The Gospel According to St. Matthew

Famed Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini's unforgettable retelling of the life and death of Jesus Christ, considered by many to be his masterpiece and the finest religious film ever made. Subtitled in English.
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Format:  DVD-R
item number:  6SRCE
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DVD-R Details

  • Run Time: 2 hours, 17 minutes
  • Video: Black & White
  • Encoding: Region 0 (Worldwide)
  • Released: April 16, 2019
  • Originally Released: 1964
  • Label: Alpha Video

Performers, Cast and Crew:

Starring
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Entertainment Reviews:

Fresh91%

TOMATOMETER
Total Count: 35

Upright86%

AUDIENCE SCORE
User Ratings: 4,332
Rating: 5/5 -- Superb in every way, and possibly the film-maker's best. Full Review
London Evening Standard
Mar 1, 2013
Rating: 5/5 -- A fierce magnesium flame of a movie. Full Review
Guardian
Feb 28, 2013
Rating: B+ -- Pasolini, a gay atheist Marxist, has made one of the most intriguing films about Jesus, cast with unknowns and shot in documentary style. Full Review
EmanuelLevy.Com
Apr 21, 2012
"Heightened realism," I had thought at first, and so it was, but as the film wore on the realism began to disappear and only the heightening remained. Full Review
Esquire Magazine
Aug 13, 2019
Pasolini uses a complex but seemingly stark and simple visual style, and he evokes wonderful performances from nonprofessionals Enrique Irazoqui, Margherita Caruso, and Marcello Morante. Full Review
Chicago Reader
Oct 24, 2007
This highly political interpretation of the passion is as scandalous in its own way as Mel Gibson's but more poetic, more contemporary in its impact, and more serious in its overall morality. Full Review
Chicago Reader
Oct 24, 2007
A defiantly earthy anti-epic, Pasolini's Gospel is a period piece in costume only, placing its rather scruffy, contemporary-looking Christ in the steep southern Italian hills of Calabria. Full Review
City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul
Aug 21, 2009

Description by OLDIES.com:

"The Gospel According to St. Matthew is certainly the best life of Jesus ever placed on film, and it is probably the finest religious film ever made, as well…" – Richard Schickel, LIFE magazine

Considered by many to be his masterpiece, The Gospel According to St. Matthew is famed Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini's unforgettable retelling of the life and death of Jesus Christ. The acclaimed filmmaker, an avowed atheist, became interested in Christ when he accepted an invitation to meet with Pope John XXIII, who wished to create a dialogue with non-Catholic artists. That meeting almost never took place, as the papal visit created massive traffic jams in the town of Assisi where Pasolini was staying. While waiting in his hotel room, the director read all four Gospels straight through. Struck with inspiration, he vowed to make a Biblical film like no other. Choosing to adapt the Gospel of St. Matthew because, in Pasolini's words, "John was too mystical, Mark too vulgar, and Luke too sentimental," he would shoot in the impoverished Italian district of Basilicata and its capital, Matera. Most of the principals were local, inexperienced actors, with Jesus himself played by Enrique Irazoqui, a 19-year old economics student. Dialogue was taken directly from the Gospel rather than a screenplay, as Pasolini wanted an Italian neo-realist style drastically different from the bombastic tone taken by Hollywood's Biblical epics. The result was a sensation around the world. The Gospel According to St. Matthew was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the 25th Venice Film Festival amid almost unanimous praise from critics. That acclaim has only grown in the years since Pasolini's tragic murder in 1975. Roger Ebert has called it "one of the most effective films on a religious theme I have ever seen," while the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano called it the best film on Christ ever made in 2015. For a filmmaker as controversial as Pasolini, it is a legacy he might not have predicted. "I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief," said the director, "the point is that...I, a non-believer, was telling the story through the eyes of a believer."

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Product Info

  • Sales Rank: 6,196
  • UPC: 089218820990
  • Shipping Weight: 0.25/lbs (approx)
  • International Shipping: 1 item

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