Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) on Netflix
G19731h 48mDramaHistoryMusical
Judas Iscariot fears the movement's leader has turned from social justice to preaching that he is the son of God. A troupe of performers stages the last days of Jesus in song.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.4/1033,022 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes50%
Trailer
Plot summary
A troupe of performers travels to the Negev Desert by bus to act out the last days of Jesus in song. Judas Iscariot, part of a humanitarian movement, worries that its leader, Jesus, no longer speaks out about social injustice and instead preaches that he is the son of God. He objects to Jesus' closeness to Mary Magdalene and to the costly ointments she buys for him; Jesus defends her, saying the poor will remain but he will not. In Jerusalem, the temple priests Caiaphas and Annas worry that Jesus' popularity threatens their standing and could bring a clash with the Roman occupiers, and they resolve to have him executed. Jesus refuses Caiaphas' order to disperse the Passover crowds and turns down his follower Simon's wish to lead an uprising against Rome.
Cast
- Pi Douglassas Apostle
- Jonathan Wynneas Apostle
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Norman Jewison's casting notes, written on stationery at the Beverly Hills Hotel, list Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Barry Gibb, Robert Plant and Ian Gillan for the title role; Gillan, who sang Jesus on the concept album, turned the offer down, reckoning he would please fans more by touring with Deep Purple.
- Jewison showed the film to Pope Paul VI, and Ted Neeley remembered that the pope "openly loved what he saw", telling him he believed it would "bring more people around the world to Christianity than anything ever has before".
- Alex Thomson was the original director of photography, but during the first week of principal photography he was seriously injured after falling from a camera crane and was swiftly replaced by veteran cinematographer Douglas Slocombe.
- Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson, who star as Jesus and Judas, both came up through the Broadway show: Neeley played a reporter and a leper and understudied Jesus, while Anderson understudied Judas and took the role over on Broadway and in Los Angeles when Ben Vereen fell ill.
- A few days before the film's release the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council called it an "insidious work" that was "worse than the stage play" in dramatizing "the old falsehood of the Jews' collective responsibility for the death of Jesus", and said it would revive "religious sources of anti-Semitism".
- Choreographer Robert Iscove recalled men with machine guns coming over a hill and pointing them at the crew: they were from a neighboring village, and the trouble had nothing to do with the actual war.
