Today airs on Sky Cinema Christmas at 9.20 (with rerun at 1 am) Jesus Christ Superstar, a film directed in 1973 by Norman Jewison, inspired by the homonymous double album and rock opera launched in 1970 by Andrew Lloyd Webber with lyrics by Tim Rice. The protagonists of the film are a group of hippies who stop in a desert and stage some episodes from the life of Jesus (Ted Neeley), from the entrance to Jerusalem to the expulsion of the Temple merchants to the Passion, with the last supper and the crucifixion. But there are differences with the traditional story of the Gospels: Jesus is extremely humanized and appears as a being frightened by the mission he has to fulfill, Mary Magdalene (Yvonne Elliman) loves Christ, while Judas (Carl Anderson) a black man who rejects the role of predestined to damnation. The evangelical episodes are accompanied by rock and pop music up to the psychedelic rhythms that dominate the prayer of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. “Jesus Christ Superstar” a secular and modern interpretation of the message of Christ: the film offers interesting and provocative reflections and a pacifist and anti-conformist Jesus that recalls hippie values. It is no coincidence that, after the death of Christ, the Resurrection is absent. The film was a huge success at the box office: it cost 3.5 million dollars, grossed 24.5 million dollars and soon became a cult. However, there was no lack of controversy: the juxtaposition of the figure of Christ with rock, the “music of sin”, made many turn up their noses and there were accusations of blasphemy and anti-Semitism. Almost 50 years after its debut, the film appears to be an innovative and thoughtful work, daughter of the counterculture of the 1970s. Waiting for the broadcast, here’s what happened to the protagonists.
December 16, 2021 | 08:42
(©) Time.News