The Gospel According to St. Matthew (film)

Plot

The film assumes the viewer already knows the story of Christ and has no conventional narrator. In Roman Galilee, the Jewish community lives in poverty, dominated day-to-day by the Jewish upper class—King Herod and the Pharisee elite—while the Romans hold formal power. Mary’s pregnancy troubles Joseph, who suspects infidelity until an angel explains God’s role. After Jesus’s birth, the magi visit, and an angel warns the family to flee to Egypt.

Herod, fearing a prophecy that Jesus will become king, orders a massacre of infants. The family returns to Judea after Herod’s death. Years later, John the Baptist preaches an anti-establishment message to commoners. Jesus is baptized by John, God appears, and Jesus rejects Satan’s offers of wealth and power.

Jesus gathers disciples, warning them he brings not peace but a sword, and that they will suffer. He travels healing the blind, raising the dead, exorcising demons, and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. The film rapidly montages his parables and sayings, including the Sermon on the Mount. Meanwhile, the new king imprisons John the Baptist, then capriciously executes him to impress his stepdaughter.

Jesus is uneasy displaying divine power publicly, except for the miracle of loaves and fishes. He prefers preaching radical messages to working-class crowds and children. The wealthy are alienated by his social teachings, the religious elite by his contempt for their legalism, and commoners by his asceticism. Matthew is hurt when Jesus chooses Peter to lead the church, but accepts it.

Though initially ignored, Jesus attracts a large following and enters Jerusalem to cheers. The Roman army is called in for crowd control and beats several followers.

Production

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 visited Assisi to attend a seminar at a Franciscan monastery. A papal visit caused traffic jams, confining Pasolini to his hotel room, where he found a copy of the New Testament. He read all four Gospels and claimed that adapting a film from one of them threw in the shade all other ideas for work he had.

He decided to remake the Gospel by analogy. Pasolini did not want to reconstruct Christ as he actually was, since he did not think Christ was God's son; instead, he wanted to re-mythologize the story, projecting the present-day society of southern Italy onto the figure of Christ after two thousand years of Christian storytelling. The film was dedicated to John XXIII, with an opening credit reading 'dedicated to the dear, joyous, familiar memory of Pope John XXIII'.

Pasolini was critical of the new Pope Paul VI, and a follow-up project on Paul the Apostle, due for 1966–1967, never took off.

Style

Unlike previous cinematic depictions of Jesus' life, Pasolini's film does not embellish the biblical account with literary or dramatic inventions, nor does it present an amalgam of the four Gospels. Every word of dialogue is drawn from the Gospel of Matthew, but not every scene or inference is from Matthew; for example, the detail that Mary was present at the Crucifixion is drawn from John. Pasolini also focuses on scenes to which Matthew gives limited attention, such as the massacre of the innocents.

The film deletes 592 of Matthew's 1070 verses and rearranges scenes at least seventeen times. Pasolini omits Matthew's genealogy of Jesus, the eschatological material in chapters 24 and 25, sixteen of Jesus' nineteen parables, and fifteen of his eighteen miracles. The result strips Jesus of his otherworldly status and situates him as an inhabitant of the present material world. The film employs many techniques of Italian neorealism, giving it a lack of awed formality and soft-focus sentiment that sets it apart from Hollywood Bible studies.

Due to its minimalist style and lack of narration, one must either already know the story or have a sharp eye for visual storytelling to fully understand everything.

Reception

The film received mostly positive reviews from critics, including several Christian critics. Philip French called it a noble film, and Alexander Walker said it grips the historical and psychological imagination like no other religious film he had seen. Some left-wing film critics wrote unfavorable reviews; Oswald Stack criticized its abject concessions to reactionary ideology. Pasolini admitted there were some horrible moments he was ashamed of, such as the miracle of the loaves and fishes and Christ walking on water, which he called disgusting pietism.

He stated the film was a reaction against the conformity of Marxism, as the mystery of life and death and religion are questions Marxists do not want to consider. Jean-Paul Sartre reportedly told Pasolini that Christ is not yet rehabilitated by Marxists.

Noted admirers include directors Andrei Tarkovsky, who called it genius, and Martin Scorsese, who instructed the cast and crew of The Last Temptation of Christ to view it. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 92% based on 36 reviews. At its Venice premiere, a crowd gathered to boo Pasolini but cheered him after the film was over.

Did You Know?

• The 2007 Region 1 DVD release from Legend Films features a colourised, English-dubbed version that is roughly 40 minutes shorter than the standard version.
• Pasolini chose Matthew's Gospel over the others because he felt John was too mystical, Mark too vulgar, and Luke too sentimental.
• The film was ranked number 10 in 2010 and number 7 in 2011 on the Arts and Faith website's Top 100 Films.