The Gospel According to St. Matthew () is a 1964 epic biblical drama film, written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It is a cinematic rendition of the story of Jesus according to the Gospel of Matthew, from the Nativity through the Resurrection.
In the neorealist tradition, the film employed a cast of mostly amateur actors, and was filmed entirely on-location throughout Southern Italy. The dialogue is taken directly from the Gospel of Matthew, as Pasolini felt that "images could never reach the poetic heights of the text." He reportedly chose Matthew's Gospel over the others because he felt "John was too mystical, Mark too vulgar, and Luke too sentimental."
The Gospel According to St. Matthew premiered on 4 September 1964 at the 25th Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and three Nastro d'Argento Awards, including Best Director. It was nominated for three Oscars—Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design and Best Score. In 2015, the Vatican City newspaper L'Osservatore Romano called it the best film on Christ ever made. The film is considered a classic of world cinema and the neorealist genre.
Plot Note: The film lacks a conventional narrator, and assumes (or at least benefits from) familiarity with the story of Christ.
In Roman Galilee, the local Jewish community lives in poverty. Although the Romans are formally in charge, the Jewish upper class—including King Herod and the Pharisee religious elite—dominates the locals on a day-to-day basis.
The pregnant Mary has a troubled relationship with Joseph, who worries she cheated on him. Joseph reconciles with Mary after an angel tells him that God caused Mary's pregnancy. After Mary bears Jesus Christ, the magi visit the baby Jesus. The angel tells the family to flee to Egypt. Herod—who fears a prophecy that Jesus will become king of the Jews—brutally massacres the region's infants. The family return to Judea after Herod dies.
Many years later, John the Baptist preaches a brazenly anti-establishment message to the commoners of Galilee. Jesus visits John to be baptized, and God appears to them. Satan offers Jesus wealth and power, but Jesus declines.
Jesus recruits a band of disciples. He warns them that "I came not to bring peace, but a sword" and that they will suffer on his behalf. He travels around the country with his disciples, healing the blind, raising the dead, exorcising demons, and proclaiming the arrival of the Kingdom of God and the promised salvation. The film rapidly canvasses his parables and sayings, including the Sermon on the Mount, in a series of montaged monologues. Meanwhile, the new king imprisons John the Baptist before capriciously executing him to impress his stepdaughter.
Jesus is generally uncomfortable showing his divine power in public (with the exception of the miracle of the loaves and fishes). He prefers to preach radical messages to working-class crowds and children. The wealthy are alienated by Jesus's socially conscious teachings, the religious elite are threatened by his contempt for their legalism and hypocrisy, and even commoners are concerned with his asceticism. Matthew is wounded when Jesus chooses Peter over him to lead the church, but accepts Jesus's decision.
Although the public—which wants to see the supernatural—initially ignores Jesus, he attracts a large following and triumphantly enters Jerusalem to cheering crowds. The Roman army is called in for crowd control and beats several followers of Jesus.
After Jesus claims to be the Jews's prophesied Messiah, the chief priests plot to murder him. Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus after Jesus scolds him in front of the other disciples. During the Agony in the Garden, Jesus accepts his fate, which he has long known. The chief priests organize a mob to arrest Jesus. The apostles rise to defend him, but Jesus insists on surrendering peacefully. The chief priests hand Jesus over to the Romans. Fearing a similar fate, Peter denies Jesus three times. After escaping, he breaks down crying. Judas commits suicide after realizing even the priests are disgusted by his treachery.
The Roman governor, Pilate, declares Jesus innocent but executes him anyway to placate the chief priests. Mary buries her son. After three days, Jesus rises from the dead and instructs his disciples to spread the gospel throughout the world.
Cast
Enrique Irazoqui as Jesus Margherita Caruso as Mary, mother of Jesus Susanna Pasolini as older Mary Marcello Morante as Joseph Mario Socrate as John the Baptist Settimio Di Porto as Peter Alfonso Gatto as Andrew Luigi Barbini as James Giacomo Morante as John Giorgio Agamben as Philip Guido Cerretani as Bartholomew Rosario Migale as Thomas Ferruccio Nuzzo as Matthew Marcello Galdini as James, son of Alphaeus Elio Spaziani as Jude Enzo Siciliano as Simon Otello Sestili as Judas Iscariot Rodolfo Wilcock as Caiaphas Alessandro Tasca as Pontius Pilate Amerigo Bevilacqua as Herod the Great Francesco Leonetti as Herod Antipas Franca Cupane as Herodias Paola Tedesco as Salome Rossana Di Rocco as Angel of the Lord Renato Terra as Legion Eliseo Boschi as Joseph of Arimathea Natalia Ginzburg as Mary of Bethany Silvio Citti as Stephaton Ninetto Davoli as a shepherd
Production
Background According to Barth David Schwartz's book Pasolini Requiem (1992), the impetus for the film took place in 1962. Pasolini had accepted Pope John XXIII's invitation for a new dialogue with non-Catholic artists, and subsequently visited the town of Assisi to attend a seminar at a Franciscan monastery there. The papal visit caused traffic jams in the town, leaving Pasolini confined to his hotel room; there, he came across a copy of the New Testament. Pasolini read all four Gospels straight through, and he claimed that adapting a film from one of them "threw in the shade all the other ideas for work I had in my head." He said that he decided to "remake the Gospel by analogy".Wakeman. pp. 746.
