola Tedesco as Salome
- Rossana Di Rocco as Angel of the Lord
- Renato Terra as Possessed one
- Eliseo Boschi as Joseph of Arimathea
- Natalia Ginzburg as Mary of Bethany
- Ninetto Davoli (uncredited) as a shepherd
- Umberto Bevilacqua (uncredited) as a soldier
Production[edit]
Background and pre-production[edit]
In 1963, the figure of Christ appeared in Pier Paolo Pasolini's short film La ricotta, included in the omnibus film RoGoPaG, which led to controversy and a jail sentence for the allegedly blasphemous and obscene content in the film.[5] According to Barth David Schwartz's book Pasolini Requiem (1992), the impetus for the film took place in 1962. Pasolini had accepted Pope John XXIII’s invitation for a new dialogue with non-Catholic artists, and subsequently visited the town of Assisi to attend a seminar at a Franciscan monastery there. The papal visit caused traffic jams in the town, leaving Pasolini confined to his hotel room; there, he came across a copy of the New Testament. Pasolini read all four Gospels straight through, and he claimed that adapting a film from one of them "threw in the shade all the other ideas for work I had in my head."[6] Unlike previous cinematic depictions of Jesus' life, Pasolini's film does not embellish the biblical account with any literary or dramatic inventions, nor does it present an amalgam of the four Gospels (subsequent films which would adhere as closely as possible to one Gospel account are 1979's Jesus, based on the Gospel of Luke, and 2003's The Gospel of John). Pasolini stated that he decided to "remake the Gospel by analogy" and the film's sparse dialogue all comes directly from the Bible.[7]
Given Pasolini's well-known reputation as an atheist, a homosexual, and a Marxist, the reverential nature of the film came as a surprise, especially after the controversy of La ricotta. At a press conference in 1966, Pasolini was asked why he, an unbeliever, had made a film which dealt with religious themes; his response was, "If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief."[8] Therefore, he sets his criticism against a backdrop of sheer religious concern, for the role assumed by the Church, the organization, for centuries.[9]
On the idea of analogy, Pasolini emphasized his intention of not reproducing exactly a historic, casual Christ, but projecting the present-day society of southern Italy onto that figure, a Christ after 2,000 years of narrative build-up. As he explained,
The film was dedicated to John XXIII.[11] The announcement at the opening credits reads that it is "dedicato alla cara, lieta, familiare memoria di Giovanni XXIII" ("dedicated to the dear, joyous, familiar memory of Pope John XXIII"). Pasolini was particularly critical with the new Pope Paul VI (1963), at a moment when he was drafting a storyboard for a follow-up to the film, this time on Saint Paul. The project due for 1966-1967 never took off, but it was advanced.[12]
Filming and style[edit]
Pasolini employed some of the techniques of Italian neorealism in the making of his film. Most of the actors he hired were non-professionals. Enrique Irazoqui (Jesus) was a 19-year-old economics student from Spain and a communist activist, while the rest of the cast were mainly locals from Barile, Matera, and Massafra, where the film was shot (Pasolini visited the Holy Land but found the locations unsuitable and "commercialized").[13] Pasolini cast his own mother, Susanna, as the elderly mother of Jesus. The cast also included noted intellectuals such as writers Enzo Siciliano and Alfonso Gatto, poets Natalia Ginzburg and Rodolfo Wilcock, and philosopher Giorgio Agamben. In addition to the original biblical source, Pasolini used references to "2,000 years of Christian painting and sculptures" throughout the film. The look of the characters is also eclectic and, in some cases, anachronistic, resembling artistic depictions of different eras (the costumes of the Roman soldiers and the Pharisees, for example, are influenced by Renaissance art, whereas Jesus' appearance has been likened to that in Byzantine art as well as the work of Expressionist artist Georges Rouault).[7] Pasolini later described the film as "the life of Christ plus 2,000 years of storytelling about the life of Christ."[14]
Pasolini described his experience filming The Gospel According to Matthew as very different from his previous films. He stated that while his shooting style on his previous film Accattone was "reverential," when his shooting style was applied to a biblical source it "came out rhetorical. ... And then when I was shooting the baptism scene near Viterbo I threw over all my technical preconceptions. I started using the zoom, I used new camera movements, new frames which were not reverential, but almost documentary [combining] an almost classical severity with the moments that are almost Godardian, for example in the two trials of Christ shot like 'cinema verite.' ... The Point is that ... I, a non-believer, was telling the story through the eyes of a believer. The mixture at the narrative level produced the mixture stylistically."[7]
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