The Greatest Story Ever Told

* out of ****

Trivia note: In addition to Jesus, Max Von Sydow has also played Satan and an exorcist. By my calcuatlion, this makes him the only actor to have cast himself out of someone in his own name.

The Greatest Story Ever Told has a very honest title. Unfortunately, it's the only honest thing about the movie. Indeed, the life of Christ could be the greatest, most controversial, and most historically significant story every told in the history of mankind. I also have no doubt that had the life of Christ been told in the gospels in the same manner that it is told here, Jesus would have been just another obscure prophet buried deep within the history books. The Greatest Story Ever Told is a film from the DeMille school of Hollywood, only it doesn't have a clue how to successfully employ the epic with the DeMille's touch. The movie is all about spectacle. It is obsessed with every camera angle looking big-budgeted. It parades its all-star cast around to the point that it might as well shine their names above them once they enter into the scene. This is not the story of Christ. This is the story of Hollywood's attempt to exploit the gospels for the sake of making money and looking good.

The Greatest Story Ever Told claims to be the definite version of Christ, and this seems to be the general consensus among most film historians, who are quick to group it with The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur as another all-star Biblical spectacle. In actuality, it is one of three of Hollywood's attempts to turn the story of Christ into a big-budgeted, biblical epic. The first was the 1927, Cecil B. DeMille-directed King of Kings, unseen by me, and the second was its subsequent 1961 remake of the same name. That film was certainly silly, but it was at least sincere. Greatest Story's commercial motivations are so apparent that they are the only elements that leave any impact at all.

Yes, all of the basics of Christ's life are here. We have the birth, the baptism by John the Baptist (played by Charlton Heston, as if the character was written well enough that it matters), the teachings, the miracles, the controversy, the trial, the death, and the resurrection. The film takes its time to establish the characters and key events in Christ's life, but not because it is interested in telling a compelling story in a fresh, thorough manner. Rather, Greatest Story takes forever because it is obsessed with making elements of the epic--the sets, the costumes, the extreme shots, and the musical score--as professional as possible.

Consider the raising of Lazarus (and yes, I realized that I used this scene as an example in my review for Jesus of Nazareth, but because it is considered Jesus' most important miracle, it is important to note different filmmakers' approaches to this moment). Jesus walks off of screen towards Lazarus' tomb, and instead of watching the miracle, we are shown the reactions to the people standing around. Suddenly, choral music begins to loudly play, and we are given long, extensive shots of disciples and followers of Christ running all over town, shouting that Jesus is the messiah because of the miracle that he just performed. This montage of disciples running and screaming while the music swells drags on for several minutes, and because we have yet to see the raising of Lazarus ourselves, we can't remember what these people are yelling about, or why the music is so loud. The movie is so focused on the “Drama” of the payoff that it forgets to include the miracle! The whole film proceeds this way, from the birth to the resurrection. Such emphasis is placed on how the movie looks that the filmmakers forget to tell the story.

That's a real pity, because Max von Sydow was the perfect choice to play Jesus. The Greatest Story Ever Told was his first English-speaking film, and he got the part hot off the tails of his Swedish films under director Ingmar Bergman. Those films included classics such as The Seventh Seal and The Virgin Spring, where von Sydow demonstrated the type of authority and dignity that would have made a perfect Son of God. Von Sydow remains one of the greatest actors to grace the screen, but it is impossible to tell in Greatest Story how von Sydow would have played Christ. He is simply not allowed to act and is dwarfed in the Hollywood spectacle of it all.

Besides that, von Sydow was a relative unknown to American audiences at the time the movie was made; thus, the filmmakers undermine him by casting as many famous faces in as many of the bit parts as possible to compensate for his obscurity. Look for Sydney Portier, Telly Savalas, Shelley Winters, John Wayne, Martin Landau, Angela Lansbury, Roddy McDowall, Claude Rains, Donald Pleasence, and many others in roles so insignificant that they seem to have been cast by drawing their characters out of a hat. It is clear that Greatest Story only features these actors to exploit their star power, and therefore, when they pop up dressed up in absurd costumes to mutter their pointless lines and vanish, laughter is solicited more than awe. Perhaps if these actors has been given an opportunity to flesh out their parts and...well...act (such as in Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth) we could forgive their pointless appearances. Instead, they all only succeed in making total fools out of themselves.

I'm not sure why Hollywood felt the need to turn the story of Christ into a film of epic proportions. They seem to forget that an epic does not necessarily mean the style of filming and size of the production, but rather, the size of the ideas in the story itself, and the life of Christ had enough of that without studio intervention. Read the gospels carefully, and you will find that the life of Christ is a deeply internal story, with Jesus spending much time in prayer and personal reflection as he teaches humility and love. His message is profound and radical, and it speaks for itself. The story certainly doesn't have, nor does it need, the special effects and stirring action of, say, the adventures of Moses or Samson. Pity that Hollywood felt the need to invent them for their version of Christ.

Click here to to learn about the many cinematic faces of Christ.

Cast:
Max von Sydow: Jesus Christ
And many, many, many, many, many others.

MGM presents a George Stevens Production. Directed by George Stevens (with unbilled work by David Lean and Jean Negulesco. Written by Stevens and James Lee Barrett. Rated G (fine for kids, but they'll probably find it very boring). Running time: 260 minutes. Original United States theatrical release date: February 15, 1965.