One might be surprised to discover that the most critically acclaimed motion picture about the life of Jesus Christ is not Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ or Martin Scorcese's The Last Temptation of Christ, nor is it even The Jesus Film from the '70s, but rather it's a lesser-known Italian biblical drama called The Gospel According to St. Matthew. With a 92% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, this Pier Paolo Pasolini-directed picture is a direct adaptation of the first book in the biblical New Testament. Not only do film critics hail this film as an international triumph, but even the Catholic Church itself has praised the picture. So what makes The Gospel According to St. Matthew so special? Well, you'll have to see it to believe it.
'The Gospel According to St. Matthew' Is the Vatican's Favorite Jesus Movie
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According to one Vatican City newspaper, The Gospel According to St. Matthew is firmly the "best film about Jesus ever made in the history of cinema." Considering there are far too many movies about Christ to count — including George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told and Cecil B. DeMille's Ben-Hur — that's quite a bold claim, but many in Rome (particularly the Vatican) have stuck to it. In fact, the Vatican itself has compiled a list of films that those in charge have deemed "great," with three split categories (religion, values, and art), each containing 15 pictures, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. In the religion category, one will quickly find Pier Paolo Pasolini's take on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which "[avoids] the artificiality of most biblical movie epics."
The Vatican praised Pasolini's unique directorial style, noting that the film is wonderfully accurate to the biblical Gospel of Matthew. Other films, such as Carl Dreyer's classic silent picture The Passion of Joan of Arc and DeMille's Ben-Hur also find a place here. In addition to being formally recognized by the church, Pasolini's cinematic take on the Gospels was actively celebrated as well. In 1964, the filmmaker's work on The Gospel According to St. Matthew won him the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, and the movie itself was even nominated for three Academy Awards during the 1967 Oscars, for best art decoration, best costume design, and for best music. The year prior, the United States' National Board of Review honored the international picture as their "Top Foreign Film" of the year. To say that The Gospel According to St. Matthew is beloved by the film community would be an understatement.
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As far as critics go, Roger Ebert called the movie "one of the most effective films on a religious theme," and gave the film four stars for Pasolini's brilliance. It was also included on his famed "Great Movies" list. "I like the picture," noted Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky about the film. "I like it precisely because its director did not succumb to the temptation of interpreting the Bible." This is, by far, the biggest draw to a film like The Gospel According to St. Matthew. While different critics and filmmakers might disagree on their interpretation of Pasolini's films (much like Christians for two-thousand years have often disagreed about how to best interpret the holy scriptures), the success of this film lies strictly in its directness concerning the text. Much of the dialogue is derived straight from Matthew's account, and the story is all there.
Director Pier Paolo Pasolini Made the Film as a Non-Believer
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Of course, what's just as fascinating about a film like The Gospel According to St. Matthew is what inspired its creation. In revisiting the film, Catholic Culture recounts Pasolini's primary inspiration for making the film. As the story goes, he had gone to Assisi in 1962 to attend a seminar at a Franciscan monastery after Pope John XXII (to whose memory the final product is dedicated) had previously made it a part of the church's mission to open a "dialogue with non-Catholic artists." While there, Pasolini got stuck in his hotel after a massive traffic jam due to the Pope's arrival, and decided to pick up the Bible in his room. As he read all four Gospel accounts, Pasolini was inspired to make a direct adaptation from only one of them, without pulling from the others. Matthew was ultimately chosen after deeming John "too mystical, Mark "too vulgar," and Luke "too sentimental."
But what's perhaps most interesting about Pier Paolo Pasolini's choice of cinematic subject was his own religious stance. Pasolini was an atheist, or at least many considered him to be, and an avid Marxist who had previously gotten himself in trouble for blasphemy. He often fought with the Christian Democrats of his day, and was an openly gay man, though struggled with his homosexuality, believing it to be a sin. "I always saw it as something next to me, like an enemy, never feeling it inside me," he once explained in The Gay & Lesbian Review. Though he often flirted with Christianity, he was never able to fully accept that the biblical and historical interpretations of Jesus Christ were one-in-the-same.
Though Pasolini attempted to make The Gospel According to St. Matthew from the strict point of view of a believer, he soon recognized that he'd made the film from his own perspective. While the filmmaker was still unsure of his own belief in Christ, he didn't let those questions confuse the Jesus of his film. "I want to consecrate things again, because that is possible, I want to re-mythologize them," he once emphasized. The experience so moved the filmmaker, that he got to work on writing a film about Paul the Apostle (it sadly never happened, but the screenplay was later published). To Pasolini, re-enchantment in the minds of everyday Italians was possible, even if he wasn't quite convinced about what that meant. Like Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ decades later, Pasolini filmed his biblical account on the district of Basilicata, as well as Matera, and would use non-traditional actors to bring the story of Christ to life.
'The Gospel According to St. Matthew' Is Almost an Anti-Biblical Epic
In the critical consensus reported on Rotten Tomatoes, it notes that The Gospel According to St. Matthew "forgoes the pageantry of biblical epics in favor of a naturalistic retelling of the Christ story, achieving a respectful if not reverent interpretation with political verve." This is exactly right. Pasolini primarily evokes the techniques of classical Italian neo-realism in his film, shooting the story of Christ almost as one might a documentary. But though its understated and non-romantic, the film feels largely reverent, like a moving portrait inspired by two centuries of Christian artwork rather than historical realities. One might notice how the Pharisees do not wear period-appropriate attire (neither do the Roman soldiers), but rather costumes that feel more akin to Italian Renaissance artwork. Even Enrique Irazoqui's Jesus Christ feels inspired by the Byzantine period, particularly this image.
When compared to the Hollywood productions from the same era, such as The Greatest Story Ever Told and Ben-Hur, there's a significant difference in the way the material was handled. While both tell the story of Christ with reverence and respect, Pasolini's Italian take feels down-to-earth, un-simulated, and direct, while the American pictures, by contrast (as excellent as they are), are grand and magnificent. Hollywood's biblical epics feel larger than life, miraculous, and boisterous, while Pasolini's take is an intimate one that leaves room for thoughtful meditation. It may not be the sort of biblical or otherwise historical epic that audiences are used to viewing on the big screen, but it's certainly a film worth examining for Pasolini's artistry alone. Enrique Irazoqui's take on Jesus is a bit odd at first, but soon feels right within this documentarian-style world that Pasolini has crafted.
Release Date March 3, 1965
Director Pier Paolo Pasolini
Cast Enrique Irazoqui , Margherita Caruso , Susanna Pasolini , Marcello Morante , Mario Socrate , Settimio Di Porto , Alfonso Gatto , Luigi Barbini
Runtime 137 Minutes
Writers Pier Paolo Pasolini
The Gospel According to St. Matthew is available to watch on Plex in the U.S.
Custom Image by Federico Napoli
Image via Arco Films 
Image via Arco Film 
English (US) ·