A defiantly earthy anti-epic, Pasolini's Gospel is a period piece in costume only, placing its rather scruffy, contemporary-looking Christ in the steep southern Italian hills of Calabria.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1965)
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Reviews Counted:27
Fresh:25
Rotten:2
Average Rating:8.4/10
Runtime: 2 hrs 22 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: Christ's life is presented with respect for the traditional religious doctrine of the Church, but Pasolini's trademark naturalism "humanizes" his subject and makes him his own. The... Christ's life is presented with respect for the traditional religious doctrine of the Church, but Pasolini's trademark naturalism "humanizes" his subject and makes him his own. The documentary-style camera captures Christ's meetings with the men who were to become his disciples, the Last Supper, the betrayal by Judas, and the Crucifixion. The impassioned music of Bach, Mozart, and Prokofiev lends a further aura of spiritual intensity to the proceedings. [More]
Starring: Enrique Irazoque, Susanna Pasolini, Mario Socrate, Marcello Morante
Starring: Enrique Irazoque, Susanna Pasolini, Mario Socrate, Marcello Morante, Margherita Caruso
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Screenwriter: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Producer: Alfredo Bini
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Reviews for The Gospel According to St. Matthew
Beautifully retells a spiritual story without resorting to the overbearing piousness that makes most American Bible films such well-intentioned slogs.
Seen as a Catholic-Marxist statement at the time, nearly 40 years on, Pasolini's cinematic accomplishment still impresses.
Pier Paolo Pasolini benefited from the very austerity that underlies the particular and at the same time universal center of this film.
Pasolini uses a complex but seemingly stark and simple visual style, and he evokes wonderful performances from nonprofessionals Enrique Irazoqui, Margherita Caruso, and Marcello Morante.
This highly political interpretation of the passion is as scandalous in its own way as Mel Gibson's but more poetic, more contemporary in its impact, and more serious in its overall morality.
A quirky version of Matthew's story, one that was closer in accord with fundamentalist beliefs than Marxist tenets.
It's Jesus Christ's greatest hits in this Pasolini classic, a scrappy and odd adaptation of, as the title suggests, the Book of Matthew.
The consequence is a crescendo of excitement and involvement with the fervor and passion of Jesus and an accumulating sense of the irony and tragedy of Jesus' suffering, in historical as well as spiritual terms.
Its most enduring achievement is an ironic one, given Pasolini's Marxism: No other life-of-Christ film is so contemplative.
Tells the life of Christ as if a documentarian on a low budget had been following him from birth.
Latest News for The Gospel According to St. Matthew
November 30, 2006:
Critical Consensus: "Nativity" Is Too Safe; "Turistas" Not Worth Trip
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February 01, 2006:
SUNDANCE: "Son of Man" Review
Be it Pasolini's "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" or your church's nativity pageant, the malleability of locale is one of the key factors in the widespread appeal... More...
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