Although there have been numerous film versions of the life of Christ, ranging from the Hollywood epic King of Kings to the flamboyant Jesus Christ Superstar, Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew is, at the same time, the most beautiful, most accurate, and most spiritual life of Christ yet filmed. Shot in and around Calabria in Italy, Pasolini used a cast of non-professionals (including his mother as Mary), and worked from the text of Matthew. It is the "natural" quality of Pasolini's peasants that immediately strikes us as being authentic. Enrique Irazoqui plays a compelling Christ, his sermons and teachings at once fervent and persuasive. Yet, although Christ takes center stage in the story, it is the periphery of characters and landscapes which surround him that allows us to really see and understand the social and political milieu of his time. Winner of a Special Jury Prize at Venice, nominated for three Academy Awards, and cited Best Foreign Film by the National Board of Review in 1964, Pasolini's masterpiece was also praised by the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures. Ironically, Pasolini was both a Marxist and an atheist. Pasolini's Oedipus Rex, on the other hand, is a dimly conceived and badly executed update of Sophocles' tragic masterpiece. Apparently to show the timelessness of the tale, the film is bookended with present-day sequences, showing the birth and eventual blind wanderings of Oedipus. For those unfamiliar with the tale, the written cue cards interspersed throughout the film (which are a poor substitute for the Greek chorus), are liable to be confusing. Oedipus, exposed at birth, because of an oracle which said that he would marry his mother and murder his father, was rescued by a shepherd from a neighboring city. When, as a young man, he heard the dire prophecy, Oedipus went off in a direction opposite from "home," and unwittingly played out the terrible deeds that were prophesied. By arranging the story chronologically--as opposed to the unfolding of the play--Pasolini destroys the central feature of Sophocles' tragedy: that is, we pity Oedipus, and watch in horror as he maniacally searches after the facts, precisely because we know what he will discover. The Gospel According to St. Matthew is highly recommended (with the standard caveat that some of the subtitles are unreadable). Oedipus Rex is not recommended. (R. Pitman)
The Gospel According to St. Matthew; Oedipus Rex
b&w. 142 min. In Italian w/English subtitles. Water Bearer Films. (1964). $79.95. Not rated Library Journal
The Gospel According to St. Matthew; Oedipus Rex
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