The 1964 film The Gospel According to St. Matthew was written and directed by Italian writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini, who was both an atheist and Marxist, told the story of Jesus in a way that truly honored the gospel. The film makes no attempt at making Jesus’ life or death overly dramatic, romanticized, or sensationalized. For Pasolini, the gospel itself is worthy enough as it is. It is a simple film with one goal: to tell the story of Jesus Christ. In The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Jesus is a prophetic teacher who speaks truth to power and rebels against religious authority. Pasolini uses Marxist themes to not only critique the religious authorities of Jesus’ time, but those of his own culture, the Roman Catholic Church. Through The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Pasolini creates a work of art that transcends barriers and creates a dialogue between Christians and non-Christians alike.
Cultural Context
The cinematic style of The Gospel According to St. Matthew was unprecedented for its time. It stood out from other films made about the life of Jesus because it focused on a singular gospel story, the Gospel of Matthew. This was a departure from the established cinematic tradition of portraying Jesus’ life through a mix of all four gospels. This approach can be categorized as Redaction criticism, a method of studying biblical texts that was popular among biblical scholars during the 1960’s. The film has many Italian cultural influences. For example, the Italian artist Piero della Francesca inspired some of the clothing worn by Jewish leaders in the film. Pasolini also said during an interview that although he had intended to write The Gospel According to St. Matthew as true to the gospel text as possible, had been unavoidably influenced by “two thousand years of story-telling about the life of Christ.” It was an acknowledgment that his own interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew was exactly that—another interpretation, not conceived in a vacuum or outside the influence of 2,000 years of cultural and artistic interpretations of the gospel story.
Cinematic Portrayal
The narrative shape of the film is divided into two major sections: Jesus’ public ministry in Galilee, and Jesus’ public ministry in Jerusalem. To transition from one to the other, the film utilizes Jesus’ three passion predictions alongside Peter’s confession. Naturally, it begins with the nativity and ends with the resurrection. The film was shot in black and white in a “neo-realistic” style, similar to that of a documentary film rather than a passion narrative. Because of this, most of the actors used in the film were actually not actors at all, but real people, including locals and Pasolini’s own friends and family members. This included Pasolini’s own mother, who played Mary, the mother of Jesus. The actor Pasolini chose to portray Jesus, Enrique Irazoqui, was not even an actor, but a college student. The film was set in the southern Italian countryside, and visually, from the landscape to Jesus himself, it is seemingly ordinary and unassuming. Jesus looks to be just another face in the crowd, just as he would have appeared during his time on earth. The city of Jerusalem, most notably, was only “a drab city, without walls, clinging to a hillside.” As previously stated, it is never overly dramatic, and at times, seemingly not dramatic enough. Overall, the film is very subtle and subdued. However, this really allows the audience to focus without distraction on what is really most important: Jesus’ teachings. Other visual effects Pasolini used were the many jump-cuts and interchanging close-up and long shots that made certain scenes more dramatic and impactful. For example, the film opens with two close-up shots of Mary and Joseph, and then a long shot that shows that Mary is pregnant. In a pivotal moment in the film, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the camera remains zoomed in almost too close to Jesus’ face.
The music Pasolini chose for the film reflected a variety of different cultures and genres. The film’s score includes a Catholic mass, which is perhaps an expected choice of an Italian filmmaker for music to accompany the life of Christ. However, Pasolini did not choose just any mass. He chose the Congolese “Missa Luba,” scored for African voices accompanied by various rhythmic percussion instruments. The most hauntingly beautiful piece used in the film is Odetta’s African-American spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” which fit well with the film’s often somber tone and made multiple appearances throughout the film. Bach’s masterful and moving “St. Matthew Passion,” a sweeping orchestral and choral piece, completes the score.
