The Greatest Story Ever Told Review

Based on a 1949 novel by writer Fulton Oursler, George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told is one of those movies that has a somewhat diffuse quality about it.  On the one hand, it is a well-intentioned and reverent adaptation of Oursler's novelization of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ based on the New Testament of the Bible, with good cinematography, nice visual effects, and a wonderful score by Alfred Newman (with some Handel and Verdi tossed in by request from producer/co-writer/director George Stevens) adding wonderful production values to the movie's inherently powerful story.

 And even though Max Von Sydow looks too European to play Jesus (who was, of course, born in what is now known as Israel and probably looked more Semitic than white, blue-eyed, almost Germanic), the actor gives the Son of Man a definitely powerful yet wonderfully human screen presence, outdoing Jeffrey Hunter's performance as Jesus in 1961's King of Kings.

The Greatest Story Ever Told  at times works well.  It lays out the 33-year-long lifespan and ministry with an almost "you are there" verisimilitude and some wonderfully human depictions of the Christ, as in the scene where Jesus, upon finding out his friend Lazarus (Michael Tolan) has died, weeps.

On the other hand, the script by Stevens and James Lee Barrett manages to conjure up some of the dippiest exchanges of dialog in Hollywood history. When David McCallum's Judas introduces himself to von Sydow's Jesus, one doesn't know whether to cry with despair or cover one's eyes in mortification:

Judas: I am Judas -- Iscariot.

Jesus: I am Jesus -- of Nazareth.

It's a pity that the script has these linguistic lapses in quality, because when von Sydow is quoting from the New Testament, his delivery is impeccable and awe inspiring.

The Greatest Story Ever Told's biggest flaws aren't limited to the sometimes risible and banal conversations that somehow take away some of the power from the film's narrative. The pacing is glacially slow, and none of Stevens' many cinematic tricks -- odd visuals, weird sound effects, and editorial sleight-of-hand can compensate for a plodding plot that goes on, and on, and on.

Worse still is the obligatory all-star cast, a veritable Who's Who of A-list Hollywood royalty of the early 1960s. As in the then-popular "all-star cast" war films of the day (think The Longest Day or Battle of the Bulge), most of these luminaries of the silver screen appear in what amount to be glorified cameos, ranging from Claude Rains as King Herod, Charlton Heston as John the Baptist, Sidney Poitier as Simon the Cyrene, all the way to the woefully miscast John Wayne as a Roman centurion -- who, by the by, never, ever flays Jesus on the way to Calvary. While there may be viewers who aren't bothered by these stars' presence, to others it transforms Stevens' movie into an exercise of Hollywood "Spot the Star."

Whether viewers like this movie or not depends on their own perspectives and religious convictions, as well as their tolerance for films with long running times.  And trust me on this...this is not an average length movie; the current DVD 1-disc edition clocks in at a butt-numbing 199 minutes, which is a bit longer than James Cameron's 1997 Titanic.