Relating his facts in straight-on documentary fashion, Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1964 Biblical film stars Enrique Irazoqui as Jesus. In it, Christ and his followers are depicted as gentle radicals working against the grain of the unjust Roman power structure. Typically offbeat Pasolini touches include having Satan disguise himself as a Catholic priest and the casting of the director's own mother as the Virgin Mary. The music is selected from a variety of sources, from Bach to American spirituals. Il
Vangelo Secondo Matteo was released in the U.S. as The Gospel According to St. Matthew -- much to the discomfort of Pasolini, who didn't want Matthew designated as a saint. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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.
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.
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 most beautiful gospel film i have seen...made by an openly gay communist and dedicated to the pope. amazing faces!
November 2, 2008
Stella Dallas
Super Reviewer
The controversial Pier Paolo Pasolini retells the life of Jesus Christ in a much more honest way than many of the "socially accepted" filmmakers who tried to do the same. Told in neorrealist key, without embellishment nor grandiloquence, and that's where the beauty and the greatness of the film comes, from its natural
feel and simplicity.
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