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Five Things
It'll only cost $3 to attend Thursday night's screening of Nicholas Ray's King of Kings at the American Cinematheque. Much of this 1961 Samuel Bronston epic is either pompous or tedious -- some of it is painful -- but I'd attend anyway if they would present a 70mm print of it, which of course they're not. Burn me once with a slightly frayed 35mm print of Ben-Hur, shame on them. Burn me twice, shame on me.
The casting of the 37 year-old Siobhan McKenna (37 going on 52) as Mary, mother of Jesus, is ludicrous -- a solemn earthy Irish woman straight out of Sean O'Casey and James Joyce with her clearly lined face, alabaster Irish complexion and faintly suppressed Dublin accent.
There are nonetheless five worthwhile things about this film: (a) Miklos Rosza's score, particularly the overture; (b) Ron Randell's performance as Lucius, the thoughtful, morally conflicted Centurion; (b) Jeffrey Hunter's lead performance during the last third; (d) the shots that show perfect focus in both the foreground and background (which was pretty amazing during a time in which films would commonly rack focus to catch the foreground or background, but never both); and (e) the eloquent narration by Ray Bradbury.
Bradbury is going to show up before the show and talk about his work on the film.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on July 8, 2008 at 3:23 PM
comment #1
Edward
says ...
It tries so hard to be earnest and even in '61 I thought a white blue-eyed Jesus was a stretch.
Posted by Edward
at July 8, 2008 5:02 PM
comment #2
Mgmax
says ...
I like any part of this that isn't Jesus talking, but they were clearly afraid of actually making him a character with recognizable emotions, so it's a movie about a mannequin with no human attributes who talks in famous speeches from the Bible. Poor Jeffrey Hunter, it's not his fault, but there's a blank spot in the middle of the screen, like the ball of light playing Mohammed in that Anthony Quinn movie.
Posted by Mgmax
at July 8, 2008 5:09 PM
comment #3
Carl LaFong
says ...
(f) the Sermon on the Mount sequence is beautifully realized, though I do miss the "blessed are the cheesemakers" bit.
And you're right, Ron Randall is exceptional in the film, everything that Burton SHOULD have been in THE ROBE. Did the guy ever do anything else noteworthy?
Posted by Carl LaFong
at July 8, 2008 5:17 PM
comment #4
Mgmax
says ...
Randell (it's actually with an E) seems to have been one of those hard-luck guys who worked steady but never broke through. He was the last guy to play Bulldog Drummond in that series' final B-movie days, did a lot of TV in the 60s, and (I just learned from the IMDB) bizarrely turned up in both Russ Meyer's The Seven Minutes (his would-be respectable film, which bombed) and Fassbinder's Whity (!). Evidently he had a better later career on stage, and largely focused on that in the 70s and 80s.
Posted by Mgmax
at July 8, 2008 5:30 PM
comment #5
Edward
says ...
Makes me want to watch The Life of Brian
Posted by Edward
at July 8, 2008 7:06 PM
comment #6
Doug Pratt
says ...
You left out the whole Salome sequence! Ray's movie is the most Old Testament-ish New Testament movie ever
Posted by Doug Pratt
at July 8, 2008 7:21 PM
comment #7
BurmaShave
says ...
Anybody ever think about James Dean playing Jesus if he'd lived, and how fucking crazy that would have been?
Posted by BurmaShave
at July 8, 2008 11:02 PM
comment #8
Mgmax
says ...
Would have been tough since Jesus didn't have back pockets to stick his hands in.
Posted by Mgmax
at July 9, 2008 5:42 AM
comment #9
Rich S.
says ...
I can never look at this movie without being reminded of Harlan Ellison's description of Frank Herbert's Dune: "King of Kings with sandworms."
Posted by Rich S.
at July 9, 2008 7:06 AM
comment #10
Mgmax
says ...
Which is dead-on, considering that it caught on with the audience that had grown up on all those 50s Biblical epics; it's just an LSD-generation update, much as Lord of the Rings is World War II with elves and the Wicked Witch of the West.
Posted by Mgmax
at July 9, 2008 7:33 AM
comment #11
Edward
says ...
I somehow missed the Wicked Witch of the West in LOTR.
Posted by Edward
at July 9, 2008 9:08 AM
comment #12
Arizona Joe
says ...
Films like this call to mind what Joseph Campbell said, "It's a metaphor. No one really knows who Jesus was."
Posted by Arizona Joe
at July 9, 2008 10:21 AM
comment #13
gruver1
says ...
Wells to Arizona Joe: I know who Jesus was. He was really and truly something like the guy played by Willem Dafoe in The Last Temptation of Christ, and a little bit like the guy who played him in Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew. I don't think, however, he looked like Jeffrey Hunter -- baby blue eyes, handsome football-hero jaw, straight nose, light brown hair with golden highlights, good pedicure, etc. Or behaved like him even.
Posted by gruver1
at July 9, 2008 10:44 AM
comment #14
nemo
says ...
"... there's a blank spot in the middle of the screen, like the ball of light playing Mohammed in that Anthony Quinn movie."
I thought I was the only non-Muslim who ever heard of that movie, much less seen it.
Jesus sure looks like he's thinking about cruising down to the drive-in for a Coke and a cheeseburger.
I've never seen this. Robert Ryan as John the Baptist and Rip Torn as Judas Iscariot sounds like some pretty good casting, though.
Posted by nemo
at July 9, 2008 11:01 AM
comment #15
George Prager
says ...
Read Dwight MacDonald's essay on biblical epics if you really want a laugh.
Posted by George Prager
at July 9, 2008 11:28 AM
comment #16
Mgmax
says ...
"I somehow missed the Wicked Witch of the West in LOTR."
You missed the evil wizard in a pointy Art Deco castle who melts away when someone tosses a ring into lava?
Did you also miss the talking trees? How about the childlike innocent who leaves his/her rural home to go on a quest down a road through many lands, with strange creatures, but comes to realize there's no place like the Shire?
Posted by Mgmax
at July 9, 2008 11:34 AM
comment #17
martindale
says ...
Rosza's score for the film was terrific!
What separates this film from other "Jesus" movies, though, is its emphasis on the political situation of the era.
Posted by martindale
at July 9, 2008 2:22 PM
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