Behold the Man (DVD)

Behold the Man chronicles Jesus's life from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem until the time of his Resurrection. Originally entitled Golgotha when it premiered in France in 1935, it is famous for its shockingly graphic depiction of the Crucifixion. Director Julien Duvivier employs many of the same close-up techniques used by Carl Theodor Dreyer in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) for maximum effect. At the time, depicting Jesus on film was considered taboo, so much of Behold the Man is devoted to the stories of Herode and Pontius Pilate, both of whom are played by legends of the French cinema. Harry Baur is best known as Jean Valjean in Raymond Bernard's version of Les Miserables (1934) and as the famous composer in Beethoven's Great Love (1936), directed by Abel Gance. Jean Gabin's shadow looms even larger over the history of French cinema. His craggy, world-weary face is familiar from such immortal classics as Pepe le Moko (1937), Grand Illusion (1937), and Port of Shadows (1938). Jesus is played by Robert Le Vigan, a more obscure figure who nonetheless appeared in 70 films. During the German occupation of France, Le Vigan openly supported and collaborated with the Nazis. Following the Liberation, he was sentenced by the French authorities to ten years imprisonment for collaboration with the enemy and spreading anti-Semitic propaganda on Radio Paris. After three years in a labor camp, Le Vigan fled to Argentina, where he died in poverty in 1972. Behold the Man was named one of the best foreign films of the year by the National Board of Review upon its release in America in 1937 (it never screened in the United Kingdom, having been deemed unsuitable for audiences by the British Board of Censors.)