Jesus Christ, movie star.

Whether the intent is to entertain or evangelize, there's just no denying that his is the greatest story ever told. Patrick McCormick looks at Jesus' many portrayals on the silver screen and recommends those that are truly golden.

"IN THE BEGINNING" THERE WAS JUST THE WORD, FOUR gospel accounts, and a collection of New Testament letters. But images weren't far behind. Soon there were catacomb drawings of the Good Shepherd, Roman mosaics of the Last Supper, and Byzantine icons of Christ and the saints. Later came medieval altar pieces, stations of the cross, intricately carved bronze doors, and the stained glass windows of Christendom's Gothic cathedrals, each with ornately illustrated allegories and narratives from the life and Passion of Jesus. And then, in the fullness of time, came a heavenly host of Renaissance frescoes and Baroque statuary, and the Word was--so to speak--made flesh.

Still, as breathtaking as it was, Michelangelo and Bernini's flesh didn't breathe, or walk and talk. For that, we had to wait for Mr. Edison's kinetescope and the Lumiere brothers' cinematographe. But we didn't have to wait long. Within the first five years of "moving pictures" there were six films on the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus, and by the time the movie industry was celebrating its first century, there were more than 115 celluloid versions of the gospels. Whether playing the lead in Intolerance, King of Kings, The Greatest Story Ever Told, or Godspell--or casting a shadow from offstage in Ben Hur, Quo Vadis, The Robe, or Barabbas--Jesus has proved to be more popular down at the Roxy than Tarzan, the Marx Brothers, or Jane Austen.

In living rooms everywhere, epics and miniseries about his birth and death remain perennial favorites at Christmas and Easter. On top of that, countless films as varied as La Strada, Shane, and Babette's Feast center around a "Christ figure" who takes away our suffering or sins. This year is no exception: With all the millennial New Year's Eve bashes behind us, it's now time to fete the God-man whose existence has us marking this millennium in the first place--as portrayed in Jesus, an upcoming CBS miniseries, and The Miracle Maker, an upcoming ABC movie (scooped only by last November's Mary & Jesus, produced by the Kennedy Shrivers and aired on NBC).

Christians, it would seem, have found a new way of bringing the Good News to the ends of the earth.

The advantages of a celluloid Christ would seem to be legion. No longer relying on a thin stream of words to fuel our imagination, we are suddenly immersed in a cinemascopic epic with a cast of thousands, our every emotion enhanced by the full orchestrations of Handel's Messiah. Without the burden or cost of an international flight or time machine, we find ourselves whisked back into first-century Palestine, trailing Jesus as he presses through crowds in Jerusalem's narrow streets, or listening to him preach from a fishing boat at the edge of the Sea of Galilee. Before our eyes he and his disciples act out gospel encounters and episodes we have read about again and again, following a screenplay that adds nuance, immediacy, and psychological depth to the bare bones of the gospel account. In the faces of Peter, Mary, Judas, and Caiphas we see the shape and color of faith, wonder, shame, and resistance, and in the portrayal of Jesus' healing miracles the camera seems to bring our hearts within reach of God's merciful touch.

NONETHELESS, THE TRANSLATION FROM SCRIPTURE TO screenplay hasn't been trouble free. Part of the problem is that the gospels were written to evangelize, while Hollywood's main purpose is to entertain. The two goals do not always coincide. For while the Good News proclaimed in the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John offers hope and consolation to the downtrodden and broken, it is primarily a call to repentance and conversion. Again and again, Jesus' audiences are challenged to listen to God's Word with an unprotected heart. They are to take the splinter out of their own eye, forgive their enemies, and share their wealth with the poor. In short, the central message of the gospels is that we are to take up our cross and follow Jesus.

Hollywood, on the other hand, is in the business of entertaining, of making people feel good about themselves--maybe even good enough to go shopping. Since that isn't likely to happen when you are calling folks to repentance and conversion, Tinsel Town tends to soft-pedal such messages, preferring instead to emphasize romantic or even sentimental versions of the Jesus story. So in Bible epics like Nicholas Ray's King of Kings (1961), George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), or even Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth (1977), we encounter a Jesus who is inspirational, even holy, but hardly prophetic. Whether portrayed by an aloof Max von Sydow, a youthful Jeffrey Hunter, or an otherworldly Robert Powell, the result is similar: a holy card Christ full of compassion and forgiveness, but strangely uninterested in unsettling or scandalizing us. Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world without calling for repentance.

Another problem with translating the gospels to film has to do with christology. Should the cinematic storyteller stress the humanity of the carpenter from Nazareth--or the divinity of the Messiah? Whether trying to be reverent or avoid controversy, most early filmmakers chose the "high road," emphasizing the Son of God over the son of Mary and Joseph. In toga epics like The Robe, Ben Hur, and Quo Vadis, Jesus is so holy that we rarely see his face and must, like the woman with a hemorrhage, be content with a glimpse of the great man's garment as he passes by. And even in movies like Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927) and the subsequent Jesus epics by Ray, Stevens, and Zeffirelli, there is a cool detachment about the carpenter's son. In these films, miracles and wonders get the full treatment, while the temptation in the desert and the tears in Gethsemane seem like dress rehearsals. Indeed, it's hard to see why this unruffled Jesus would ever cry out about being abandoned.

