Cinema: A Communist's Christ

The Gospel According to St. Matthew is a modest, unadorned movie on the life of Christ that should satisfy the yearnings of anyone who has ever suffered through the pretentious piety of multimillion-dollar orgies of Scripturama. Paradoxically, it is the work of a usually irreverent Italian Communist, Director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who casts a solemn, hot-eyed Spanish student (Enrique Irazoqui) as Jesus and sends him out to preach among the peasantry with a social revolutionist's fervor. Yet Pasolini at his best has created something more noble and touching than a Marxist Messiah, and more authentic than the customary sun-kissed Hollywood Christ....

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