Pier Paolo Pasolini's Epiphany

In 1964 the Italian film director, Pier Paolo Pasolini  gave us the superlative "The Gospel According to St. Matthew." 

With a non-professional cast and a quasi-documentary shooting style, Pasolini retold the familiar story of the life of Christ in the simplest, least-Hollywood-like style imaginable. 

While its musical score was considered fairly avant-garde at the time, featuring as it did excerpts from the African "Missa Luba," Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, and Mahalia Jackson singing "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," the movie was accessible to audiences of all kinds. 

In fact, for a time a Christian fundamentalist film distributor had the rights to the film in the United States and successfully exhibited it to church groups. 

One wonders how receptive the fundamentalist audience would have been to the movie had they known that its maker was a gay, atheistic communist. 

( But then maybe they and all of us  should be reminded that God has NO favourites).

This clip shows the Epiphany, the return of the magi back home via a different route led by the angel Gabriel and then the flight into Egypt.  It is years since I saw this film and I still found it immensely moving. 

With English subtitles