Pasolini’s 1964 cinematic presentation of the Gospel according the Matthew (Il vangelio secundo Matteo) has to be one of the best made. Pasolini, an atheist with nostalgia for belief (his words), supposedly decided to direct the Gospel of Matthew after reading it to kill time while waiting for crowds to die down who gathered to see Pope John XXIII.
Because the film exclusively uses dialogue from the Gospel (and some of Matthew’s quotations from the Old Testament Prophets), the pace is slow and contemplative. Only in Jesus’ longer monologues are words brought to the forefront where they flash excitedly past in the rhetorical tones of actor Enrique Irazoqui’s Italian, or on the trembling English subtitles below, which can’t quite seem to keep up. Jesus’ railing against the Pharisees is especially effective for this reason, although the sermon on the mount does not live up to its literary qualities.
But Pasolini makes up for the restrictions on the dialogue by allowing headshots of the characters to carry the drama. These innumerable faces, so simple and subtle, often of elderly woman blinking in the hot Palestinian light or of rugged men with stone-faced curiosity, offer the necessary insight and novelty into the Gospel’s literary material. One of the best examples can be found in the opening scene which presents a serious looking Mary whose dark, young eyes look with concern and confidence.
Mary
The next shot features, in great contrast, a pathetic looking Joseph whose slight frown and steadfast eyes indicate a hurt and tacitly angry man. Mary looks down with ambiguous submission to God’s will; Joseph is further hurt and now embarrassed without an explanation; he awkwardly leaves down a ruined path through the dry terrain. Not once does he look back as Mary sadly watches him. After Joseph gets his explanation from an androgynous looking angel in the nearby village, he returns and the scene ends with a relived, almost teary Joseph, who comforted by the modest, but genuine, smile of Mary that not only welcomes him, but also seems to affirm her confidence in the God’s providence.
Pasolini also knows how to control the narrative’s development. While many of the Gospel’s episodes do not have the same kind of dramatic potential that Pasolini has read into the marital tensions between Joseph and Mary, a good portion of Matthew simply needs to be enacted to be interesting. The depiction of the slaughter of the innocents is terrifying in its ruthlessness; John the Baptist is as frenzy-eyed and convicted as those he baptizes; the instantaneous healing of a deformed man is perfectly performed by a simple editing trick and a joyous blast of music; and of course the crucifixion, as the climax of the Gospel’s narrative, is not over-done, but remains as consistently subtle as the rest of the film. There are some scenes, however, that do fall a bit flat. The temptation in the desert is disappointingly bland, mainly because Satan looks too colloquial (although the diabolical figure blurred by the heat on the horizon does make an interesting comparison to Jesus walking on water); and the feeding of the five thousand is confusingly portrayed as empty baskets that turn into full baskets (here the editing trick does not work as well).
Satan walking on sand
Jesus walking on water
Although much of the movie is silent, Pasolini’s choice and use of music is ingenious. Classical, blues, and folk are all employed appropriately and effectively. Odette’s “Motherless Child”, which is sung while John the Baptist slowly pours single handfuls of water on the heads of his followers, is heart-wrenchingly beautiful. But the real musical gems are the sudden explosions of the Missa Luba, a version of the mass sung in tradition Congolese folk style, that almost make the audience jump up in exaltation at a healing miracle or, in its most effective moment, the resurrection.
Naturally, Pasolini’s interpretation of the Gospel is slanted towards social justice. The Pharisees come across as tyrannically wielding religion over their decrepit subjects. Jesus is as much the destroyer of religious hegemony as he is the saviour of the poor. The subaltern figures say no words—their faces alone express their deep misery, and each wretch seems silently sceptical of the manifestation of a God who has been silent for so long. But it is because of this slant towards or emphasis on social justice that makes Pasolini’s rendition of the Gospel of Matthew the best yet. There is no joking Jesus who can’t resist splashing his disciples with water to show them (and the audience) that he is as human as the rest of us. And there is no banally prophetic Jesus crafting furniture of the future before a short-sighted Mary who, with painfully obvious irony, proclaims its unlikelihood of “catching on”. Pasolini’s Gospel of Matthew is presented as Matthew tells it, and therein is its success.
With any luck, this will be the first of a series on Pasolini.
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