The Messiah (1975) User Reviews

THE MESSIAH (Roberto Rossellini, 1975) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 7/10 · 26 March 2008]

Dubbed "the most Catholic of all film directors" by one critic, I guess it was only a matter of time before Roberto Rossellini tackled the life of Christ on celluloid. Ironically, this he did in what proved to be his last feature film which was, in itself, a follow-up to his TV mini-series ACTS OF THE APOSTLES (1969). That earlier work was interesting for treating little-known passages from the New Testament but, with an unhurried pace and a generally unassuming tone, the end result was decidedly meandering. Conversely, THE MESSIAH presents all-too-familiar events – with the overall effect feeling lengthy still, yet distinctly more cinematic. That said, it starts off with the arrival of the Jews in the Promised Land and the appointment of their first king (Saul) before moving on to the life of Christ; actually, this is also one of the few films to show the famous incident in which Jesus is lost in the temple as a boy. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't stray much from the spirit – or word – of the Gospels: even so, in the throes of an agonizing death, Herod The Great (played by Vittorio Caprioli – though his trademark flustered demeanor is downplayed by having his voice dubbed) is seen planning the annihilation of his own subjects akin to the practice of ancient Egyptian rulers!

Incidentally, the rich and commanding voice of Christ himself is supplied by Enrico Maria Salerno – a superb actor in his own right who had actually already handled the very same task in THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW (1964) – which is effectively contrasted with the inconspicuous appearance of the young man who appears in the role (perhaps best approximating the Lothaire Bluteau of Jesus OF MONTREAL [1989]). This Messiah, then, is far removed from the striking good-looks of Jeffrey Hunter (KING OF KINGS [1961]) and Robert Powell (the Jesus OF NAZARETH [1977] TV mini-series) or the brooding power of Max von Sydow (THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD [1965]) and Willem Dafoe (THE LAST TEMPTATION OF Christ [1988])! Naturally, the bulk of the narrative is devoted to Christ's public life – though no overdue emphasis is placed on the miracles he performed (these are mentioned but rarely seen) – which also provides the film with its essential core…since the latter section, revolving around the more commonly-depicted events of Jesus' trial (where Jean Martin, the French Colonel in THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS [1966], nonetheless makes for a fine Pontius Pilate), crucifixion and eventual resurrection are curiously skimped here!

The subplot involving John The Baptist, however, is quite nicely handled; by the way, the only other recognizable face in the cast is that of Tina Aumont (even if her contribution amounts to no more than a few minutes of screen-time!) as the adulteress Christ famously pardons by denouncing her pursuers instead. The score is, once again, by Mario Nascimbene – though it's not as prominent as his work on ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. On the visual side, the film seems closest to the contemporaneous Jesus OF NAZARETH – yet the lyrical style and quiet dignity on display makes of THE MESSIAH a more than worthy companion piece to Pier Paolo Pasolini's aforementioned (and more renowned) THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. With this in mind, while perhaps not the definitive film on the subject, it certainly emerges as an underrated achievement – both among the myriad treatments (including those by such great directors as D. W. Griffith, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Cecil B. DeMille and Abel Gance) of Christ's life over the years and in Rossellini's own highly respected canon.

Great actors in a stringently formal movie. Fantastic!

[ian-ternik · 8/10 · 5 February 2007]

THE MESSIAS is one of the best Jesus-Movies ever. It is not a big budget production like Mel Gibsons nightmare of it or Scorseses movie. Rossellinis film is reduced to one point. There are no action-scenes, no gore or blood - it is the spoke word which contains the high concentration of this special movie work. Minimalisem. The story of Jesus is taken from the bible, the dialogs are near to the holy word. The camera-work is only a long-shoot. It looks like the typical work of the Italian cameramen for the spaghetti-western...but in THE MESSIAS is the camera-work a brilliant long-shoot work, inspired by the icon-painters. Some people don't like this wonderful movie because they felt bored. The reason is maybe the high concentrated work of the director. He always get the scenes to one minimalism point. The actors are great, especially the actor of Jesus. But be warned: There is no big scene, no action! The cast has only a few extras but 80 scenes. And my favorite scene is when Jesus meets Johannes the baptist and there is only one sentence spoken - the first for the Jesus-character in this movie.This is a good, very fantastic moment, a really great for the movie. Here you can feel the consequence of the perfect work Rossellinis. And his true work to the bible without any pathos!

It is maybe the best Jesus movie ever. The movie tells from the WORD and the message is the deep love to the mankind.

