Less Is More

NBC has re-broadcast Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, and its very excellences point up its failure. Nearly everything about it is fine; I don’t expect ever to see a better version of the Gospel story; but somehow it doesn’t work.

Part of the problem is that it’s one of those Who’s Who spectaculars: a synod of great actors in great cameos— Ustinov, Plummer, Olivier, Richardson, Mason. Ustinov, as Herod, is a terrifying figure, all right, not because of any royal grandeur but precisely because he embodies pure petulance liberated by absolute power, raging with violent self-pity at the rumor of a baby. But then he’s gone, and it’s somebody else’s turn to be memorable for a minute. Bythe time Ernest Borgnine and Anthony Quinn turn up, it’s wearing pretty thin. The big names flashing by have the unfortunate effect of emphasizing the discontinuity of the Gospels, especially when they are conflated to get all the facts in. The acting, the dusty visual beauty, the pungent Jewishness of the intimate scenes—these are undermined by the attempt to be comprehensive.

JS

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Joseph Sobran

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NBC has re-broadcast Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, and its very excellences point up its failure. Nearly everything about it is fine; I don’t expect ever to see a better version of the Gospel story; but somehow it doesn’t work.

Part of the problem is that it’s one of those Who’s Who spectaculars: a synod of great actors in great cameos— Ustinov, Plummer, Olivier, Richardson, Mason. Ustinov, as Herod, is a terrifying figure, all right, not because of any royal grandeur but precisely because he embodies pure petulance liberated by absolute power, raging with violent self-pity at the rumor of a baby. But then he’s gone, and it’s somebody else’s turn to be memorable for a minute. Bythe time Ernest Borgnine and Anthony Quinn turn up, it’s wearing pretty thin. The big names flashing by have the unfortunate effect of emphasizing the discontinuity of the Gospels, especially when they are conflated to get all the facts in. The acting, the dusty visual beauty, the pungent Jewishness of the intimate scenes—these are undermined by the attempt to be comprehensive.