Jesus on Film: "King of Kings," "The Greatest Story Ever Told," and Zeffirelli's "Jesus of Nazareth"

I just don’t know.  Being such a fan of Star Trek, I, of course, knew the guy who played Jesus here.  It was Jeffrey Hunter, the guy who was the original captain of the starship Enterprise in the original pilot that didn’t sell, and showed up later in the two-parter “The Menagerie” so Roddenberry could use that original pilot and spread it out over two episodes during the first season.  He was different from Shatner’s Kirk, and actually harkened back to the days of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon from the cheap 40’s and 50’s movie serials that the character of Tom Paris loved so much on Star Trek: Voyager.

     I had previously been disappointed in The Greatest Story Ever Told, which I referred to as "Not the Greatest Movie Ever Made About the Greatest Story Ever Told" and hoped this old retelling of the Jesus story would be better.  It seems, however, that whenever Hollywood tackled the story of Jesus, they tried to give Jesus and the material the somber reverence it deserves, and it just doesn’t work.  In their attempt to make Jesus so worshipful and perfect, it always left Jesus, and the material, feeling overly detached instead.  Besides being the Son of God, of course, Jesus was a great teacher and philosopher, but he was also quite human, and was never that detached.  Never do we feel while watching these old movies about Jesus that he has real feelings for the humans he walks with and teaches. Instead, it is some isolated connection to the Father, as if to say, “Yes, I love all you little people, but I am also above you.  Behold me and my grand but quiet love and grace!”  I didn’t get that feeling with Robert Powell’s performance in Jesus of Nazareth.  In that movie, even though he carried the look of grace and wisdom, when he looked at other people, or taught them, he also carried a look of pure love for them in his eyes.  These other movie Jesus’ are always looking upward, and if they do look at the others they are on screen with, it feels like happenstance.  These other movie Jesus’ don’t have the loving connection with people they do with the Father, and that’s just not right.  THEY are the REASON HE CAME!

Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus in "King of Kings"

     While watching King of Kings with Mom, I shut it off after the scene where Jesus collects Peter and tells him he will make him a “fisher of men.”  As shot for this film, it simply felt like actors on a movie set repeating lines of dialogue.  None of it felt real.  I then showed her the same scene in Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazarath, and there simply was no comparison.  The Zeffirelli film seemed infinitely more “real”!  Not only did Jesus seem more real, but so did Peter and all the others, and even the sets were more real.

     The weird thing is, I am sometimes a fan of epic Hollywood bravado, even over realism, and it is the reason I still like The Ten Commandments over some more realistic movies about Moses, such as the TNT version.  But for whatever reason, the same kind of thing just doesn’t work for Jesus.  The best version of the Jesus story is Jesus of Nazareth.  All the others just don’t measure up!