The Last Temptation of Christ

The life and death of Jesus Christ, as presented in the King of Kings (both the original by Cecil B. de Mille, 1927 and the remake by Nicholas Ray in 1961), is not only considered The Greatest Story Ever Told (the title of George Stevens’ eponymous film, 1963), but also counts among the most important victim myths in the Western hemisphere. Few directors have managed to approach the figure of the redeemer without some form of sterile pathos. In contrast, Martin Scorsese tried to show Christ the human being behind the victim, presenting him both as a religious moderniser and as a man who lost faith in himself and his divine mission. ‘THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST is (…) really much more a psychological film about the inner torments of the spiritual life’, according the script-writer Paul Schrader. Hence, the film is not only a cinematic portrayal of the Passion itself - an important subject in Scorsese’s work - but also an endeavour to gauge his own religiosity: a contemplation on the (im) possibility of transcendence in a chaotic world.

7 p.m.

Talk: Dr. Oliver Keutzer, film theoretician, Deutsches Filminstitut – DIF, Frankfurt am Main, and University of Mainz

Film

The Last Temptation of Christ

D: Martin Scorsese, USA 1988, 164 min., Germanversion