A Filmmaker's Review: "The Gospel of St. Matthew" (1964)

I absolutely adored this film and it wasn’t, as you probably think, for the religious message behind it. Instead, it was this realist and dramatic, almost melodramatic, film about the like of Jesus Christ according to St. Matthew’s gospel. It is an amazing film that kind of makes you think about the production of film during the 1960s. If you know me, you’ll probably know that I love hidden gems from the days of the mid-20th century and I love watching low-budget golden age cinematic experiences such as the silent films that are from the 20s and 30s and this film, though in colour and with sound, is no exception. Now, if you remember this film at all, you would know that it is the Vatican’s favourite film about Jesus Christ and is often, by filmmakers, called one of the greatest films of world cinema. In world cinema, it is a brilliant and an amazing experience to watch. I watched the restored version and really, I was shocked that it was so good. From the very beginning, from the very first shot to the very end and the final shot, this film has been meticulously crafted not only to show us the life of Jesus Christ but also to show us the progression of world cinema in the 1960s.

It is a brilliant film from the beginning as I have already said. I’m not going to lie, the first shot in the film makes Mary look like a Renaissance painting. I loved this actress. She was subtle and her facial expressions/reactions were always appropriate to the situation. She was never over the top and she was never too much or too melodramatic because she was part of the first act. The film still needed to build up and so, she was subdued slightly and looked like she understood why her body language needed to be that way. She was incredibly Marian and honestly, this was exactly how I pictured her given all the painting that have been made of her. She is a solitary spirit and walks with an air of knowing, if that makes sense. It was acted amazingly and she was probably the highlight of the first act of the film.

The atmospheres of silence were absolutely compelling. There were moments in the film that had no music, no speech and no sound except the whispering of the wind going by and this really made all of the difference. It pushed the film into the melodrama territory and thus, the film was lifted by its own sense of sound and silence towards an even higher genre. It gathered these silences unto the best parts of the film, including the annunciation scene and build ups towards more recognisable biblical scenes. The way in which this worked perfectly was by showing and focusing on facial expressions of characters involved and during the first act, there is honestly a larger amount of this around due to the fact that the Marian themes suggested so because of her (actress who portrayed Mary) acting being this quiet, introverted spirit of a woman.

The war scene completely flipped this on its head. A loud and raucous scene in which children are shown harmed and hurt was graphic to the point that I don’t understand how this came out before the 1970s relaxation of cinematic laws on aesthetic uses of violence. There is a great amount of war graphics and the way in which it is filmed through the long shot and the tracking shots is just brilliant, especially for the lower budget that it had. I was not only surprised but it made a good juxtaposition between characters of good and characters of bad.

All in all, I was surprised by watching this film because I thought it was just going to be another low-budget movie that has no real grounding in cinematic history. But when I watched it and read about the film’s legacy I was shocked at how good it was and how developed it was in world cinema. This is really a marker for Italian Cinema and would be one of the films you would need to watch to learn about international cinema and the development of cinema in Europe.