It’s all the more powerful for its starkness. There are no angels, no halos, no voice of God to distract from the central image of Christ alone in his agony on the Cross. This is emphasized by Zeffirelli’s restrained camera work, relying on close-ups and a dramatic use of light to achieve an affecting intimacy, even in the Crucifixion. The result is a dramatic story, told simply and well, unhampered by complicated or fashionable themes. Zeffirelli is obsessed by Christ as man and God in this production all sectarian disputes are dismissed as so much window dressing. Among the guests, faithful and infidel alike, the ques^ tion was the same: what in God’s name was so controversial about the film? Nothing. Their best screening room has only 16 seats, which caused a minor religious war in the network’s public relations department over how many chairs should be allocated to each faith. Patrick’s Day the network began scrambling for endorsements, both ecclesiastical and commercial. Faster than a Corvette in overdrive, GM left behind a reported investment of $ 10 million and three years in the Anglo-Italian venture.įaced with General Motors’ defection, NBC determined to air the film anyway and at a special screening on St. The good reverends have a way with words.
They urged Americans to protest to NBC and to GM by spending their car dollars elsewhere.
Neither Jones nor the Reverend John Dekker of Baltimore’s Club Hill Bible Presbyterian Church, another vociferous critic, had seen the film, but both had read an Associated Press interview with Zeffirelli in which the Italian director described Jesus as “an ordinary mangentle, fragile, simple.”This “blasphemy,” particularly at Easter, filled both Jones and Dekker with righteous indignation. Bob Jones, president of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. on Palm Sunday, April 3, and Easter Sunday, April 10), GM withdrew its sponsorship because of criticisms from such noted theologians as Dr. Why else would General Motors and a bunch of fundamentalist Protestants band together in a religious brouhaha that has caused condemnation to rain down upon both the car makers and the preachers, and guaranteed NBC a huge television audience for Franco Zeffirelli’s six-hour film, Jesus Of Nazareth? Less than three weeks before airtime (NBC stations, 8 p.m. What, in God’s name, was all the fuss over Zeffirelli’s ‘Jesus’?