Review Essay Faith and Film
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RELIGION and the ARTS Religion and the Arts 13 (2009) 595–603 brill.nl/rart Review Essay Faith and Film David McNutt University of Cambridge Austin, Ron. In a New Light: Spirituality and the Media Arts. Grand Rapids MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007. Pp. x + 95 + illus- trations. $12.00 paper. Humphries-Brooks, Stephenson. Cinematic Savior: Hollywood’s Making of the American Christ. London and Westport CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006. Pp. x + 160. $39.95 cloth. Malone, Peter, ed. Th rough a Catholic Lens: Religious Perspectives of Nine- teen Film Directors From Around the World. Communication, Culture, and Religion Series, eds. Paul J. Soukup, S.J. and Fran Plude. Lanham MD, Boulder CO, New York, and Plymouth, England: Sheed and Ward Books Division of Rowman and Littlefi eld Publishers, 2007. Pp. vi + 272. $25.95 paper. Walsh, Richard. Finding St. Paul in Film. New York and London: T. and T. Clark, 2005. Pp. vi + 218 + illustrations. $29.95 paper. * he dynamic relationship between religious faith and fi lm may be seen Tthrough a number of diff erent lenses. Th is essay will evaluate four examples of the growing number of recent books that address this connec- tion. Th e titles featured here include a volume about Hollywood’s portray- als of Jesus Christ on screen, an interpretation of fi lms in light of the fi gure and theology of Paul, a study of the infl uence of Catholicism upon the © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/107992609X12524941450244 596 D. McNutt / Religion and the Arts 13 (2009) 595–603 work of directors from around the world, and a book investigating the pos- sibility of developing one’s spirituality through fi lmmaking. While the Bible affi rms that Jesus Christ is the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4, Col. 1:15, Heb. 1:3), Stephenson Humphries-Brooks contends that Hollywood’s versions of Jesus Christ reveal a savior created in the image of America. In Cinematic Savior, he off ers an engaging and provocative study that traces the development of the representation of Jesus upon the screen in six fi lms from Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings (1927) to Mel Gibson’s Th e Passion of the Christ (2004). Although originally trained as a New Tes- tament scholar, Humphries-Brooks is less concerned in this work with analyzing the faithfulness of the adaptations of the gospel narratives than he is with considering how these depictions of Jesus reveal the changing religious culture of America. Indeed, he argues that what is at stake in these fi lms is “America’s sense of itself—its ideals, its theology, its mythology, and its salvation” (6). Th us, what emerges from his study is the contention that the various portrayals of Jesus become a way to interpret America’s changing perception of itself and the development of popular religious beliefs. Although D. W. Griffi th’s Intolerance (1916) had already depicted Jesus on screen, Humphries-Brooks begins his analysis with DeMille’s King of Kings. Due to its infl uence upon cinematography and mythmaking, he argues that this work stands as “a modern fi fth gospel” (10). Among the fi lm’s highlighted features are the fi ctitious “love triangle” in which Jesus and Mary Magdalene compete for the devotion of Judas, the underlying anti-Semitic tones, and the concluding scene in which a risen Christ ascends over a modern, industrial cityscape. More than thirty years later, Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings (1961) off ered the fi rst attempt by Hollywood to tell Jesus’ entire life story. Created during the Cold War, this fi lm juxta- poses Jesus, the Messiah of Peace, with Barabbas, the Messiah of War, in the context of Roman oppression, which Humphries-Brooks interprets as analogous to Nazi ideology and Soviet totalitarianism. Regarding other cinematic representations of Jesus, Humphries-Brooks believes that Th e Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), directed by George Stevens, fails in its attempt to appeal to a unifying Protestant narrative in the midst of great social upheaval; Norman Jewison’s Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) employs the genre of rock opera to portray a more human Jesus full of doubt, temp- tation, and alienation who heroically opposes the establishment; and Mar- tin Scorsese’s Th e Last Temptation of Christ (1988) draws upon images from Hollywood’s own history as it controversially explores the psychological dimensions of Jesus’ character and, through them, America’s own psychosis..