Jesus of Nazareth (1977)

Directed by Franco Zeffirelli

In the discussion for our Word of the Week, prodigal, I brought up a scene from today’s Film of the Week, Jesus of Nazareth. If you remember, it’s when Jesus is having supper at the house of Matthew, the tax collector, and that’s presented as a scandal not only for those Pharisees who hated Jesus, but for the apostles too, especially Peter, who detests Matthew. It was the principle the Jews hated, not the onerousness of the tax, because, as I mentioned, the Romans, able administrators as they were, knew that they could never hope to hold their mighty empire together if the taxes they laid on their subject peoples were too heavy. Instead they used a combination of canny governance, modest taxation, public works, and terrifying cruelty when they deemed it necessary, to make people Roman first, and whatever else they were, second. You see, I guess, why that could not possibly work with Jews, for whom God is to be all in all. In any case, in Jesus of Nazareth, the writers Anthony Burgess (yes, the novelist, composer, and linguist) and Suso Cecchi d’Amico decided to set the parable of the Prodigal Son at Matthew’s feast. That’s where Jesus (Robert Powell) tells the story, and it so obviously applies to everyone there, it seems as if their whole world has vanished and they are left with nothing but a kind of sorrow for which you would trade all earthly delights. But it also applies to Peter (James Farentino), who is lurking outside the door, so that when Jesus gets to the part about the older brother’s reaction, he turns to Peter, and we see how utterly the righteous need the grace of God, along with the unrighteous. It is a brilliant stroke.

Jesus of Nazareth is full of such scenes. Zeffirelli was a master of cinematic precision; let me try to explain what I mean by that. His sets in Jesus of Nazareth are a feast of color, and the music of Maurice Jarre is unforgettable (Jarre won three Oscars and was nominated for five others; you may remember “Lara’s Theme” from Doctor Zhivago, as the song “Somewhere, My Love”). But Zeffirelli never allows the cinematography, the music, the staging, or the acting to run away with the meaning of the moment, a meaning that is intensely human and profoundly theological. Of course, nobody can act the part of Jesus, and that’s why Biblical epics mostly avoided even trying, till that unwritten law was broken by Jeffrey Hunter in King of Kings (1961) and Max Von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1966). I find those performances disappointing. How could I not? But Robert Powell, as directed by Zeffirelli, understood that what he said with his eyes — an unearthly blue, and he seldom blinks — and his hands and his words of truth would have to carry the whole weight; anything that would reduce Jesus to a character would fall flat.

He was assisted in this by the theological meaning of the scenes, one after another. See for example the quiet brilliance of the moment when the blind man at the pool in Jerusalem suddenly has his world filled with light; and then Jarre’s theme surges again, and we know, without having to be told about it, that there is nothing chipper or happy-go-lucky about this wonder. It will demand a decision from all who witness it: you cannot un-see the miracle without putting out the eyes of your soul. When the centurion (Ernest Borgnine) appeals to Jesus to heal his servant, he is desperate, but also somehow desperately confident — he has, we might say, put all his life on the line, and there is no going back. When, one dark and quiet evening, Jesus appeals to Judas (Ian McShane), at a moment we can well imagine though it is not recorded in the Gospels, and begs to open his heart, we see the hapless apostle as it were trembling on the verge of salvation. But he looks down and turns aside. It is as if Judas had said, “Let there be night.”

Biblical epics are often full of stars in cameo roles, as if the producer had smuggled them in, so that he could say, “Look who we have here!” Jesus of Nazareth is and is not like that. I mean that there are plenty of first-rank actors and actors, but they are all subordinate to the film — and they give many a tremendous performance. Rod Steiger, playing Pontius Pilate, took his role so deeply to heart, I’ve heard that it changed his life. Olivia Hussey as Mary is eternally youthful, physically slight, pure, and unshakably strong. Anne Bancroft’s Mary Magdalene is not somebody I’d like to fall afoul of. Christopher Plummer is perfect as the weak-willed, oily, intelligent, and debauched Herod Antipas. Borgnine, Farentino, Ian Holm, James Mason, Laurence Olivier, Anthony Quinn, Peter Ustinov, Ralph Richardson — all splendid. It is as if, for this film, they all forgot that they ever had any egos to stroke. Somehow it seems that the faith of the director Zeffirelli, not to mention in many cases their own faith, had silenced the ego, so that they all could say, as John the Baptist said of Jesus, “He must increase, and I must decrease.”

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