”A magnificent film... handled with reverence, artistic appreciation and admirable restraint.” - New York Daily News

The supreme epic and definitive screen version of the life of Jesus Christ ”touches the heart and stirs the spirit” (New York Times). Academy Award-winning director George Stevens (A PLACE IN THE SUN, GIANT) collaborated with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Carl Sandburg to tell the story of the carpenter who became teacher, healer and savior. The movie, true to the Biblical story, earned five Oscar nominations and has become an enduring and revered classic.

Internationally-acclaimed actor Max Von Sydow gives the performance of a lifetime, revealing the compassion, anguish and glory of Jesus of Nazareth. He’s suppprted by one of the finest film casts ever assembled including: Charlton Heston as John the Baptist, Jose Ferrer as King Herod, John Wayne as the Centurian, Sidney Poitier as Simon of Cyrene, Telly Sevalas as Pontius Pilate and Angela Lansbury as Claudia. Together they bring the pages of the Gospels to life as never before.


TRIVIA:

• Telly Savalas shaved his head bald for his role as Ponitus Pilate. He kept his head shaved for the rest of his life.

• Being a perfectionist, George Stevens did many takes of John Wayne’s single line, ” Truly, this man was the Son of God.” A rumor has long persisted that one stage Stevens pleaded with Wayne to show more emotion, an overwhelming sense of awe. During the next take, Wayne changed the line to, ”Aw, truly this man was the Son of God.”

• This was Claude Rains’ final film before his death on May 30, 1967 at age 77.

• Max Von Sydow said the hardest part about playing Christ was the expectations people had of him to remain in character at all times. He could not smoke between takes, have a drink after work, or be affectionate with his wife on set.

• Joanna Dunham, who played Mary Magdalene, became pregnant during filming. The director worked around this by shooting her from the chest up as much as possible, making her later scenes markedly unlike the earlier ones.

• Director George Stevens shot THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD in the American southwest, in Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah. Pyramid Lake in Nevada represented the Sea of Galilee, Lake Moab in Utah was used to film the Sermon on the Mount and California’s Death Valley was the setting of Jesus’ 40-day journey into the wilderness.

• This was Joseph Schildkraut’s final film before his death on January 21, 1964 at age 67. He died almost fifteen months before the film’s release.

• This marks the American film debut of Max Von Sydow. Prior to this film, Von Sydow was a highly popular Swedish actor who appeared in Ingmar Bergman film (THE SEVENTH SEAL in 1957; WILD STRAWBERRIES in 1957; THE VIRGIN SPRING in 1960; THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY in 1961). Stevens wanted an unknown actor free of secular and unseemly associations in the mind of the public.

• Jean Simmons was initially announced to portray Mary Magdalene.

• By the time shooting was completed in August 1963, the budget ran to an astounding $20,000,000 - the 2017 equivalent of approximately $148,000,000 - plus additional editing and promotion charges), making it the most expensive film shot in the United States and the second most expensive film ever made at the time, following CLEOPATRA.

• George Stevens habitually took at least one year over the editing stage of his films, once he had achieved complete artistic control over them. He usually shot dozens of takes of each scene, varying his camera angles from take to take, so that he would have a great deal of choice in the editing suite. In this case, so much footage was amassed that the film’s opening date - originally planned for Christmas 1964 - had to be postponed because the editing was not completed, even though he had finished shooting in the late summer of 1963. The film opened at Easter 1965 with a running time of some 225 minutes, making it one of the longest theatrically-released films of all time; it was re-cut several times since its initial release and this version has not been seen since the 1960s.

• Filming began in 1962 and was completed in 1963, but the movie went unreleased until 1965.

• Martin Landau has said in interviews that half his role was deleted in the editing stage.

• While between his films LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, David Lean directed some interior scenes with Claude Rains and José Ferrer as a favor for George Stevens, who was bogged down with the production in Nevada. Meanwhile, Jean Neguelesco directed the Nativity scene.

• In his career, Max Von Sydow has played Jesus, Satan and was the titular character in THE EXORCIST.

• Alec Guinness was sought for a cameo.

• In his diaries, Charlton Heston says that when he filmed the baptism scene with Max Von Sydow that if the river Jordan had been as cold as Pyramid Lake where they shot the sequence, Christianity would never have gotten off the ground.

• The cast includes eight Oscar winners:

- José Ferrer
- Van Heflin
- Charlton Heston
- Martin Landau (subsequent winner)
- Sidney Poitier
- Joseph Schildkraut
- John Wayne (subsequent winner)
- Shelley Winters

and ten Oscar nominees:

- Carroll Baker
- Victor Buono
- Angela Lansbury
- Robert Loggia (subsequent nominee)
- Dorothy McGuire
- Sal Mineo
- Claude Rains
- Telly Savalas
- Max Von Sydow (subsequent nominee)
- Ed Wynn

• Jospeh Schildkraut (Nicodemus) previously played Judas Iscariot in Cecil B DeMille’s 1927 silent epic THE KING OF KINGS, which also depicted the life of Christ.

• George Stevens originally offered the role of Mary Magdalene to Elizabeth Taylor, but she was unavailable.

• Max Von Sydow was still mastering his English speaking skills while this film was in production.

• George Stevens was also under pressure to John the Baptist sequence, which was shot at the Glen Canyon area - it was scheduled to become Lake Powell with the completion of the Glen Canyon Dam, and the production held up the project.

• George Stevens offered Spencer Tracy the role of Pontius Pilate but Tracy was convinced that it would conflict with his shooting schedule for IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD. The shooting schedules didn’t overlap but Tracy passed on the role anyway.

• For THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, George Stevens reunited with his actors he had previously worked with:

- Carroll Baker (Veronica) - GIANT
- Van Heflin (Bar Armand) - SHANE
- Sal Mineo (Uriah) - GIANT
- Joseph Schildkraut (Nicodemus) - THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK
- Shelley Winters (Woman of no name) - A PLACE IN THE SUN and THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK
- Ed Wynn (Old Aram) - THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK

1965

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Movie

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2018-02-07 18:28:24