Word: passionate
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...Just between the few of us, I'm written out on the Gibson movie. I did a review in the magazine ("The Goriest Story Ever Told"), which was maybe the only mixed review the film got. And I wrote about some of the attacks on Gibson and his "Passion" ("Holy Hypocrisies") on this web site. In the day since that was posted, I've received more than 150 e-mails, the vast majority of them with subject headings like "Thank you," "Well put," "Bravo," Kudos," "Amen, brother," "Loved the article!" and "wow." Most of the notes cheered me for pointing...
...film, though, has a strange, stately calm, an antidramatic tone that the melodramatic music tries to vivify. The Passion scenes (about 40 mins. of the 2hr.40min. film) lack wallop, especially in comparison to the hammer-on-nail-through-flesh-into wood impact of the Gibson film. The raising of Jesus' cross, a big moment in any Gospel film, is shown from above - a God- or pigeon's-eye view of the crucifixion. Count on the pictorials to keep you awake; watching the movie is like having someone thumb, slooooowly, through a book of religious art history. The film's last...
...Like Gibson, but 92 years before him, Olcott uses a blue filter for the Holy Thursday night scenes in Gethsemane. The Passion section, which consumes the last 14 minutes, has no more juice than the rest of the film. Back then, of course, directors didn't have access to the fake-blood squibs and other effects of today's gore artists. (The blood Mel used was fake, wasn't it?) Remember, too, that in 1912 film was in its infancy; that D.W. Griffith and others were still creating the medium's visual vocabulary and sentence structure; and that, for most...
...1hr.52min. edition distributed by Kino International, 48 mins. are devoted to the Passion and Resurrection. As Clarens notes, the De Mille signatures of gigantic sets (a 30-ft. eagle statue in Pilate's chambers) and special effects (in the earthquake a man grabs at a rock that breaks off and carries him to a crashing death) take a back seat to the hallowed story and processional pace. H.B. Warner's Jesus is in the gaunt El Greco mode; the scenes are essentially brisk illustrations of the Gospels. Nearly all the dialogue and narrative intertitles are from the Gospels. The exceptions...
...Thus, in the 28-minute Passion segment of "Il Vangelo," does Jesus stride to his death, across the same countryside (Matera, in Puglia, near the heel of the Italian boot) where Gibson shot much of his film. And the mob rushes after him. One screams: "His blood be on our children!" This is the phrase, implicitly condemning Jews for the murder of Christ, that Gibson said he removed from his film. (Turned out, he removed only the subtitle for the Aramaic translation of the curse.) We leave for another day the debate over whether a film is anti-Jewish...