I agree that this is one of the best, if not the best depiction of Jesus' life. I am not as enchanted by the actor as many others seem to be, but what is appealing about him are the lines he delivers, wonderful wisdom from the Bible itself (or the Jesus Seminar version of it). But absolutely the most compelling figure in this film is Lucius -- in fact, I would argue that it could rightfully be called "The Conversion of Lucius".

This is a biblical movie, one of many that was made in the mid-fifties and sixties. It accounts, in a somewhat light way, the life of Jesus from birth to the ascent to heaven and, thus, runs counter to the general tendency of focus only on the birth or passion of Christ. On the other hand, the film makes a very interesting use of peripheral biblical characters (Herod, Salome, Pilate, Barabbas etc.) to make a movie with more movement than one would expect, which prevents it from appearing slow and drawn. The problem of doing this is the indispensable resource for creating scenes that aren't in biblical accounts, but cinema does a lot of that, it's normal and I deal well with it, as long as creative freedom doesn't contradict the biblical story. Nicholas Ray assures the direction in a competent way and Orson Welles makes a great narration of the events. The cast is mostly composed of illustrious strangers (at least for me) which reinforces realism, probably in a conscious move by the director. The cast usually does a convincing and enjoyable work, especially Jeffrey Hunter, who gave birth to Jesus, and Robert Ryan, who played John the Baptist. The environment, costumes and scenery are convincing, beautiful and look good on the screen, but they have no comparison to other biblical films such as "Ben Hur" or "Quo Vadis", where everything is bigger and done in greater detail.

Despite the running time coming in at almost three hours, KING OF KINGS is a surprisingly fast-paced biopic of the life of Jesus Christ, from cradle to grave (and out of it again). As you'd expect, events surrounding the Crucifixion take up a good third of the running time, so the first two thirds basically rush from event to event, with little room to breathe in between.I'm not entirely sure what I think about the production. I don't particularly like Jeffrey Hunter's Christ, who I found difficult to take seriously with that broad American accent, but overall the production values are impressive and the film certainly brings to life the times and settings of the Bible. The cast is also well chosen, and it was great to see the likes of old timer Robert Ryan in the role of John the Baptist.Overall, this is a slick production but one that doesn't really connect to the heart. Hunter spends his time spouting homilies and reciting the Lord's Prayer instead of bringing the emotion and conflict of his character across. Robert Powell is still my definitive Christ and Mel Gibson's PASSION OF THE Christ still the definitive version of the Crucifixion.

I read a highly amusing bit in the trivia section that I want to share here - apparently the crucifixion had to be reshot because preview audiences reported back offended by a hairy chest. So let this be a revealing irony behind so many whitewashed historic spectacles; movies so often print images that we want to see.But since there is clearly not enough spectacle in this legend, unlike so many Biblical epics as DeMille defined the genre, so loose scripture that pivots around big splashy entertainment on nothing short of a monumental scale, nothing short of waters parting and a temple being toppled, since in its essence, this is a story of humble origins and deep emotion, so Barabbas becomes the hardened guerilla fighter who leads Judean rebels against Roman oppressors.There are two battle scenes here, both ill-advised and distracting. The rest is a common Hollywood Jesus narrative, emphasis on the piercing gaze of virtue and the rod of suffering as the tree of life, blame once more shifted to Romans and the Herods - stressed to be of Arab descent.It doesn't work - it is clunky, feels patched together, formulaic filler when it steers away from the tragic scene. But this reveals something else, let's call it the Italian connection.Now Hollywood at around this time, certainly after the monumental success of Ben Hur, was busy filming casts of thousands in Italy outside Rome, North Africa, Spain and the Almerian desert. The Italians had inspired this tradition as far back as the silent era, and the original Ben Hur had also filmed there, but now all these huge American productions were rolling in, well equipped, professional, helmed by directors of note, and young Italian filmmakers could not hope for a better film school. Many tutored there, including Leone.Why I deem this important to mention, is because this type of film is where the new cinematic language for action films was being forged that would last until a few years ago and is still in the process of being replaced now by the Orson Welles eye.Nicholas Ray was not the man for this project, which I assume was tighly supervised by MGM hoping for another cash cow, and he only gets to bring his colors - those ruby reds and deep cyans, they might as well have spilled over from the cavernous sets of Johnny Guitar. But just look at the kind of filmmaking going on in a few key instances, say the exchange of very tight close-ups of eyes when the Baptist meets Jesus by the river, or the amazing series of operatic panels for the crucifixion, really the only scene worth watching here.They look jumbled and out of their proper order, as though the rest of the film was filmed by clerks. It is going to be breath-taking when Leone unfolds them from the scrunched bunch of celluloid and are made to stretch across rolls of punctuated silence. The catch is that his operas were about scoundrels, but they resonated with something akin to spiritual clarity.So Ray, a filmmaker to watch on a good day, doesn't get it right here, but mostly I believe because spectacle was imposed on him and he only applied colors, not really fussing over arrangements except in the finale. And this particular story can only resonate in its true beauty when the son of God teaches with a dust-caked mouth and bleeds ascetically, and the air is not all musky and baroque but smells of earthly scents.Orson Welles narrates this and is unusually restrained. He had appeared in one of those Biblical epics in Italy a few years back, directing his own scenes for what must have been a tremendous seminar for everyone in attendance. He would appear the next year as a director making a Biblical film in Italy, in a film by the one man who got this story right, an Italian.