Pasolini’s Influences and his Portrayal of Christ
Although Pasolini was an atheist, he did well to honor both the humanity and divinity of Jesus. Despite his own disbelief in the incarnation, Pasolini said his goal was to “re-mythicize” the story of Jesus. “I, a nonbeliever, was telling the story through the eyes of a believer,” he said. The film’s focus is on the life of Christ and his role as a teacher and model. Despite Pasolini’s intention to stay as true to the text of the Gospel of Matthew as possible, he made the curious choice to edit out all of Jesus’ eschatological sermons after they had already been filmed. The Parable of the Sower (Chapter 13) and Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the Temple and signs of the end times (Chapter 24-25) were omitted from the film. He also portrayed Jesus as a “social critic” who spoke truth to power and rebelled against authority. He taught authoritatively, with the fiery oration of a political activist or revolutionary figure. In every way, he was “a man at odds with his social environment.” These thematic choices, much like Pasolini himself, are boldly and overtly Marxist in nature. Pasolini’s Marxism may have made him seem like an “unlikely person” to produce a film about the life of Jesus, or “contrary to what might be expected from a Marxist.” Yet, both Pasolini’s views and Marx’s own views of the relationship between Marxism and Christianity contradict this. Perhaps the most oft-quoted remark that Marx ever made: “[religion] is the opium of the people,” divorced from its context, can be used (or rather, misused) as evidence of Marx’s indictment of religion as a whole. However, his “opium of the people” statement invites a closer look in order to discern its true meaning. As Marx wrote in his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
It is worth noting that Marx himself was a regular user of opium, and he used opium as a pain-reliever for various chronic ailments. Simply referring to religion as “opium” is not, on it’s own, a negative statement on the value of religion. Marx’s view, like Pasolini’s, is far more complex. Marx saw the role of religion in society similarly to the role of opium in his own life. Both relieve suffering, yet neither do much to cure the root cause. He also refers to religion as the “heart of a heartless world” and the “the soul of soulless conditions,” which are overtly positive statements about the role of religion in society. Though, he continues,
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Therefore, Marx’s “opium” comment is not a blanket criticism of religion, but a criticism of religion that calls on human beings to ignore their own material suffering. As such, this kind of religion acts as an instrument of the state, and as a tool of oppression. Marx’s criticism is not unlike the criticism of liberation theologians. Religion, as Marx metaphorically attests, can be both a tool of oppression and a liberating force. Pasolini, when he was being interviewed by a journalist about his screenplay on the life of Saint Paul, echoed this sentiment. He said,
The “opposite of religion is not communism which, despite having taken the secular and positivist spirit from the bourgeois tradition, in the end is very religious); but the “opposite” of religion is capitalism (ruthless, cruel, cynical, purely materialistic, the cause of human beings, cradle of the worship of power, horrendous den of racism…”
The English translator of Pasolini’s screenplay, St.Paul, Elizabeth A. Castelli, elaborated further, saying, “Religion retains for Pasolini the revolutionary power of human solidarity, a bulwark against the materialist noise of bourgeois culture.” Religion becomes a tool of oppression when those with power use it to control the masses by convincing them, among other things, that they should not be advocating for their own liberation. Instead, their hopes for justice are unrealized, set far off in the future in an unknown time, and not in the here and now. Pasolini’s Jesus comes across as “hurried and harried” to spread his teachings and there is a sense of urgency about the way he speaks. Pasolini’s choice to remove all of Jesus’ eschatological sermons “makes Jesus’ message more this-worldly.” The absence of eschatological discourses alongside Jesus’ depiction as a revolutionary figure and social critic certainly make Pasolini’s Jesus stand out among other depictions of Jesus in films made from non-marxist perspectives. For Pasolini, the story of Jesus is about real, tangible hope in both this world and the next.
The Crucifixion Scene
The scene depicting Jesus’ crucifixion is quite short, only a little over a minute and half in length, and it is relatively understated. As he is being nailed to the cross, Jesus cries out when a nail is hammered through his right palm. This is the first and only time in the scene that Jesus’ distress can be heard. He is wearing a crown of thorns and covered from the waist down. He does not appear to be bleeding from anywhere. Apart from where he is nailed to the cross, his wounds are mysteriously absent. Overall, the scene is far more solemn than violent. Compared to the relatively graphic scene of Judas’ suicide by hanging, it is fairly tame. Even the walk to Calvary was depicted as almost unimportant. Jesus is hardly bleeding, and for much of the walk he does not even carry his own cross. However, this fits with the overall tone of the film. Just like the scene of Jesus walking on water, there is not as much drama as perhaps would be expected. As Jesus is being raised up on the cross, he does not appear to be in any pain. His face is stoic and his eyes are fixed upwards towards heaven. As this is happening, the disciples and Mary, Jesus’ mother have made their way up Calvary and are witnessing the crucifixion. The disciples have to physically hold Mary up as she struggles not to collapse from the grief and horror of watching her son being crucified in front of her eyes. She is incredibly distressed, and though her cries are not audible to the audience, her pain is clearly visible on her face. This scene, interestingly, seems to focus on Mary as much as Jesus, if not more. Her sorrow over the death of her beloved son is the true focal point of the scene.
