{"id":39661,"date":"2016-02-01T12:49:39","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T20:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=39661"},"modified":"2016-02-01T23:28:26","modified_gmt":"2016-02-02T07:28:26","slug":"hail-caesar-and-other-movies-about-making-bible-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2016\/02\/hail-caesar-and-other-movies-about-making-bible-movies.html","title":{"rendered":"Hail, Caesar!<\/i> and other movies about making Bible movies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
$\"hailcaesar-crucifixion\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n
Hail, Caesar!<\/a><\/i>, the newest film from the Coen brothers, opens this Friday. The film is set in 1950s Hollywood, and one of its central plot elements is a movie-within-the-movie \u2014 also called Hail, Caesar!<\/i> \u2014 that depicts the crucifixion of Jesus. This got me wondering, how many other films have depicted the making<\/i> of a Bible movie?<\/p>\n
I am not aware of any examples from the silent era, but I do<\/i> know of one such film that was made during the earliest days of the genre\u2019s 1950s revival.<\/p>\n
I refer to Billy Wilder\u2019s Sunset Boulevard<\/b><\/i> (1950), in which former silent movie star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) pays a visit to Cecil B. DeMille (playing himself) while he happens to be rehearsing one of his Bible movies. The film came out just one year after DeMille revived the Bible-epic genre with Samson and Delilah<\/i> (1949), and sure enough, some of the actors we see are wearing Philistine costumes.<\/p>\n
You can watch part of the scene in question here:<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\nThen there is La Ricotta<\/b><\/i> (1963), a short film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini just one year before he made his own Jesus movie, The Gospel According to St. Matthew<\/i> (1964). In La Ricotta<\/i>, Orson Welles \u2014 who appeared in a few Bible movies himself \u2014 plays a director shooting a movie about the crucifixion, and one of the actors who is working for him ends up being taunted and abused by the film\u2019s cast and crew.<\/p>\nI wrote a fair bit about the film <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/08\/pasolinis-la-ricotta.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">back in August 2005<\/a>. You can also watch a clip from the film here, in which the Welles character is interviewed by a journalist:<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Orson Welles in Pasolini\u00b4s about Italian society and its middle-class EN SUB\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zTUYBHp72r8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\nGood Morning, Babylon<\/b><\/i> (1987) was a film about two Italian brothers who work as set designers on the Babylon portion of D.W. Griffith\u2019s Intolerance<\/i> (1916). The fall of Babylon is<\/i> mentioned in the Bible, but I don\u2019t believe Intolerance<\/i> uses the biblical material at all; it does, however have sequences based on the life of Jesus, but I can\u2019t remember if Good Morning, Babylon<\/i> ever went behind those particular scenes.<\/p>\nYou can watch a clip from Good Morning, Babylon<\/i> here:<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"dir. Tavianis - GOOD MORNING, BABILONIA! (excerpt) (1987)\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dfx91MSa4g4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\nThen there was The Making of \u2018\u2026And God Spoke\u2019<\/b><\/i> (1993), a mockumentary about the making of a Bible movie. It\u2019s fairly difficult to find the entire 82-minute film online, but Movieclips has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLZbXA4lyCtqrt08okG0aO-XgAaUiopns8\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">a dozen clips<\/a> totaling about 25 minutes. This clip features Eve Plumb (Jan from The Brady Bunch<\/i>) playing herself as an actress who plays Noah\u2019s wife (which is kind of funny, because Plumb played one of Noah\u2019s daughters-in-law in an episode of the 1970s series Greatest Heroes of the Bible<\/i>):<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"And God Spoke (6\/12) Movie CLIP - Noah's Ark (1993) HD\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HwYyKEu2_Mg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\nFinally, Abel Ferrara\u2019s Mary<\/b><\/i> (2005) starred Juliette Binoche as an actress who is profoundly affected by her work in a film about Mary Magdalene. I wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?s=ferrara+mary\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">several blog posts<\/a> about the film when it premiered in Europe and then when it played in New York City, but I have never seen the film myself. Here\u2019s the trailer, though:<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Mary (2005) Abel Ferrara - Trailer\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/54pJe7wmLcI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\nHonorary mention