Sightlines · reception

How The Gospel According to St. Matthew was received

1965 · Pier Paolo Pasolini · The Gospel According to St. Matthew on Sightlines

The arc

Whistled at by right-wing protesters at its 1964 Venice premiere — a gay Marxist atheist filming the life of Christ was a scandal on paper — yet it won the Special Jury Prize, and the Church came around so completely that the Vatican's own newspaper has since called it the best film about Jesus ever made.

What’s debated

The evergreen debate: how did an avowed atheist make the most genuinely devout Jesus film — and does it belong to the believers or the Marxists?

Its footprint

It's the yardstick every screen Jesus gets measured against, and its needle-drop soundtrack — Bach and Mozart rubbing shoulders with the Missa Luba and American blues and spirituals — is a touchstone for anachronistic music in period film. It also made the Vatican's 1995 list of great films.

Where it stands

A world-cinema canon staple and many cinephiles' pick for Pasolini's most approachable masterpiece — the 'start here' entry before the thornier stuff.

Did you know? Pasolini cast no professional actors: his Jesus was Enrique Irazoqui, a 19-year-old Spanish economics student and anti-Franco activist, and the older Virgin Mary was played by Pasolini's own mother, Susanna.

Named by the director

• Carl Theodor Dreyer — Pasolini said he began shooting in the solemn, hieratic 'sacred' style he associated with Dreyer, then abandoned it after a few days for a looser, documentary-like approach.

A Deleuzian reading of The Gospel According to St. Matthew →