STILL, NOT EVERY MOVIE HAS PUT JESUS on a lofty pedestal. A number of films have stressed the humanity--even frailty and neurosis--of the Galilean rabbi. In Norman Jewison's musical Jesus Christ Superstar, the miracle worker from Nazareth is not just human, but a rather weak, insecure, and strangely unreligious human. Here is a Jesus with little faith in God or his own vocation--certainly not the sort of fellow you would trust to drive out demons or moneylenders, walk across a swimming pool, or face down a crowd of angry Pharisees. This Jesus needs to be in a rest home for underachieving Messiahs.

Still, the most neurotic celluloid Christ must certainly be the disturbed anti-hero of Martin Scorsese's film version of Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ (condemned for all the wrong reasons). For here Jesus is not merely uncertain or insecure but suffers from a macabre fascination with blood and violence, someone in need of some serious medical treatment.

My own two personal favorite Jesus films, Godspell (1973) and Jesus of Montreal (1989), overcome the problems of translating the gospels to the big screen because they, like Jesus, tell their stories as parables. For in both David Greene's Godspell and Denys Arcand's Jesus of Montreal, we are at first enchanted by the charm of watching a "play" about the Passion, and only slowly do we recognize that we have stumbled into a place where the story makes unsettling demands upon us.

Charmed by its playful costumes and clowning Christ, we are seduced by Godspell's parable and find ourselves lovingly tricked by a jesting God who has snuck beneath our defenses disguised in greasepaint. So too, watching the tale of a ragtag band of actors put together a Passion play in modern Montreal, Jesus shows up in surprising, unexpected places, and we only catch on later that we were the intended audience all along.

Maybe that's why the best Jesus stories aren't usually the religious epics with the huge casts and colossal sets, but the Christ-figure films like La Strada, Babette's Feast, and Dead Man Walking. For when we see religious films coming at us (often at Christmas or Easter), we get into a pious or religious mindset, put on our Sunday finest, and get ready to encounter God. But as the parables of Jesus prove, God has more success sneaking up on us in stories, catching us off balance, and showing up in places where we (and other religious folks) never expected to find her.

RELATED ARTICLE: McCORMICK'S QUICK TAKES ON TWO NEW JESUS STORIES

Jesus (CBS Miniseries: May 14 & 17). There are a number of things to like about this occasionally uneven and somewhat overloaded miniseries that follows Jesus from the beginning of his public life to his death and Resurrection in Jerusalem. Jeremy Sisto (Jesus) generally does a good job portraying both the struggles and deepening conviction of the carpenter from Nazareth as he acknowledges and embraces his identity as Messiah. There is a nice balance between the zeal and passion that fuels his commitment to bring about God's realm, and the temptations and doubts that haunt him in the desert and at Gethsemane. While taking the humanity of Jesus seriously, this is also a film having no doubts about either miracles or the Resurrection.

In walking the line between revolutionary zealots and Roman oppressors, Sisto's Jesus offers a message of both forgiveness and liberation, one that abhors violence but not confrontation. And, refreshingly enough, the compassion Jesus shows for sinners and outcasts here has some political and economic implications, though these remain largely undeveloped.

There are also a couple of strong, intriguing performances. Gary Oldman is a more conniving and powerful Pontius Pilate than we are used to, a spidery politico manipulating lesser creatures like Caiphas, Herod, and Judas Iscariot, while providing a much more interesting (and dangerous) foil for Jesus than Jeroen Krabbe's over-the-top and nearly campy Satan. At the same time David O'Hara offers a traditional but strong performance as John the Baptist (though one wonders why Jesus' cousin should have a Scottish accent).

More cumbersome is Jacqueline Bisset's performance as a stage-mother Mary, who seems to serve as Jesus' manager and counselor. So too Debra Messinger's Mary Magdalene is haunted a bit by echoes of the actor's sitcom role as an oversexed vamp on Will and Grace. And the romantic relationship with Mary (sister of Lazarus and Martha) seems forced and awkward. Still, it is intriguing to see a Jesus film struggling to give larger roles to women. One could only wish this could be done without limiting them to the roles of virgin mothers, prostitutes, and possible fiancees. ** 1/2

The Miracle Maker (ABC: April 23). The first and most striking thing about this charming and engaging film is the special effects. It may also be the primary reason why this amazingly sophisticated 3-D clay-animation film works its magic as a parable so well. For as the opening sequence immerses us in the sort of animated set we are accustomed to associating with Saturday morning kidvids--and as the storyline introduces us to Jesus through the eyes of a Scout Finch-like little girl who turns out to be the sickly daughter of Jairus--we are seduced into thinking we have stumbled into some biblical Wonderland, where we will be enchanted and entertained, but never challenged.

But the characters we meet here, including Ralph Fiennes' Jesus, William Hurls Jairus, Ian Holm's Pontius Pilate, David Thewlis' Judas Iscariot, and (especially) Miranda Richardson's Mary Magdalene are anything but clay cutouts.

Instead, the animators have drawn faces and figures of such rich and textured expression that their emotions seem more immediate and visceral, and we find ourselves less protected from their trials and tribulations than we might have been with "real" actors.

As a result, we are drawn into many of the gospel encounters as if seeing them for the first time. This enchanting entrapment only deepens as we follow the "Miracle Maker" on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem and walk with him through the Last Supper, betrayal in the garden, and Passion and death. Fiennes' voice gives Jesus a rich authority as Messiah, while the clay figure provides the carpenter's son with a frailty that makes us believe in his humanity. *** 1/2

PATRICK MCCORMICK, an associate professor of Christian ethics at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.