I'm a big fan of George Stevens. I think A Place in the Sun is one of the great films of all time. What he did with the close-up in Sun is nothing short of miraculous - he literally reinvented the close-up and in the process elevated Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift to stellar status. When I first heard that Stevens was making the story of Christ, I was baffled. My first question was why? It may be the greatest story ever told but it is also the oldest. Is there a single person on this planet who does not know the story? Then when I saw that Stevens was casting every star in the world for the film I was truly incredulous. How could any film with all those stars not collapse just because of the sheer weight of so much star power? Mike Todd succeeded with Around the World in Eighty Days but that film was nothing like Jesus' story and in fact lent itself to so many stars each one of which was perfectly cast and it was fun to look for them as the mammoth production unrolled. But Jesus' story is hardly the kind of vehicle to lend itself to such theatrics and ultimately the ploy simply becomes part of the overall problem with the film. It ends up being just too ponderous in too many ways to be enjoyable. It's way too long and has way too many scenes that just do not make any sense. The script departs from scripture in a most annoying way, for example, when an apostle's coat is stolen and Jesus lectures him on giving everything he owns away. Just does not work and it's not even according to scripture.
