Life and Passion of Christ

THE STORY OF THE KELLY GANG (1906) seems to have made it clear that people would sit still for a movie considerably longer than one reel. So over in France, Pathe Freres had its best director, Ferdinand Zecca, make this feature on a sure-fire subject, even as Gaumont did the same.

It's about 45 minutes long. It's also told in an 'illustrated text' format, in which titles are offered, and then you see the events. Although a couple of scenes use horizontal pans, most of them are shot with a single, unmoving camera set-up. The backgrounds are all sets. There is extensive coloring in the copy I looked at, quite obviously stenciled.

Familiar subjects were frequently used for early feature films, just as they had been for shorter films. This would allow those who were familiar with the works in written form to link them to the book version, and serve as markers and instruction for those less familiar. I'm sure when they were planning this film, it was assumed that the vast majority of the audience would know the many miracles briefly reenacted here by name, but would also serve to instruct the fallen away, the non-believer, and the heathen.

Although its primitive cinematic techniques make this a hard film to watch more than a century later, in its time it was revolutionary. Mostly it's of interest to people who, like me, are interested in the history and evolution of movies.