Review of Golgotha (1935) by Jean-Francois V — 04 Oct 2008

"Golgotha" covers the last days of Jesus's life among us, from Palm Sunday to his sending the Apostles to teach all nations, with Jesus being arrested about forty minutes into the film. The time frame is therefore very similar to Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ", but the film couldn't be more different.

For one thing, Duvivier does not seem that willing to show his rather unearthly, spectral Jesus. He is more interested in the progress of the conspiracy against him, the debates in the Sanhedrin, the behind-the-scenes negotiations with Pilate and the recruiting of Judas. Most of the time, Jesus himself is seen from a great distance, as if you happened to be there, but at the worst seat imaginable. Sometimes it's even hard to tell where exactly Jesus is supposed to be, and the film feels like a movie version of "Where is Charlie?" When you do get a closer look, Jesus is reduced to a few token sentences, as if the movie was addressing an audience already familiar with the text and needed only to raise its voice once in a while in a "Nobis quoque peccatoribus" to remind them where they were. Much of the soundtrack is a mixture of boisterous music and the braying of crowds. If you ever needed a reminder that the term "turbulent" comes from the latin "turba" for "crowd", this is it.

This said, the film does have its charm. The shot for the washing of the hands was particularly well composed, Gabin's uttering of "What is the truth?" was among the best, and even though Jesus is a bit too theatrical and remote, like some Lazarus emerging from the tomb or an ectoplasm oozing from the Turin Shroud, he is a good antidote to the feel-good Jesus of some modern evangelical productions. I also like the psychological verisimilitude of the confrontation with Herod (Harry Baur) and Jesus' humiliation at the hands of the Roman soldiers.

"Golgotha" is worth seeing if only as a piece of film history: shot barely eight years after Cecil B. De Mille's silent "The King of Kings", it was the first talking Jesus movie, however little it lets its Jesus talk.