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Not just a great story...
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They NEVER should have cast Pat Boone, Shelley Winters, or...JOHN WAYNE in cameos! Talk about unintentional comedy!
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They NEVER should have cast Pat Boone, Shelley Winters, or...JOHN WAYNE in cameos! Talk about unintentional comedy!
One wonders why George Stevens bothered to make this film. The greatest bomb?
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At least, the inspiration for one of the most interesting books on film music - "Hollywood Holyland", by Ken Darby. Essential reading!
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Maximum Jesus
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So reverent you yawn. Went to this with my mother, back in 1965, who described it as "static," and commented on the "Medieval" look of the compositions.
And the laughable "Spot the Stars" approach stops the whole thing dead in its tracks. I actually heard audience members around me laugh when Shelley Winters cries out, "I'm cured!," as some leper healed in a crowd. So dumb, because you don't think about Christ healing a leper; instead you think, "What's Shelley Winters doing here?" Pat Boone in the tomb was bad enough, but the worst example was the full, Cinerama close-up of John Wayne's face, filling the screen, intoning, "And this must be the Son of God!" right after the moment Christ dies. Totally killed the moment.
Critics howled, and Stevens, who had a reputation for re-cutting his films, removed the close-up, and replaced it with a medium shot of Wayne, almost in silhouette, standing on a rock outcrop, but with the same soundtrack. The sound of his voice was still startling, but the jarring close-up of his face was gone. (I know about this, since I saw both shots in different versions of the roadshow. I think I must have seen this movie in roadshow about 5 times.)
What holds up is Max Von Sydow, whose portrayal is so unlike anything seen before. No blue-eyed, auburn-haired Jeffrey Hunter here, with those immaculate shaven armpits. Somebody mentioned somewhere that Sydow never blinks, and it may be true; he certainly has an intensity about him that carries the whole film, and it works.
And, of course, there's Alfred Newman's score. At times, like the film, it seems just interminable, but at other times simply sublime. Newman creates a spare sound, which soars when it needs to. Like the film, it also has its "static" moments, but is structurally supportive of the entire enterprise, and lingers in the mind long after. (Ken Darby's "Hollywood Holyland" is a comprehensive account, not only of how he and Newman progressed with creating the score, including Stevens' notorious excision of Newman's "Hallelujah" choruses, but also chronicling the chaotic production of this epic, shot in a desert area that was later flooded, due to dam construction. Eerie, to realize that Steven's sets may still linger, somewhere beneath the waters of Lake Meade.)
And, for all that, I still want to see Steven's longer cut, which I understand runs about 4 hrs. As I noted above, Stevens continued to tinker with the length, and I saw at least 3 different versions in theaters. Apparently, it was stated at one point that MGM had found the 4-hour version, and planned to release it to video, but that still hasn't happened.
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