The Gospel According to Matthew (1964) on Netflix
NR19642h 17mBiographyDramaHistory
In Roman Galilee, the Jewish community lives in poverty under King Herod and the Pharisee elite. Mary bears a son, Jesus, who is baptized by John the Baptist and gathers disciples.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.6/1015,335 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
Joseph worries that his pregnant wife Mary has been unfaithful until an angel tells him that God caused the child. After Jesus is born, magi visit, an angel sends the family to Egypt, and King Herod massacres the region's infants before they can return to Judea. Years later, John the Baptist preaches to the commoners of Galilee, and Jesus comes to him to be baptized. Satan offers Jesus wealth and power, and he refuses. He gathers disciples, warning them that they will suffer for his sake, and travels through Galilee healing the blind and raising the dead as he proclaims the Kingdom of God. Crowds follow him, and the wealthy and the religious elite take offense at his teaching.
Cast
- Margherita Carusoas Maria (giovane)
- Susanna Pasolinias Maria (vecchia)
- Marcello Moranteas Giuseppe
- Mario Socrateas Giovanni Battista
- Settimio Di Portoas Pietro
- Alfonso Gattoas Andrea
- Luigi Barbinias Giacomo
- Giacomo Moranteas Giovanni
- Giorgio Agambenas Filippo
- Guido Cerretanias Bartolomeo
- Rosario Migaleas Tommaso
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Gospel According to Matthew (1964)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Enrique Irazoqui, a 19-year-old Spanish economics student and communist activist, at first refused the role of Jesus for ideological reasons before friends talked him into playing a "Gramscian" Christ, and he gave his entire acting fee to anti-Franco causes; Spain's Falangist government targeted him for taking part in the film.
- Pasolini cut 592 of the 1070 verses in the Gospel of Matthew and rearranged scenes from the narrative at least seventeen times.
- Pasolini scouted the Holy Land but rejected it as unsuitable and "commercialized", judging Israel's landscape too modern and industrialized to stand in for the time of Christ, and shot the film in Italy instead.
- At the Venice Film Festival the film won the OCIC Award and the Silver Lion, and at its premiere a crowd gathered to boo Pasolini but cheered him once the film had ended.
- Pasolini cast his own mother, Susanna, as the elderly Mary; she had herself lost a son, Pasolini's brother, a resistance fighter during World War II.
- Martin Scorsese instructed the cast and crew of his own Biblical film The Last Temptation of Christ to view Pasolini's Gospel.
