From the Manger to the Cross

This movie is not the first feature picture. That distinction appears to go to an Australian film, NED KELLY AND HIS GANG from about 1906. Others, particularly the Italians, had made a few films of more than a couple of reels before FROM THE MANGER TO THE CROSS came out. Nonetheless, this movie is historically very important as the first American feature..... and much of it was shot on location in Egypt and what was then Palestine. It was an enormous undertaking in its time and deserves our respect.

But, does that mean it is worth seeing? Well, if you are fascinated by the history of the film, yes. If you are unfamiliar with silent film techniques, then no, almost certainly not.

This film is shot as a series of tableaux. In the films of D.W. Griffith and others of his line, the titles explain the picture. In tableaux, the pictures illuminate the text of the titles, like an illustrated edition of a novel. Given the average American's familiarity with the subject of this movie -- the life and death of Jesus Christ -- and the use of quotes from the New Testament as titles, this is precisely the effect of FROM THE MANGER TO THE CROSS: an exciting one, for people who never got to travel further than downstate. To a modern audience, however, it will seem static, as this style of moviemaking went out of style by about 1920.

Second, there are the anachronisms. Cities are shown in their modern guises and if Jesus never saw the walls of Nazareth reared by the Crusaders, so much the worse for the moviegoer. If the nose of the Sphinx was battered off some time between 700 and 1000 AD, someone viewing this picture would never know it, given that Jesus, Joseph and Mary are shown sitting in front of the Sphinx and a pyramid to illustrate the Egyptian exile.

So there are problems with this movie that make it something not to be recommended to the average, or even above-average moviegoer. However, if you love films for their own sake, give it a look.

While this pioneering effort does have some shortcomings that would now be easy to point out, it also has several strengths that are quite commendable, given that it was one of the earliest full-length movies to be produced. While mostly a straightforward rendering of the life of Jesus Christ, it has a number of visual effects that, while not flashy, are generally effective. The decision to film it in or near the original locations of the story, while introducing some occasional anachronisms, works in general, and gives it a more appropriate feel than a studio backdrop would have.

The adaptation by Gene Gauntier, the actress who also appears as Jesus' mother Mary, does a pretty good job of covering a selection of events from Jesus' life. It does clearly assume a pretty good familiarity with the New Testament writings, as in several scenes the point of the action is otherwise obscured. Even then, though, Robert Henderson-Bland's low-key rendering of Jesus usually communicates a general image of gentleness and wisdom, which in many cases is more significant than the specific teachings.

The whole picture is shot in the old 'tableau' format, which does, in particular, minimize the impact of Henderson-Bland's performance. But most audiences of its own era would almost certainly have found this a worthwhile and believable portrayal of the life of Christ, and even now it deserves some commendation for its positive qualities.

From the Manger to the Cross (1912)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Early Warner Bros. film is the typical telling of Jesus, as the title says, from the manger to the cross. This is a really boring, dull and pointless telling of the story but I guess the studio wanted to make a feature and stretched everything to the limit. The film uses quotes from the New Testament but this gets tiresome very quickly as well. The film was shot on location all around the world and from a historic standpoint, this here is interesting but the rest of the film isn't.

Life and Passion of Christ, The (1903)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent telling of the story of Jesus from his birth up to the resurrection. This early French feature is full of wonderful imagination and the use of color is a real added bonus. The visual are all very nice and the set decoration is among the best I've seen in any silent film of its era. The biggest problem is that the feature runs just over 40-minutes and it seems like a bunch of short films edited together. There's really no consistent storytelling but instead just various segments from the Bible.

Sidney Olcott's curious life of Christ was staple fare for 50s schoolkids under the guise of the terrible voiceover version distributed by Rev. Brian Hessian - this was the version I first saw and although the quality of the film, all its anachorisms aside, shone through, I didn't think the marriage of modernish narration to silent splendour worked at all.

I later saw a tinted copy on video with a lovely musical accompaniment and was struck by the touching portrayal of Robert Henderson-Bland as Jesus. Some of the camera tricks are justly famous, the boy and the cross probably more so than any other, but this very early feature film is one of the best I have seen so far.

This inaugurates a handful of Good Friday-related films that I will be watching all through this week. It is perhaps the first major effort on celluloid about the life of Christ but, being virtually a century old, cinematic technique was obviously still very primitive then; though the static camera-work makes the whole feel more like a succession of religious tableaux than a film, framing is generally pretty crammed and sometimes even offers admirable depth for its era. While obviously recounting events which would be familiar to most viewers, this aims for absolute authenticity: not only is the entire script composed of direct (albeit stilted) quotes from the Scriptures but the film-makers even went so far as to shoot in the actual Palestinian locations! At the then-remarkable length of 70 minutes, the film virtually breezes through Christ's tenure on Earth, taking care to present most of the highlights and, naturally, devoting a good deal of the running-time – about 35%, in fact – to his Passion and Crucifixion (though, curiously enough, completely omitting the Resurrection - more on this later)! With this in mind, there is no real plot progression to speak of as a quote from one of the four Gospels merely sets up the current scene; even so, there are a couple of surprising blunders along the way: we are told that Christ was capable of working miracles before presenting the one which is recorded as having been His first (at the Wedding of Cana) and, again, an episode involving a woman applying an ointment to Jesus' feet and wiping it off with her hair is shown twice (the second depiction is an extended scene which also displays Judas' growing disenchantment with his Master but surely the two could have been combined!); likewise, the fact that Jesus indiscriminately raises a man from the dead before the famous revivification of his friend Lazarus diminishes the desired effect of the latter moment! As I said, the last third of the film involves the episodes in Christ's life which are commemorated at this particular time of year; even if, once more, they are presented in streamlined fashioned – thus lacking in perspective – the violence inflicted upon Jesus is quite realistically done (though, needless to say, nowhere near the quasi-exploitative detail exhibited in Mel Gibson's THE PASSION OF THE Christ [2004]). I will be checking out another Silent film on the subject – the obscure Italian production CHRISTUS (1916) – but it is almost a given that the best early version of it will remain Cecil B. De Mille's much more elaborate (and genuinely impressive) THE KING OF KINGS (1927).

P.S. Apparently, this film was re-released in 1916, retitled simply Jesus OF NAZARETH and addressing the glaring Resurrection issue by attaching to it footage lifted from the aforementioned CHRISTUS (which, obviously enough, featured completely different actors)! For what it is worth, this alternate version can be easily viewed in its entirety (albeit in ten successive segments) on "You Tube"...