King of Kings (1961)

When Nicholas Ray, the man who directed Rebel Without a Cause and Bigger Than Life decides to take on the story of Jesus of Nazareth, well you can expect the results to be interesting. Indeed Ray's 1961 King of Kings might well be the best of the 'Life of Christ' films to have come out of Hollywood, excepting of course the just tangentially life of Christ films like Ben-Hur, or I suppose Life of Brian, or The Passion of the Christ which is about Jesus death and little else. So in effect I'm just saying this movie is better then The Greatest Story Ever Told or the Cecil B DeMille's silent version of The King of Kings. Now that may not sound like much of a compliment, but I've long said that the Life of Christ story is one that hasn't lent it self well to film, at least not conventional, epic style films like came out of Hollywood back in the day, were as less direct more metaphorical 'Life's of Christ' like Jesus of Montreal can be truly powerful.

Indeed there is not any unusual depth to Ray's Jesus, here portrayed ably but not definitively by Jeffery Hunter. No Ray manages to get his film to work more like an epic through really two things 1) more historical context and 2) more action. This movie has Christ at its center yes, but it makes sure to put him in the context of his time, so the narrative follows closely a through line about Jewish resistance to Roman occupation in Palestine. We see contemporary movements for the liberation of the Jewish Kingdom from the Romans, and how Jesus growing movement plays off of them, and how one in turn tries to co-opt Jesus movement in the service of Jewish independence, this is done through the Judas Iscariot character and certainly makes him more interesting and coherent then he is in most renditions of this story. The action Ray injects in his film isn't simply limited to a couple of fairly well done battle scenes between Romans and Jewish patriots, but also by simply moving the camera around in scenes that might otherwise have been shot static. The Sermon on the Mount scene is excellent, arguably the highlight of the film, because it has Jesus move around and interact with his audience, they ask him questions and he answers back with blurbs of Red Letter dialogue. Yes so that's not exactly like in the Bible, but it suites the film format better and probably gets more of Jesus message across then a straight reading of Biblical text might.

Anyway if your looking for a good 'Life of Christ' film to just have on next Christmas or come Easter, you certainly could do worse then King of Kings, because this movie is actually watchable. ***