A colorful but simple version of Jesus Christ's life with an agreeable treatment

[ma-cortes · 7/10 · 12 July 2021]

This highly regarded religious pic deals with the dramatic recreation of the life of Christ with an unknown cast , being spectacularly shot in 1975 and well directed by Roberto Rosselini . It chronicles the life and ministry of Jesus Christ from the Annunciation , Crucifixion , Death and Resurrection . Interesting retelling at the life and teachings of Christ (Pier Maria Rossi) from a historical and religious view point , though overlong . The film begins with the arrival of the Jews in the Promised Land and the appointment of their first king Saul (Vernon Dobtcheff) with descriptive Biblical passages ; his birth in Bethlehem and visit by three Magician Kings who , subsequently , go to the Palace of Herodes the Great (Vittorio Caprioli). His incident in which Jesus is lost in the temple as a boy, later on , in the desert tempted by Satan , knowing he has a destiny to fulfill ; his baptism by John the Baptist ; the miracles , such as : cripples walking , blind men seeing ; the fishes and the loaves ; Lazarus' resurrection ; his relationship to 12 apostles and so on . Jesus Christ's journey from Galilee to Golgotha is portrayed here in thought-provoking as well as enjoyable treatment . And usual scenes between John the Baptist , Herod Antipas (Toni Ucci) , Herodias , and Salome and , of course , John the Baptist's beheading as Salome's price for dancing for Herod . In addition , Biblic roles as Mary Magdalene , Lazarus , Caiaphas (John Karlsen) , Peter, Mary of Bethan , Thaddeus , Simon the Zealot , John , Philip , the Adulteress (Tina Aumont) , Pontius Pilate (Jean Martin) and Barrabbas . And including holy sentences as "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?".

This is a low-buget , impressive -though slow-moving- story of the life of Jesus Christ from his birth in Bethlehem to his Crucifixion and subsequent Resurrection . It is a religious and anguishing epic where the eternal questions of faith and doubt become resolved , being shot in Pasolini's Gospell according St. Matthew style . Life of Christ is intelligently written by prestigious screenwriter Silvia D'Amico and Roberto Rosselini himself and source writings from Bible itself . Resulting to be completely reverential at some Biblical characters and passages from New Testament . Stars a serious and attractive Pier Maria Rossi in exactly the right role , he gives a dedicated effort at the character , his acting has power , nobility and subtlety . Being a limited budgeted production , here shows up mostly unknown players , however there are brief appearances from some Italian actors in brief performances as Vittorio Caprioli , Tina Aumont , John Karlsen , Jean Martin , Renato Escarpa ,and Vernon Dobtcheff as Samuel . Including glowing and evocative cinematography in charming visual style by Mario Montuori , shot on location in Morocco ; however , being necessary a perfect remastering . Sensitive and atmospheric soundtrack by the classical Mario Nascimbene. The motion picture was compellingly directed by Roberto Rosselini .

Jesus life has been adapted several times , such as : ¨King of Kings¨ (released in 1927) , it is the yardstick by which all Jesus movies are to be measure , being first silent version by Cecil B. DeMille with H. B. Wagner . Other pictures dealing with his divine presence are the following ones :¨King of Kings¨(1961) by Nicholas Ray with Jeffrey Hunter , Robert Ryan , Ron Randel , Hurd Hatfield , Rip Torn , Frank Thring , Carmen Sevilla ; ¨The greatest story ever told¨1965 by George Stevens with Max Von Sidow ,Gary Raymond) , David MacCallum , Roddy McDowall , Dorothy McGuire) , Telly Savalas , Charlton Heston , José Ferrer , Sidney Poitier , Claude Rains, Ina Balin ; ¨Gospel according to Matthew¨ by Pier Paolo Pasolini with Enrique Irazoqui as Jesus ; ¨Jesus Christ Superstar¨(1977) by Norman Jewison with Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson ; ¨Jesus de Nazareth¨(1977) by Franco Zeffirelli with Robert Powell , Olivia Hussey , James Mason , Laurence Olivier , Anne Brancfort , Fernando Rey ; ¨Last temptation of Christ¨ by Martin Scorsese with Willem Dafoe , David Bowie , Harvey Keitel , Ian Holm , Harry Dean Staton ; and ¨The Passion of the Christ¨ (2004) by Mel Gibson with James Cazievel , Maia Morgenstern and Monica Belucci .