Pasolini had the idea to not reproduce exactly a historic, casual Christ, but rather projecting the present-day society of southern Italy onto that figure, a Christ after 2,000 years of narrative build-up. As he explained,
Along with this method of reconstruction by analogy, we find the idea of myth and epics [...] so when narrating the history of Christ, I did not reconstruct Christ such as he actually was. If I had reconstructed Christ's history as it actually was, I would not have made a religious film, since I am not a believer. I do not think Christ was God's son. I would have made a positivist or Marxist reconstruction if any, so at the best of cases, a life of one of the five or six thousands saints preaching at that moment in Palestine. However, I did not want to do that, I am not interested in profanations: that is just a fashion I loathe, it is petit bourgeois. I want to consecrate things again, because that is possible, I want to re-mythologize them. I did not want to reconstruct the life of Christ as it really was, I wanted to make the history of Christ plus two thousand years of Christian storytelling about the life of Christ, since it is the two thousands years of Christian history that have mythologized this biography, one that as such would have been virtually insignificant otherwise. My film is the life of Christ after two thousands years of stories on the life of Christ. That is what I had in mind.
The film was dedicated to John XXIII. The announcement at the opening credits reads that it is "dedicato alla cara, lieta, familiare memoria di Giovanni XXIII" ("dedicated to the dear, joyous, familiar memory of Pope John XXIII"). Pasolini was particularly critical with the new Pope Paul VI (1963), at a moment when he was drafting a storyboard for a follow-up to the film, this time on Paul the Apostle. The project due for 1966–1967 never took off, but it was advanced.On the new draft film, he went as follows: "The film is an extremely violent action against the Church and the Vatican, since I put together a double-sided Paul, i.e. schizophrenic, clearly dislocated into two: one is a saint [...] while the other is a priest, an ex-Pharisaic, one that retrieves his former cultural status and founds the Church. Hence my condemnation; as a mystic he is fine, it is a mystical experience like any other, respectable, I am not judging that, but I do condemn him firmly as the founder of the Church, with all the negative elements inherent to it: sexophobia, anti-Feminism, the organization, the collects, triumphalism, moralism. To sum up, all the things that have made the Church a bad thing." See Martellini, L. 2006, p. 119.
The film was co-produced by Arco Films and French company Lux Compagnie Cinématographique.
Motives and blasphemy prosecution During the pre-production process, Pasolini attracted controversy when the figure of Christ appeared in his short film La ricotta, part of the omnibus film RoGoPaG. Pasolini was prosecuted and convicted of attacking the state religion (Catholicism was the sole state religion of Italy until 1984).Wakeman. John. World Film Directors, Volume 2. The H. W. Wilson Company. 1988. pp. 746. He received a suspended prison sentence. Nonetheless, he continued making the Matthew film. Pasolini was well-known for being an atheist, a homosexual, and a Marxist. It has been speculated that the real motive for his prosecution may have been to preemptively discredit him in front of Catholic audiences, in case The Gospel proved to be iconoclastic. Due to the controversy, Pasolini strengthened the disclaimer at the start of La ricotta, saying that he believed the Passion of Christ was "the greatest [story] that ever took place."
At a press conference in 1966, Pasolini was asked why he, an unbeliever, had made a film which dealt with religious themes. He responded that "If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief." Therefore, he sets his criticism against a backdrop of sheer religious concern for the role assumed by the Church, the organization, for centuries.
Casting In Italian neorealist style, most of the actors Pasolini hired were non-professionals. Enrique Irazoqui (Jesus) was a 19-year-old economics student from Spain and a communist activist who met Pasolini through Elsa Morante. Irazoqui initially did not want to play the role for ideological reasons, but was convinced by Morante and a local leftist writer named , who told him to play a "Gramscian" Christ. Irazoqui donated his entire acting salary to anti-Franco causes, and was targeted by the Falangist government upon his return to Spain for his participation in the film.
For the young Mary, Pasolini hired 14-year-old Margherita Caruso. He was looking for a woman who looked "naturally 'of the people'/commoner as they say; like thousands you see, with their faded clothes ... destined to be nothing but living humility." For the elderly Mary, Pasolini cast his own mother, Susanna, who had herself lost a son (Pasolini's brother, a resistance fighter during World War II).
The rest of the cast were mainly locals from Barile, Matera, and Massafra, where the film was shot. The cast also included noted intellectuals such as writers Enzo Siciliano, Alfonso Gatto, and Natalia Ginzburg, poet Rodolfo Wilcock, and philosopher Giorgio Agamben.
Much of the dialogue was overdubbed by professional voice actors in post-production. For example, Irazoqui was dubbed by stage and screen actor Enrico Maria Salerno.
Filming