Word: zeffirelli
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Next week the classical Christ-on-celluloid comes back full force in Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth, created not for the movies but for television. For sheer spectacle and expense ($18 million), nothing like it, religious or otherwise, has ever been attempted on TV. The two-part film will fill three hours of prime time on NBC on both Palm Sunday and Easter,* and it is well worth viewing. Director Zeffirelli, an Italian and a Roman Catholic, has brought to the project a rare combination of religious sensitivity and film expertise (Romeo and Juliet, The Taming...
John the Baptist had some difficult days. So did-on a modest scale-Michael York, who plays the prophet's role in Franco Zeffirelli's The Life of Jesus. "We shot the prison scenes in a real dungeon in a castle in Tunisia," recalls York. "I spent the day actually chained to the wall. It wasn't hard to feel the part." For his final scene at King Herod's banquet, of course, York could appear only in the form of an elaborately made-up piece of sculpture, which enabled him to observe...
Strehler, 55, is one of Europe's best-known stage directors, a co-founder with Paolo Grassi of Milan's prestigious Piccolo Teatro. But, unlike his countrymen Franco Zeffirelli and the late Luchino Visconti, he has not yet worked in movies, and so is almost unknown in the U.S. A native of Trieste, he comes from a musical family; his mother played violin in a professional string quartet. "I grew up reading music," says Strehler. Since then he has hankered to be a conductor. "It's a pity that I'm not qualified to conduct...
...felt like a sumo wrestler," grumbled Actor Peter Ustinov, reflecting on his scanty costume in The Life of Jesus. "But I'd rather wear diapers than nothing. I'm not very decorative anyway." Cast as a hefty King Herod by Director Franco Zeffirelli, Ustinov makes his biggest splash when he drops by the Roman baths for a dip with his fellow dignitaries. "Romans talk more freely in the bath," quipped the actor, adding that his watery scene was "not long enough for me to catch a cold." The movie, which features Olivia Hussey as the Virgin Mary, Robert...
...time he and Wertmuller met, Giannini was already well on his way to becoming the brightest young stage star in Italy. In 1964 he played Romeo in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, then David Copperfield in an ambitious twelve-part television program, roles that made him a modest and rather reluctant matinee idol. He worked with Wertmuller for the first time in 1966 on a movie called Rita The Mosquito, which she directed under the name "George Brown." Two years later, Giannini starred in a Wertmuller play he had brought to Zeffirelli's attention. Zeffirelli staged...