Walsh, Richard. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003. 209 pgs + xi pp. $23.50 (CAD). ISBN: 1-56338-387-X.

[1] Walsh’s book is part of a growing trend within academia to take seriously the art of film in relaying religious meaning.  Of particular interest has been the genre of Jesus films, which Walsh approaches as a conversation between gospels (canonical and non-canonical), film (Jesus films from The King of Kings to Life of Brian), and scholars. Recognizing the inherent danger of attempting such a task from the perspective of a Christian scholar, Walsh sets out to read the gospels “in the dark” of the theatre, and not in the oftentimes blinding light of ecclesial or academic readings of the gospels. All too often Christian scholars take from film only that which supports their ideology and discard or ignore the remainder; Walsh recognizes this danger and distances himself from it from the beginning.

[2] For all intents and purposes the first two chapters are the most significant of Walsh’s book. The first (“Telling Sacred Stories in Cathedral Cinemas”) sets the various Jesus films in their historical, cultural, and ideological contexts, while the second (“Films without Heroes”) puts each of the Jesus films in their cinematic and literary (narrative) context.  As America’s own religious identity has evolved, so has the way that Americans culturally portray religion. Walsh shows that in the Jesus film genre portrayals of Jesus have evolved from the reluctant depiction of Demille’s The King of Kings to the nostalgic Jesus of Nazareth to the demythologizing of directors such as Scorsese and Arcand.

[3] It is the charts in both chapters, however, that are most helpful in illustrating Walsh’s argument.  For example, under the heading of “cinematic and literary focus” (figure 2), Walsh notes that Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Matthew has a cinematic focus on peasant life and a story focus on the destruction of peasants by institution. Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand, has a cinematic focus on special effects while the story focuses on the conversion of the apostles.  Under “genre” Walsh locates Ray’s and Steven’s films (King of Kings and The Greatest Story Ever Told, respectively) as biblical epics, while Krish and Sykes’ film (Jesus), as well as Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Matthew are labeled “documentary.”  Another category that Walsh adds to his genre chart (figure 3) is that of the epithet. The footnote tells us that this follows the “tags” used by W. Barnes Tatum (Jesus at the Movies, 1997) to distinguish between the different portrayals of Jesus in the various Jesus films. Walsh notes that the Jesus of film, like the epic heroes (e.g., Odysseus, Achilles), is reducible to mere epithets—the innocent victim (as in D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, or Terry Jones’s Monty Python’s Life of Brian), the modern hero (as in Young’s Jesus)—reinforcing his argument that Western culture, including film, makes of Jesus what it will.  It would be interesting to see where recent Jesus films such as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and Philip Saville’s The Gospel of John would fit in Walsh’s schema.

[4] In the next five chapters Walsh puts into practice his goal of reading the Gospels in the dark; that is, reading them in the light of the Jesus films. His “dialogues” include Jesus of Montreal and the Gospel of Mark; Godspell and the teachings of Jesus (namely in the gospels of Q and Thomas); Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Matthew and the Gospel of Matthew; King of Kings and the Gospel of Luke; and The Greatest Story Ever Told and the Gospel of John.

[5]  It is in the chapters, where Walsh brings the Jesus films into dialogue with the gospels, that his book fails. This is so for two reasons. First, it is almost impossible not to read the Jesus films in the light of the gospels since the films are based on them, however loosely.  It is very hard to separate the two.  How can one not critique Pasolini’s film if one does not mention its similarities and discrepancies from the gospel on which it is supposedly based?  Second, Walsh inevitably reads the Jesus films as a biblical scholar. He views Jesus of Montreal in the light of apocalypse; he sees in Godspell parallels with Q and Thomas; he points to the Gospel of Matthew as a precursor to The Gospel According to Matthew in the same way that the Old Testament is a precursor the Gospel of Matthew; he notes the fourfold structure of both Luke’s gospel and Ray’s King of Kings; he claims that both the Gospel of John and The Greatest Story Ever Told have Gnostic tendencies. Although he tries not to, Walsh inevitably reads into the Jesus films what he knows as a biblical scholar; he views the Jesus films in the light of the gospels.

[6] This book is probably not suitable for an introductory course on Jesus in film. At times Walsh is hard to follow, and the beginner in this field may get left behind. Advanced students, though, will be greatly rewarded for their labors.  Any scholar interested in Jesus films and their relation to their New Testament precursors (to borrow a term used by Walsh and George Aichele, with whom he co-authored Screening Scripture, 2002) must read this book. It is a well researched, well thought out, and challenging presentation of the portrayal of Jesus in film.

Robert Cooke
Queen’s College
St. John’s, Newfoundland
cooke@mun.ca