Brilliant

[DivineComedy · 22 August 2003]

This is an incredible movie, and for many reasons. No one in Hollywood could make such a low-key, authentic, and INTELLIGENT historic drama, especially considering subject matter. The first 20 minutes is a concise and brilliant history of the Jews. And then the life: It is the life of Jesus without the miracles. Like the priest in Open City (by Rossellini), R understands that the struggle is to live a good life. Most Biblical movies are a total insult. This is extraordinary. The actors are believable. It feels raw -- but controlled raw, if that makes sense. Again: authentic. Believable.

Politics and the Messiah

[EdgarST · 10/10 · 8 November 2017]

I do not know if I am delirious, but living in a country that has an enclave called the Vatican (in a certain way, a spiritual "Canal Zone", as the area that was under US control within the republic of Panamá until 1999) must predispose Italian artists: perhaps the Vatican inspires the most pious to exalt Catholicism, while the most progressive maybe take a more critical stance towards this ecclesiastical state-enterprise within their country. I find quite curious that two Italian non-believers and filmmakers, one Marxist and the other atheist, made two of the most interesting films I have seen about the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. First, Pier Paolo Pasolini, released in 1964 «The Gospel According to Matthew», a production that was surrounded by a controversy that finally turned into applause and praise; and the other, Roberto Rossellini, presented «Il Messia» in 1975 with less luck, to the point that the free circulation of the product had to wait almost 30 years to be (marginally) distributed. «The Messiah» is long, Brechtian, austere and intelligent; it dispenses with many biblical passages in which David W. Griffith, Miguel Morayta, Nicholas Ray, George Stevens, Franco Zeffirelli, Martin Scorsese or Mel Gibson delighted in their (kind of frivolous) versions of the Nazarene's immolation; and it introduces the story in an ingenious way: the film starts with a synthesis of the history of the Jewish people, from the arrival of the tribes to the "promised land", after 40 years in the desert, to the selection of Saul as their first king, who led the common man to war; and then proceeds with a description of the growing political and moral corruption of the tribes, a process that reached a "plot point" the day the expected Messiah appeared. As the story goes, they ended up turning their backs on the holy man and murdered him. Rossellini does not shilly-shally: he cleverly exposes the political intrigue of Pharisees and Jewish priests, who try to preserve their power without disturbing the Roman invaders that control them. Jesus is young and strong, somewhat shy, he works wood, ploughs and gleans, has mystical outbursts, preaches with metaphors to death, and knows how to debate with logical reasoning. The most difficult part of the film is the long sequence of the apostles' proselytizing campaign, as they preach the "new word", but that is the director's choice. Rossellini prefers that, to show us instead the brutal and the violent, in the best aesthetic line of a Greek tragedy, which showed not tortures, crimes or mutilations on stage. «The Messiah» saves us the lashes, the road to Golgotha, the long agony on the cross, and the miracles. The film has another agenda: to show the story of a man who confronted the corruption of power, who preached love as method, but who was paid with hatred by his own people. Rossellini does it in a realistic way, he shows things as natural and non-dramatized facts (often in long shots, with few cuts or none); the images lose that false fervor of "saint cards" that has ruined so many films about Jesus. As an example, see the sequence of the last supper, from the moment Jesus washes the apostles' feet to Judas' departure. It is just that, a last meal, a sad farewell and the leader's final instructions, and not an ornate evocation of the first Eucharist. Roberto Rossellini was not an improvised filmmaker: he is the father of Italian neo- realism, a brilliant light in the history of cinema, whose trilogy of war («Rome, Open City», «Paisá» and «Germany, Year Zero») marked the birth of contemporary cinema. He was an innovator who took melodrama to the limit in his films with Ingrid Bergman, the love of his life, in «Stromboli, Land of God,» «Europe 51» or «Voyage to Italy,» and a visionary who joined the practice of television, a medium that he glimpsed as the audiovisual future of the planet. «Il Messia» is not a sole spiritual work in his oeuvre. It also includes the portrait of Francis of Assisi in his film «Francesco, Jester of God» (1950) and the TV mini-series «Acts of the Apostles» (1969), which suggests that atheists can also be sensitive to genuine religious people.

oh my

[monsieurblob · 10/10 · 27 May 2005]

like with late Pasolini, late Rossellini splatters one on the wall with such greatness. if he didn't have enough with descartes, Medici, pascal, Louis xiv, agostino, he went and made this enormous movie that put to ridicule the producers who gave him the money, who knowing what was at stake denied distribution it if it didn't have a god's omniscient narrator pasted upon. It wasn't distributed, naturally, and yet lies light years above politically correct (the dictionary meaning of 'political correctness') tripe like Gibson's or Zeffirelli's, even light years above Scorcese's and Pasolini's Evangelio.

