By: Laura Moreno
Jesus of Nazareth (1977) directed by Franco Zeffirelli, and The Gospel of St. Matthew (1964) directed by Pier Pasolini are both masterpieces. Critics tend to prefer Pasolini’s sensitive, artistic black and white film shot in the Basilicata region of Italy with local non-actors (including Pasolini’s own mother as the older Mary). The public, on the other hand, opts for Zeffirelli’s film with its all-star cast of highly skilled actors, shot in Tunisia and Morocco.
The two very different men, although both gay, focus on different aspects of the story of Jesus, producing films that are complimentary.
Franco Zeffirelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth” (1977)
Zeffirelli’s Jesus (Robert Powell) is serene, divine, and deeply human. Powell’s Zen-like eyes in particular make him striking in the role. Drawn from all four Gospels, the film adds dramatic scenes not found in Scripture. The 6-hour made-for-TV miniseries is lavish and emotionally rich, in line with the multi-million dollar productions Zeffirelli directed at the Metropolitan Opera and globally.
While filming the Last Supper scene, Zeffirelli recalled a feeling of “absolute silence and deep spirituality in the room, while outside, a sandstorm raged,” an experience that invigorated his own faith.
He was the illegitimate son of a member of a prominent noble family who refused to acknowledge him, and was raised by his Florentine mother and her English expatriate cousins in Italy, who taught him perfect English.
Appointed as a member of the Italian Senate by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in 1994, Zeffirelli served for two years in Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party.
His mentor was acclaimed film director Luchino Visconti.
Director: Franco Zeffirelli Starring: Robert Powell, Olivia Hussey, Anne Bancroft, Sir Laurence Olivier, Anthony Quinn, Christopher Plummer, James Earl Jones, Peter Ustinov, Ernest Borgnine, Claudia Cardinale
Pier Pasolini’s “The Gospel of St. Matthew” (1964)
Pasolini’s Jesus (Enrique Irazoqui) is a fiery revolutionary who challenges authority and champions the oppressed. Dialogue is taken verbatim from the Book of Matthew. Using all non-actors in his films was important to Pasolini as a way to strip away all Hollywood artifice. Pasolini, an atheist/Marxist, earned high praise from Christians of all traditions including the Vatican for the film’s artistically profound and spiritually contemplative approach. Notably, it has a bold soundtrack that includes a range of styles from Bach to blues.
On his own spiritual evolution, Pasolini wrote, “I discovered first of all that there is an old latent religious streak in my poetry. I remember lines of poetry I wrote when I was 18 or 19 years old, and they were of a religious nature. I realized, too, that much of my Marxism has a foundation that is irrational and mystical and religious.”
At age 19, he published his first poetry book and became an acclaimed poet. At age 27, Pasolini was charged with “corruption of minors and acts of an obscene nature.” The minors were teenage male hustlers he had befriended; the parents of the boys refused to press charges. Pasolini was never detained, and all charges were dropped. But he lost his teaching job, was publicly vilified, and he and his mother fled the small town for Rome.
Ever the outsider, it was a formative experience that made him very mindful of society’s two sides of the same warped coin: the normalization of injustice against outcasts, and the sexual hypocrisy of so-called respectable men.
In Rome, Pasolini and his mother lived in extreme poverty in a shantytown on the city’s periphery. He had grown up with a father who was a military officer and his mother taught in a Catholic school, so this was his first brush with poverty. Pasolini decided to view his new life as an anthropologist would—the result was his first major novel, “Boys of Life” (Ragazzi di vita, 1955). The book’s obscene language and depiction of thieves got it banned and all copies ordered burned.
In 1975, Pasolini appears to have been assassinated on the beach at Ostia. A vocal critic of the Italian establishment, politics and consumerism, the murder may’ve been related to his last film “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.” Set in 1944 in the final days of Italy’s fascist Nazi puppet state known as the Republic of Salò, the brutal film is a scathing critique of corrupt authoritarian regimes that commit crimes against their own people.
He learned filmmaking from the best, having worked on “Nights of Calabria” (1957) and “La Vita Dolce” (1960) with Federico Fellini.
Director: Pier Pasolini Starring: Enrique Irazoqui (a 19-year old Spanish economics student), Margherita Caruso, Susanna Pasolini, (Pasolini’s mother), Enrico Maria Salerno, Rodolfo Valente, and Marcello Morante (Pasolini’s brother-in-law) as Joseph.
Both films are available for free on YouTube.com