King of Kings (3 Stars)

I wanted to watch this film six days ago on Easter Sunday. I was feeling nostalgic for the days of my childhood when I used to sit in front of the television with my parents at Easter. The usual film was "Ben Hur", but I saw it too often in my youth. I wanted to watch something else, but still Easterish, so I picked "KIng of Kings" after a friend mentioned it on Facebook. Sadly, I wasn't able to watch it. The only streaming service I could find that showed "King of Kings" was BBC's Iplayer. Living in Germany, I can only watch Iplayer with a VPN. I use ExpressVPN, which is faultless for accessing American web sites, but it's weak for accessing UK web sites. Sometimes it doesn't work at all, sometimes it works but the connection is too slow to watch a film. Last Sunday I could access Iplayer, but the connection kept stalling.

A quick question for my readers in Germany or other EU countries: can you recommend a better VPN for accessing UK web sites? Please leave the answer in the comment box.

Today I tried Iplayer again, and I was lucky. My VPN worked. Not perfectly, but good enough to watch the film.

The film was made in 1961 and tells the story of Christ, from his birth to his death and resurrection, with a prologue about the Roman conquest of Israel in 63 BC. There's a droning voiceover for most of the film, explaining what's happening. This isn't enough to distract from the poor acting by most of the characters. The actors who play Joseph and Mary speak so woodenly that you'd think they're reading from cue cards. The actor who plays John the Baptist is only slightly better. Thankfully, the actor Jeffrey Hunter, best known for his role as Captain Pike in the pilot episode of Star Trek, plays a believable Jesus. The best scene in the film is the Sermon on the Mount, where he convincingly faces the masses.

The best female actress in the film is Brigid Bazien as Salome, who was only 16 at the time when the film was made. Despite her young age, she performs the sultry, sexual dance that persuaded her stepfather to kill John the Baptist. Surprisingly, she never had a big film career. This was the third of her five films from 1958 to 1962. She's in stark contrast to the poor actress playing her mother Herodias.

The film doesn't just follow the Biblical events. A Roman soldier called Lucius is inserted into the story. He was responsible for killing the new born babies in Bethlehem, and he met Jesus several times during his life. He's probably based on Lucius of Cyrene, who's mentioned in Acts 13:1, but this is a very tenuous link. Barabbas, who's also mentioned only briefly in the Bible, plays an important role in the film. Judas Iscariot was a friend and supporter of Barabbas, and after he became a disciple of Jesus his loyalties were divided.

If anything, Judas' guilt in the betrayal of Jesus is downplayed. In the Bible it's said that he betrayed Jesus for money. "King of Kings" doesn't show any payment for his betrayal. He conspires with Barabbas to help Jesus become the King of Judea. That's too far from the Biblical records for me.

For some strange reason, Jesus is missing from the middle of the film. Lucius appears before Pontius Pilate and tells him about what Jesus is doing, particularly his miracles, but we don't see the miracles. Could it be that this was done because the film's budget had run out?

Are there any outstanding films about the life of Christ? If there are, I don't know them. It's an exciting story, as written in the Bible, so there's a lot of room to make a good film. It's not necessary to add non-Biblical details; just make a film based on the four Gospels.

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