I say all those churches, with all that money they've taken from what legitimately should belong to philosophy or science or enjoying life or socialism or whatever, should learn to keep their money in their own propagandistic institutions and companies, should keep to their Hannah Barbera cartoons through which we've all been through in their indoctrination sessions, should continue to illegally sum numbers to their entity through baptisms at age 0, communions at age 10 and 'confirmations' at age 13... Because they won't convince anybody on equal terms, without manipulation, or financing intelligent projects like this one, which blew in their faces.

this is rossellini at his best, like francisco giulare di dio, like Europa 51, like louis xiv...

For us, the living

[tieman64 · 4 September 2010]

Released several years after his death, Roberto Rossellini's "The Messiah" is arguably one of the two most interesting films made about Jesus Christ, the other being Pier Paolo Pasolini's "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" , which paints Christ as a proto-Marxist and radical, social activist.

Oddly, though Rossellini made many excellent "spiritual films" - see "The Flowers of St Francis" - the tone of "The Messiah" is closer to his 1971 film "Socrates" and his 1972 film "Blaise Pascal", Rossellini (an atheist) painting Christ as a quiet man of logic and reason.

And so Rossillini's film is less about "the messiah" than it is about people whose needs for "a messiah" are so strong that they project godhood upon a Jesus Christ that is held at a distance and treated almost as a cipher. As such, Rossillini portrays Christ as a mild, almost timid rabbi, the most ordinary, quiet and uninspiring teacher imaginable. His Jesus, like Bresson's Joan of Arc, despite being immensely curious, also seems to want to disappear into obscurity.

Of course, upon this blank slate Rossillini then shows a slew of followers blindly projecting their burdens, wants and needs. Rossellini's Christ is a resonant tabula rasa, and it is ultimately others who turn him into the son of God.

In this regard, the followers of Jesus are turned into a subtle parody of irrationality, whilst those naysayers whom films typically show lambasting Christ as a conman and charlatan, are shown to be simply reacting against illogical, scripture twisting "Christians" who are, at worst, a civilly disruptive phenomenon, at best, a harmless bunch of simpletons.

Christ is such a cipher in this film that, even on the cross, Rossillini chooses to leave out those iconic bits of Biblical dialogue which we're all familiar with ("Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do!", "My Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?" etc). Instead, Christ just hangs there, a provocative question mark.

Which is not to say that the film mocks Christians. No, Rossellini is up to something else. His film downplays the New Testament's miracles and more supernatural elements, and portrays Christs followers, both as a race and social class, as being abandoned, adrift, perpetually persecuted, direction-less and without a unifying leader. So hungry are they for direction and justice, that they almost conjure Christ himself out of the desert sands. He, they decide, will stand for them. In this regard the film draws parallels with Rossellini's Socrates, who is abused by an Athenian "democracy" which persecutes intellectuals, humanists and educators (intellectuals are similarly summoned and slain in "The Messiah"). The animosity directed towards Christ and Socrates then becomes a metaphor for the growing animosity toward social justice and critical thinking in both totalitarian and democratic societies, both of which are preoccupied with power, profit and so afraid of autonomy, knowledge and education. This, of course, echoes Rossellini's own life under Mussolini and post-fascism.

So again we have Christ the liberator, not sent, but hungered for by a people who wish to be liberated from the despotic rule of a wealthy minority. Christ's murder then becomes the execution of a people's very dream for liberation. The film's last shot focuses on a sad, strangely empty sky. Christianity as an existential, even social project, dies here, and henceforth becomes a religious cult. Pessimistically, social justice is seen to be attainable in the area of values/beliefs/hopes etc, but not in the realm of real life.

8/10 - Worth one viewing.

Rossellini in precise way

[Kirpianuscus · 19 July 2022]

It is a Rossellini. You feel it scene by scene. Different by other Jesus portraits, it represents the honest - precise portrait of great teacher. The words are fruit of work of hands. The message is simple and the sacrifice propose a special form of reddemption.

Sure, at the first sight, after the gallery of portraits of historical personalities, the temptation is to believe than Messiah is just a piece from the chain.

Obvious, it is more. The portrait of Saint Mary, the solutions for Passion and Resurrection or for the grave of Lazarus, the silence and calm respired by the film, the mathematical demonstration of the presence of Jesus, the eliptic speech about Him , the status of hakawati of the Savior , the reference to Pietta by Michelangelo are just proves of this.

Provocative in personal way.

Dialogue with the viewer.

Far by blockbusters about same theme.

Wise perspective about The Savior .

Not impressive. Useful is enough.

So, a form of last word of a great director.