Peter Costello
At a recent press conference Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, speaking about the Vatican’s Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (as discussed last week in these pages), went out of his way to remind the reporters of the international arts press that it is 60 years since Pier Paulo Pasolini launched at the same venue his film Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (otherwise The Gospel According to Matthew) on September 4 at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. It was later awarded Catholic prizes as well and was shown at the Vatican Council.
Matthew
In this context, the Cardinal recalled that Chapter 25 of St Matthew’s Gospel, which begins, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat…”, remains “one of the most commented biblical texts by Pope Francis” throughout his pontificate.
The following year, as I recall, I saw the film in a university context in the USA. Shot in monochrome, which added to the starkness of the landscape standing in for Palestine in the time of Jesus, it also used non-professional actors in the tradition of the Italian neorealism that had developed since the fall of fascism in 1944.
The man of the Right presents a bloodstained fictional drama, the man of the Left the actual message Jesus expounded”
It was perhaps the last great achievement of that school of film making. With a mobile, often hand-held camera in cinéma vérité style, it had a sense of urgency that carried the viewer forward at a hectic pace.
The presentation of The Sermon on the Mount, as the central teachings of Jesus, I found thrilling and uplifting.
The Jesus of the film is a Jesus of the rural roads, impoverished villages and ordinary life; they cast people with lived in faces, scared by life and disease.
What a contrast this is to something like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004), which cannot escape all the insincerity of Hollywood, despite its intense presentation of suffering.
But the script suffered from a complicated mixture of visionary, legendary and traditional matter with the genuine Gospel text.
In contrast Pasolini presents, with powerful directness, in the very words of the Gospel, the teaching of Jesus. The man of the Right presents a bloodstained fictional drama, the man of the Left the actual message Jesus expounded.
Pasolini
Pasolini is now dead, as is his lead actor, in later life a professor of literature and a chess expert, but the film is still shown and admired. There is a universal critical view that it represents one of the most important films ever made.
(It is available on DVD; but avoid the later colourised version, which vulgarises the total sense of reality that Pasolini achieved; and also the American film with nearly the same title whose values also belong to Hollywood.)
In the anniversary year I understand that there are plans for The Gospel According to Matthew to be rereleased; certainly in the Vatican of today there is renewed enthusiasm for the film, as the warm remarks of Cardinal Mendonça clearly demonstrate.
The Jesus of the film is a Jesus of the rural roads, impoverished villages and ordinary life; they cast people with lived in faces, scared by life and disease”