goes to Holy Flying Circus<\/b><\/i> (2011), a somewhat surreal film that is not about the making of Monty Python\u2019s Life of Brian<\/i> (1979) per se<\/i> but, rather, is about the publicity campaign after the film was finished, and specifically about the events that led up to the infamous televised debate between John Cleese, Michael Palin, Malcolm Muggeridge and Bishop Mervyn Stockwood. Here\u2019s a clip:<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Python's in Barry Atkins' Office - Holy Flying Circus - BBC Four\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FnXehnVpoGU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\nHonorary mention could also go to Jesus Christ Superstar<\/b><\/i> (1973), which begins and ends with actors and crew members getting off and on a bus near the film\u2019s Israeli set. It\u2019s not exactly a movie about<\/i> movie-making, but the film does draw attention to its own artifice. Here is the end of the film, in which everyone gets back on the bus once the show is over \u2014 everyone, that is, except the actor who played Jesus:<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jesus Christ Superstar - Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice - John Nineteen- Forty-One (19-41)\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7SY1gEgjtc4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\nFinally, there are a number of films, such as He Who Must Die<\/i> (1957), Jesus of Montreal<\/i> (1989) and Hamlet 2<\/i> (2008) that show people putting on Passion plays or other kinds of plays about Jesus \u2014 but they\u2019re not making films, per se<\/i>.<\/p>\nDid I forget any significant films? If so, please let me know in the comments!<\/p>\nUpdate:<\/b> A friend reminds me that Peter Jackson\u2019s Forgotten Silver<\/b><\/i> (1995), a pseudo-documentary about a supposedly forgotten New Zealand filmmaker, features the \u201crestoration\u201d of a silent movie about Salome (and Herod Antipas and John the Baptist). So, the film doesn\u2019t exactly dramatize what happens behind the scenes on a Bible-movie set, but it is<\/i> about the making of a fictitious Bible movie.<\/p>\nThe making of Salome<\/i> is mentioned intermittently throughout the film, beginning at the 14:33 mark, and the \u201crestored\u201d Salome<\/i> itself begins at the 43:10 mark:<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2dEq50tyxhg<\/p>\nAlso, in addition to the films I mentioned earlier that show people putting on plays about Jesus, one could point to films like Moonrise Kingdom<\/i> (2012) that show people putting on plays about Noah and other biblical characters. But again, the people in those films are producing plays, not films, so it\u2019s not quite the same thing.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Billy Wilder, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Peter Jackson, Abel Ferrara and others have all told fictitious stories about the making of (frequently fictitious) Bible movies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1650,4],"tags":[860,420,3349,3351,3347,1613,3122,2767,357,678,858,2540,3346,3348,3350,428,364,55,373,159,676,2312,1196,3345],"class_list":["post-39661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-movies","category-blog","tag-antipas","tag-cecil-b-demille","tag-eve-plumb","tag-forgotten-silver","tag-good-morning-babylon","tag-greatest-heroes-of-the-bible","tag-hail-caesar","tag-holy-flying-circus","tag-intolerance","tag-jesus-christ-superstar","tag-john-the-baptist","tag-juliette-binoche","tag-la-ricotta","tag-making-of-and-god-spoke","tag-mary-2005","tag-mary-magdalene","tag-monty-pythons-life-of-brian","tag-noah","tag-orson-welles","tag-peter-jackson","tag-pier-paolo-pasolini","tag-salome","tag-samson-and-delilah-1949","tag-sunset-boulevard"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Hail, Caesar! and other movies about making Bible movies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Billy Wilder, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Peter Jackson, Abel Ferrara and others have all told fictitious stories about the making of (frequently fictitious) Bible movies.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2016\/02\/hail-caesar-and-other-movies-about-making-bible-movies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hail, Caesar! and other movies about making Bible movies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Billy Wilder, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Peter Jackson, Abel Ferrara and others have all told fictitious stories about the making of (frequently fictitious) Bible movies.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2016\/02\/hail-caesar-and-other-movies-about-making-bible-movies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-02-01T20:49:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-02-02T07:28:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/files\/2016\/02\/hailcaesar-crucifixion-1024x309.png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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