When it comes to depicting the King of kings on celluloid, a recent book, Jesus of Hollywood by Adele Reinhartz, gives film-makers a failing grade.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus Christ is the most popular historical subject of the movies, going all the way back to the beginning of motion pictures with an 1898 silent film, The Passion Play at Oberammergau, and up to Mel Gibson’s bloody The Passion of the Christ in 2004. In the intervening 106 years, Jesus “biopics” have come to the screen with variable frequency and even more variable regard for the events recorded in the canonical Gospels, and what might be reasonably assumed in the gaps left by the Gospels.
In her new book, Jesus of Hollywood, Canadian academic Adele Reinhartz says that although Jesus has been popular with Hollywood, he is almost never depicted with accuracy. When asked directly, she said, “In their desire to be either iconoclastic or pious, the films fail to portray a Jesus who is truly compelling. They make it difficult to understand why Jesus would have been such a compelling figure in his own lifetime, and why people should continue to find him so, many centuries later.”

Professor Reinhartz is associate vice-president for research at the University of Ottawa, and a professor in the classics and religious studies department. She has a previous book, Scripture on the Silver Screen (2003), and numerous magazine pieces and lectures on the topic.

Bringing Jesus to the Big Screen
Reinhartz says it is a rule of the biopic that its subject be someone who, at the end of the movie, has achieved an evident and epochal change in the society or situation in which he or she has lived. In purely historical terms, at the end of his earthly ministry, Christ hadn’t done this. “Causality” is essential in these films-the subject did or said something to cause the historic events that followed. In the time frame usually covered by films about Christ, that didn’t happen. He was crucified, his followers had betrayed him or scattered, and the Jews were still under Roman rule.

The epochal change he wrought became evident only in the decades and centuries following his death and resurrection. Thus, in movie terms, Reinhartz argues, his earthly life story can never be brought to the screen satisfactorily.

To give a faux authenticity to their films, some directors have used the device of a scrolling text or a stentorian voice-over at the beginning of a film (e.g. Orson Welles in Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings, 1961) to assure the audience that what they are about to see is scripturally and historically accurate. It never is, even though the late Pope John Paul II is reputed to have said of Gibson’s film, “It is as it was.” Had he even seen the film? We might never know.

The plight of Palestinian Jews in the first century provides the movie-maker with a classic scenario of political tension-a sullen, conquered people under the heel of the occupying army, in this case Imperial Rome. To be fully successful in Hollywood terms, Jesus would have led an armed revolt against Rome. But that didn’t happen, and some films even go so far as to use his words to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor: “My Kingdom is not of this world.” The perfect denouement is denied the screen writer.

Aiming for Accuracy
The gaps in the Jesus story as told in the Gospels pose narrative problems for filmmakers. For instance, we know little of his childhood. As Adele Reinhartz writes, “The Gospels are silent on his emotional ties, even with his mother or closest followers.” Jesus’ life didn’t consist only of teaching and miracles. What went on during those treks between Galilean villages? In strict literary terms, some character development would have helped. There is little on which to construct a “back story.” It is how those gaps are filled by screenwriters where problems occur. (By comparison, much is known about Mohammed, founder of Islam. Colourful though his life was, he is not the subject of films because Muslims consider it blasphemous to make any image of him.)

The physical representation of Christ has sometimes been almost laughable in its inaccuracy, because Hollywood has been reluctant to represent Jesus for what he was-a Palestinian Jew-likely with the physical features and build of most men of that place at that time in history. The Jesus of teen heart-throb Jeffrey Hunter in the aforementioned King of Kings was perhaps one of the most outrageous, with a Christ figure totally devoid of body hair. A brown-haired, blue-eyed Jesus is pretty much the standard Hollywood casting decision. (Even Mel Gibson digitally altered Jim Caviezel’s blue eyes in the editing stage.)

The Jesus of the screen is often so lacking in human attributes as to be totally unbelievable. Gentle Jesus is the character most often on view, even though the Gospels present a forthright, sometimes angry and confrontational Jesus, who went on a rampage in the temple precinct. According to the New Testament, he was also capable of a verbal thrust and parry with the legalists who tried to trap him into saying something seditious of Roman rule. He was tried and crucified not because he challenged Rome, but because he challenged the hereditary and corrupt leadership of the Jewish temple.

Whether it is veneration for Christ’s divinity or a kind of squeamishness, very few films have given us a “full frontal” Jesus on the cross. Often we see him from behind, or see outstretched arms or hear only his voice. Let’s face it, bringing Christ to the screen is problematic and, some might say, should never be attempted.

Changing With the Times
Also troubling author Adele Reinhartz is an undercurrent of anti-Semitism in these films, particularly during the Passion. This might be nothing more than a reflection of the times in which the movies were made when, in some societies (e.g. the United States and Britain in the 1920s and ’30s), it wasn’t socially taboo to be anti-Semitic. Post-Holocaust a shift can be detected, but even Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was judged anti-Semitic by some and caused much media chatter when it was released. This perceived anti-Jewish stream is strange considering that as long as the Hollywood “studio system” was in place, many studios were headed by Jewish émigrés from central Europe, and many screenwriters were Jewish. (This aspect of Hollywood moviemaking is covered extensively in the film Hollywoodism.)

Overall, Jesus biopics have not made for distinguished cinema, even though several have received critical approval. The 1989 Canadian film Jesus of Montréal by Denys Arcand received the Grand Prize at that year’s Cannes Film Festival, as well as 12 Genies, the Canadian equivalent of the Oscars. Martin Scorsese received a best director Oscar nomination for his controversial 1988 film, The Last Temptation of Christ, but lost to Barry Levinson for Rain Man. Canadian director Norman Jewison’s film of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar was widely appreciated but didn’t garner any prizes. Most of the other films simply weren’t very good, nor did most have pretensions beyond the desire to entertain within the tried and true Hollywood formula for “sand and sandals” epics.

Grounded in Reality
Christians looking for factual information and anything beyond shallow inspiration would be advised to look elsewhere. We live in a time of unprecedented and accessible biblical scholarship. This can help us read between the lines of Scripture, give us a social, religious and political context with which to read the Bible, and make faith something grounded in the gritty reality of the world in which Christ lived. By comparison, most Jesus movies are little better than the average wide-screen western, with metaphoric white hats on the good guys and black hats on the villains.

Palestine was a dusty backwater of the Roman Empire. The soldiers in this unpopular outpost were little better than mercenaries;they certainly weren’t Rome’s elite. The Jewish people were being sold out by their own temple leadership, who were concerned that worship be “by the numbers” and that the Romans be placated. (Jesus threatened this delicate balancing act.) Their royal family was illegitimate in every sense and, while nominally Jewish, kept statues of Roman gods to appease their political masters. They were splendid apostate puppets, while their people shouldered the burden of Rome’s rough justice.

This is the world into which Christ came; it is inferred from the Gospels and can be teased from what we now know of life in Roman Palestine at the time of Christ, most of it gleaned from non-canonical historical sources.

There is no reason to believe that Hollywood’s fascination with Christ has ended, and it is only a matter of time until other films come along. We can only hope that future productions have the courage to represent Christ, his teachings and his world for what we know they were. Meanwhile, Reinhartz’s Jesus of Hollywood provides an engrossing and informative survey of how he has been portrayed since film’s early days.

by Doug Field

Doug Field was the producer-host of “The Connection” audio magazine at www.salvationist.ca, and the weekly Podcast at www.salvationarmy.ca. Jesus of Hollywood by Adele Reinhartz is published by Oxford University Press

by Doug Field
Reprinted from Salvationist, July 2007