Pasolini places the responsibility of Jesus’ death entirely on the Jewish authorities. Jesus was found guilty of the charge of blasphemy, and his crucifixion is the result of a religious charge, but not a political one. The blame on the religious authorities is a subtle critique of the modern religious authorities in Italy—the Roman Catholic Church. Thematically, the crucifixion is another scene where Jesus is depicted as “a subversive character who undercuts ecclesiastical authority in the modern world.”
The Garden of Gethsemane Scene
When Jesus goes to pray in the garden, he asks Peter, James, and John to come with him and keep watch while he prays. He tells them, “My soul is sorrowful even unto death. Remain here and watch with me.” Interspersed between silence and somber music, there are multiple cuts to Jesus kneeling quietly and sweating from his forehead. By appearance, the sweat appears to be only sweat, but not blood. While he kneels, Jesus is shown with a downcast gaze and eyes hidden, and also with his eyes looking upwards. The dialogue in the scene is taken straight from the gospel. Jesus says, “Father if it is possible let this cup pass away from me. But yet, not as I will, but as thou willest.” Afterwards, he comes out of the garden to find that the disciples are sleeping. He asks if they are not willing to keep watch for even an hour, and that “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” As he departs from them, there appear to be tears running down Jesus’ face. Once he is back in the garden, he kneels down once more and says, “My father, if this cup cannot pass away from me, and I must drink it, then thy will be done.” When a crowd of people, soldiers, and religious authorities make their way to the garden, Jesus runs quickly out to meet them. Judas runs to Jesus, shouting “Master!” but does not betray him with a kiss. Instead, he hides his face in the crook of Jesus’ neck, as if he is both seeking comfort from Jesus and hiding his face in shame. “Oh my friend, on what errand hast thou come?” Jesus asks him, before the scene promptly ends, and he is arrested.
Staying with the neo-realistic theme, the silence in the scene has a profound emotional weight. It is like the silence before a storm, as both Jesus and the audience know that it will soon be disrupted. Jesus’ agony is extremely subtle. As he kneels in the garden, his face is still and stoic. When he speaks to God, it is almost in a whisper. It is as though Jesus is resigned to do God’s will, though his anxiety is palpable in his quiet pleas for the cup to be taken from him.
Conclusion
True to the gospel story, Jesus is resurrected after he is crucified. The same angel that appeared to Joseph at the beginning of the film, portrayed as a young girl, appears at the tomb and announces to the women that Jesus is indeed risen. Jesus in his resurrected form makes an appearance to give his great commission as it is found in Matthew 28, that the disciples should go forth and make disciples of and baptize all the nations. The film ends with Jesus’ words, “I shall be with you always even until the consummation of the world.” Though the film leaned heavily into Jesus’ teachings and his humanity, in the end, his divinity is given its rightful attention. From watching the film, the audience would have no indication whatsoever that Pasolini was a non-believer because he truly told the story of Jesus, to use Pasolini’s own words, “through the eyes of a believer.”
Bibliography
Boer, Roland. Criticism of Earth: On Marxism and Theology. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2013.
Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Saint Paul: A ScreenPlay. trans. Elizabeth A. Castelli. New York: New Left Books, 2014. Kindle.
Pedersen, Esther Oluffa. “Religion is the Opium of the People: An Investigation into the Intellectual Context of Marx’s Critique of Religion,” in History of Political Thought, Vol. 36, No. 2. Imprint Academic Ltd., 2015. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26228603.
Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. trans. A. Jolin and J. O’Malley, ed. J. O’Malley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm.
Tatum, W. Barnes. Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years and Beyond. 109-121. Salem, Oregon: Westar Institute, 2013. EBSCOhost.
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