La vie du Christ

This 1906 film is an epic for its time, although nowadays it will seem stunted. Bear in mind that 1906 was very very early in the film era. From that time there are few films of note. "A Trip to the Moon" (1902) from Georges Melies and "The Great Train Robbery" (1903) from Edwin Porter are the exceptions. A little later William S Hart made "Ben Hur" (1907) and D.W.Griffith made "In Old California" (1910), but it wasn't until "Birth of a Nation" (1915) that we have something of similar scope.

The film is a series of brief plays, with a single camera recording the action from medium to long shots. If you didn't know the story it would be hard to follow, but who doesn't know the story?

The film will be of interest to film scholars as an early epic. Otherwise there isn't much to recommend it. That being said, for 1906 it is very impressive.

You have to give this film credit for having been made in 1906, and it seems to me it was one of the earliest epics, predating D.W. Griffith by almost a decade in big productions. Director Alice Guy-Blaché had beautiful sets crafted, a very large cast, and delivered some nice special effects via double exposures. By far the most impressive shot is when the dead Christ rises from the sepulcher, done apparently by slowly dropping the camera on the superimposed image, with an effect that is ethereal and miraculous. The indoor stage scenes feature pretty arches and action over a wide area (and depth of field), and the outdoor scenes of Christ carrying the cross include a panning shot.

Unfortunately, despite all of these notable achievements, the film was not very interesting to me. With a single exception, the entire story is told with long shots, which severely limits the actors and feeling the emotions of the moment. It's as if we're in the 30th row at the theater and looking at a stage play, one with no dialogue or intertitle equivalents, and a static view. The selected 25 scenes from Christ's life are introduced and rather dryly marched past us one by one, each taking about a minute. And even worse, the chosen scenes miss the most profound and moving aspects of Christ's teachings, e.g. the Sermon on the Mount, his advocating pacifism and nonviolence, his views on forgiveness, loving one's enemies, and fighting for the poor. This is the meat of the story of Christ, and instead we're given the bare bones of events, which seems to me to be missing the point entirely. This would have been much better had some of that been included, but instead it takes the safe, dogmatic path, which is where I was most disappointed. Guy-Blaché was not simply the first woman director, she was an innovative pioneer, so for film historians it wouldn't be a bad idea to check this one out though.

This silent film from 1906 is one of the earliest films about Jesus Christ (although it isn't THE FIRST, which would be "The Passion Play" from 1903), whose possibly the most well known figure of all mankind.

Whether you're particularly religious or not matter, because any work of cinema this old is at least somewhat interesting, and it's amazing seeing how well made this film is when you consider the fact that it was made 110 years ago! There's actual extras, sets, and multiple sequences, rather than just being a couple seconds of a man drinking a glass of water. It's probably the highest scale film of the 1900's (other than "A Trip to the Moon" and "The Great Train Robbery", two more popular and, somewhat, superior films), and it is really amazing how successful they were able to tell this story.

The film is also pretty dramatic and emotional for its time, showing how cruel the death of Christ really was (but it doesn't go nearly as in depth as, say, "The Passion of Christ").

Anybody with a strong interest of the history of silent and classic cinema should really take a look, because it truly is amazing.

This passion play came on the heels of (and shouldn't be confused with) Pathé's 1903 "La vie et la passion de Jésus Christ," which is also available on the web and DVD and lasts over 40 minutes, which was an extraordinary length for the time. Soon after this Gaumont Jesus picture, Pathé produced yet another such film itself. From nearly the beginning of cinema as a commercial medium, multi-tableaux passion plays were filmed. In France, a filmmaker named Léar made 12 scenes on Christ in 1897. The Lumiére Company made a 13-scene version sometime around 1897 to 1898. American productions based on the Horitz and Oberammergau performances were also being made early on. Alice Guy, the director-producer of this one had already made another passion film in 1899 for Gaumont.

Gaumont's "La vie du Christ" is especially interesting to compare to the available 1903 Pathé film. At about 33 minutes and 25 tableaux, this one isn't quite as long as Pathé's, which lasts over 40 minutes and 35 tableaux. The significant difference, however, is in their approaches to the subject, or style. The Pathé film was very much centered in the tradition of Georges Méliès and his féeries (fairy films), with its décor, fairy/angel characters, and an emphasis on the attraction of trick effects and color. Gaumont's film also includes such angels, but is more naturalistic (especially in set design), as well as biblical--being based on the watercolor, or gouache, illustrations of James Tissot's Bible, as opposed to the Francophone fairy tale rendered by Pathé. Both adopt the tableaux style, with title cards describing proceeding shot-scenes.

While Guy's version appears more distant--the long shots are from very far away in some scenes, these compositions tend to be elaborately layered and with our focus drawn to the central positioning of certain characters. Figures also variously enter and exit scenes horizontally and vertically, which somewhat alleviates the staginess. There is remarkable staging in depth in some scenes. Additionally, there are a few pans and trick effects (substitution splices and superimpositions). There's one cut-in medium close-up shot for Saint Veronica. There are even a few shots which come close to being reverse-angle takes (one when Pilate washes his hands, another leading up to crucifixion, and another for the cave in the resurrection scene). It's hardly enough to prevent this from being overly theatrical. A telling number is that there are only 28 shots in this 25-scene movie, so there's very little in the way of scene dissection, but Guy directed within those scenes well for some starkly lit, deep stagings, elaborate sets for the day, and naturalistic acting. Transitions aren't bad for then, either, between exteriors and interiors--even for supposed-outdoor scenes filmed inside a set.

As for the plot, there, of course, have to be selections and cuts made in the adaptation, to fit the biblical tale into 25 scenes. Here, Guy made some interesting decisions. As historian Richard Abel ("The Cine Goes to Town") has pointed out, Christ's miracles are whittled down to three here, and the chosen all involve women. Furthermore, women help Jesus with the cross when he stumbles, rather than Simon, and women also play an atypically prominent role in other scenes. It's interesting to see the passion play receive a woman's hand, for once, not only on screen via angels and devoted followers, but also behind the scenes.

We're at 1906 now and once again in France for another of Alice Guy's works. Here, she's trying to depict the life of Jesus Christ from birth to resurrection after death. So the thing is divided into segments throughout his life. The camera is stationary for each segment with the exception of when it goes on location on some hills when it moves from one part of a terrain to another. There are also some neat dissolves involving angels, dreams, and the last scene. There were no intertitle cards but if you know the story of Jesus you should have no trouble understanding what's going on even though there's nothing that I would consider violent being depicted considering what happens during the narrative. This was mostly interesting stuff to watch so on that note, I recommend The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ for anyone interested in movie history.