The final days of Jesus from the time he enters the city of Jerusalem. Viewed as a threat, it is decided that he must be captured, tried, and executed as a criminal, a plan aided and abetted by disciple Judas Iscariot.
Acting
Robert Le Vigan's Christ: exhausted, human, devastatingly still.
Direction
Duvivier's Expressionist shadows in a biblical epic — wild.
Cinematography
Massive crowds shot like anxious geometry, not spectacle.
Director
Julien Duvivier
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Robert Le Vigan was a fascist sympathizer who fled to Argentina after liberation; Duvivier had to replace him in his next film. Awkward.
Duvivier shot this simultaneously in three languages (French, English, German) with different casts — the 1935 equivalent of a Marvel multiverse.
FR
