Surely this IS the greatest story ever told. A populist preacher — from the backwater of a backwater — is abruptly snuffed out, crushed under the Imperial foot. Yet his message spreads, flashing into a conflagration which the mightiest empire in the world can't extinguish and is ultimately consumed by. The story gets even better when you consider the mythically-perfect oppositions set into conflict: incomparable military power and grandiose display versus the humility, love and sacrifice of that one solitary life. You can't get much more dramatic than that. And it's not just great drama: it's spectacular cinema — the first subject truly worthy of Hollywood's epic ambitions and widescreen-Technicolor-special effects presentation. There is this little problem, though. The Tinsel Town treatment and all the trimmings are decidedly at odds with everything the subject had to say about mass taste, fame, wealth and power. And despite the obvious cinematic possibilities for a showdown with the Empire, the core of this story involves less a political revolution than a change of hearts: much less easy to photograph, and touching upon miracles that glitzy effects may tend only diminish. Yet the Incarnation suggests this very possibility: that something of Cosmic Significance may show up in the most unlikely of places. In a manger. In the company of sinners. And maybe even in a film.

The Internet Movie Database lists over a hundred film interpretations of the story of Jesus in whole or part: theatrical releases, tv-movies, mini-series, and direct-to-video productions. Numbered among these are the first silent movies ever made, the earliest sound films, and the most expensive epics Hollywood in all its own imperial power and glory has ever assembled. The treatments range from realistic costume-dramas to stylized contemporary updates and imaginative efforts that aim to capture spirit more than letter. As with the Gospel authors, there's a multitude of perspectives in play: filmmakers hoping to cap their career with something of significance, studios looking to tempt audiences from television with widescreen spectacle, a Marxist meditating on Christ's revolutionary challenge to the status quo, evangelists trying to preach the Word. All of these grasps inevitably fall short of the greatness of the story they reach to express — and some much farther than others. Yet any one of them is liable to offer at least one fresh insight, one unexpected glimpse of their subject which the viewer might not otherwise have ever seen.

The following survey has been a quest for such insights and glimpses. While far from comprehensive, the films covered are representative, scanning treatments from 1902's La vie et la passion de Jésus Christ to Mel Gibson's recent The Passion of the Christ. Some films are included not as "Life of Christ" films but rather as examples of related or subsidiary traditions. As to the question of relative merit, a fast way to put it might be: Which Jesus Film would Jesus watch? That is, would he attend to the hoopla, to the trumpet-blowing, conscious-of-their-own-righteousness productions at the high end of the budget spectrum? Or would he scandalize all the respectable people and hang out with more disreputable films made by obvious sinners? Of course, some might consider any such comparison and/or criticism of these films impious (and many a producer has doubtless counted on squeaking past on just that!) Rating this particular genre with stars, let alone giving martyr films the old thumbs up or down, does seem a tad too objective. Nevertheless, there seems plenty of room for discussion of these films as films, both within a clearly identifiable genre and as individual works — and with an eye and ear for both authenticity and religious claptrap, an approach that finds some congruence with Christ's own.