La vie et la passion de Jésus Christ

Life and Passion of Christ, The (1903)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent telling of the story of Jesus from his birth up to the resurrection. This early French feature is full of wonderful imagination and the use of color is a real added bonus. The visual are all very nice and the set decoration is among the best I've seen in any silent film of its era. The biggest problem is that the feature runs just over 40-minutes and it seems like a bunch of short films edited together. There's really no consistent storytelling but instead just various segments from the Bible.

From the Manger to the Cross (1912)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Early Warner Bros. film is the typical telling of Jesus, as the title says, from the manger to the cross. This is a really boring, dull and pointless telling of the story but I guess the studio wanted to make a feature and stretched everything to the limit. The film uses quotes from the New Testament but this gets tiresome very quickly as well. The film was shot on location all around the world and from a historic standpoint, this here is interesting but the rest of the film isn't.

Few people, I think, appreciate how the bible has been reinvented in the last century. Until this very film, what we had were words, stories in words. For centuries, those written stories were illustrated in static icons and symbols complex and simple. With this film, we began a new era, where religion is cinematic. American Fundamental Christianity and Indian neoHinduism are currently in the lead, nearly completely transformed by the moving icon and the ghostly eye. Prayer has literally been redefined and no amount of thumping will restore the imagination as a personal relationship with God again. Not one with an INNER eye.

Its why the Fundamentalist Film School down the road from me at Pat Robertson's empire is so interesting. They change the thing by bearing witness, in a sort of quantum effect.

It all started here, but you won't find much to indicate so. What we have with this first instance are two things. First is the implicit proposal that as "the greatest story," it deserved the greatest, fullest, longest treatment.

The second is the interesting stuff. This is literally closer to moving stained glass than films of today. Its quite beautifully painted if you see it that way. Its staged as tableaux, with little movement and none from the camera which is at eye level. There are "miraculous" appearances and disappearances, which is how the filmmakers would have seen the promise of film. The much noted fades are harder to notice. I'll take the historian's word that these French fellows invented the fade. It is remarkable how they worked it though with the color. Because you see the color fade, so they must have painted before optically splicing. Its a mystery to me.

I'll just take it on faith.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

It is its first view. to be an useful testimony about the early cinema. in same measure, it is a great movie. for technique, for the accuracy of story, for the science to present, în 43 minutes, in clear and precise manner, the history of Salvation. and the colors and "the special effects" are more than impressive.for the trust in viewer. a lesson of cinema and one of the trips in the past , with its sensitivity and vision and ambition of a complex work who remains impressive and moving.

This film must rank as one of the most important of its time, even though it doesn't occupy the same place in the public consciousness as other early landmarks such as Melies' Voyage to the Moon and Porter's The Great Train Robbery. At 44 minutes long it is one (if not the) earliest example of a near-feature length film, even though it was often sold as individual scenes so that many audiences in 1903 never actually got to see the film in its entirety the way we do today. The use of stencil colouring is effective and enlivens what otherwise becomes a rather dull series of tableaux from the life of Jesus, all filmed with a static camera that captures the 'exaggerated gesture' school of acting that was considered outdated long before the age of the silent movie was over.

With the invention of a new medium of narrative and communication, it was inevitable that the story of "the life and passion of Christ" (the film's original title) would immediately attract the attention of those seeking to dabble in the nascent enterprise. This primitive artifact is of historical value not for being the very first film to deal with these events but because it was later considered to be the first feature-length film ever released...despite the fact that, running just under 45 minutes, it isn't one technically and besides, it was originally shown in segments in serial-like fashion!

What I find more important, however, is the fact that for the next few years after its making, rather than setting up newer and more elaborate productions, it was being exploited by exhibitors by getting re-edited and distributed under various aliases. The version I watched, subdivided into virtually split-second re-enactments of the most famous incidents in Christ's life on Earth, was predictably bland on a technical and artistic level with the usual drawbacks of overly emphatic acting and stagey movement. What to say, then, about the extremely hirsute and curiously chubby actor chosen to portray the all-important central role?

Even so, it proved pleasant enough to watch given the sheer ingenuity (hand coloring specific objects, like angels' wings or soldiers' robes, for added effect) utilized to straightforwardly convey familiar material for mass consumption. Occasionally there was also the odd sparkle of inventiveness, with the angel literally obfuscating the Holy Family from Herod's pursuing soldiers in the land of Egypt. Also, I have to say the print was in much better shape than a century-old footage has any right to be. Divine intervention, perhaps?