Now the sharp-eyed amongst you will have observed that several of the big movies recently referred to—The Longest Day, Exodus and Mutiny on the Bounty—were in fact made or released sometime after the period in which I place them. This is in part because the placement relates to when I read the books on which those movies were based but it is also because, in 1961 and especially the latter part of it, there was a very serious dearth of worthwhile movies.
    When in those summer holidays, I set forth to the city with my pocket money jangling expectantly in my pocket, hoping to repeat the phenomenal experience of Spartacus, I was about to learn that not only was life filled with disappointment but that the fantasy world of Hollywood could be so equally. I roamed from theatre to theatre, studying the posters and lobby cards for something that would catch my eye or stir my imagination, as the unexpected image of Kirk Douglas fending off the trident of the giant black man had done a year earlier. Alas there was nothing of the kind. I couldn’t quite believe it when I realised that I had been to every cinema, and was left utterly uninspired.
    Determined to see something, I back-tracked. Ultimately, I realised that there was only one possibility—the one that I thought least likely of all as I passed it by with my heart yet unspilled of its optimism. After all, it was on a subject that I had fulsomely rejected as valid more than a year before. This was Samuel Bronson’s remake of the Cecil B. deMille silent epic King of Kings—the story of the life of Christ. Surely not…
    Well, it was an ancient epic, set in Roman times and the lobby cards did suggest a battle scene of some kind. And, I happened to know, it was certainly the most controversial movie around at the time. Indeed the religious authorities were so outraged by it that maybe it was the film for me after all. Furtively, I slipped inside.
    The controversy seemed to be based on three issues—firstly, that it depicted Jesus Christ as a real person rather than some ephemeral divinity; secondly, that it allowed the countenance of the Messiah to be seen; and third—and worst of all—that countenance belonged to the rather baby-faced Wild West matinee idol Jeffrey Hunter. Furthermore, purists pointed to the fact that the film declared that the activities of this blue-eyed, red-haired Christ sparked a fictional rebellion against the Roman masters, lead by the thief Barabbas. The miracles were passed over lightly and the whole thing was a picture post-card view of the grand passion-play. All in all, it was just too much for them.
    In fact the film is pretty good, a lively three hour romp through the New Testament, not at all dissimilar to Monty Python’s handling of the same material twenty years later in The Life of Brian except without the jokes. Hunter, despite his inappropriate looks and accent, does a great job, bestowing Christ with real humanity, vulnerability and inner strength, and renders the sermon on the mount as the most outstanding piece of pure Marxism ever stated in American cinema. Aussie Ron Randell is excellent as the centurion who gets converted—he is the actually main character from whose POV the story is told, and compatriot Frank Thring adds his usual pompous villain thing as Herod Antipas; Hurd Hatfield delivers a coolly urban Pilate; Rip Torn, who would become famous as the expletive deleted Richard Nixon, gets some practice as Judas; and a sexpot named Brigid Bazlen is distracting as Salome. All good fun.
    Now the film is not without substantial weaknesses, not the least of which was its unimaginative handling and mock reverence (which was actually real reverence gone badly wrong). No one knew what to make of Harry Guardino’s energetic Barabbas—an Italian-American playing a Jewish rebel against Romans, but Robert Ryan took the turkey honours, his pronounced southern drawl about as far away from John the Baptist as El Paso is from Jerusalem. And the whole handling of the crucifixion and resurrection scenes is rather poor— you suspect the production ran out of money along the road to Golgotha and had to be finished on the cheap. Written by Phillip Yordan and directed by Nicholas Ray, overall the film is most enjoyable, especially for those who wish to remember their Sunday School days with a wry smile.