The best film adaptation of any Lloyd Webber score including EVITA...
This is thanks to Douglas Slocombe's epic cinematography, making the temple ruins of Avdat and Roman amphitheatre at Beit She'an into vivid musical stages; the towering mountains of the Israeli desert seem to say "I knew the real one, y'know..."
Jewison and Melvyn Bragg's screenplay adds anachronistic touches like Judas' Fates being represented by tanks.
A tourist bus stops in a desert, the cast appear and start unloading costumes and props including a large cross...
Only two of the cast - mostly JCS stage performers - had any film experience. However two outshine the others: Carl Anderson is sensational as Judas, burning the screen with his intensity, while Yvonne Elliman's warmer presence as Mary Magdalene features her glorious honeyed voice.
Ted Neely's Jesus is problematic - his upper register is a thin 70s rawk screech and his performance lacks charisma or depth.
Shelf or charity shop? Shelf as it's one of my favourite film musicals. A special mention for costume designer Yvonne Blake whose designs include Judas' white jumpsuit for the SUPERSTAR number, with a low cut front and long arm fringing which I covert it to this day. I also want to praise Jewison's inspired directorial choices - at the climax of Jesus's Gesthemene song, on the line "Just watch me die", he suddenly intercuts close-ups of details from Reinaissance crucifiction paintings as if showing how his death has indeed been viewed over and over; cut on the violin strokes, it is another example of the fine editing of Anthony Clark. Constant Reader, you will notice there is an important componant that I have not mentioned: the score. It is the weakest part of the film - the tuneless rececitive remains ghastly - along with Tim Rice's public-school-clever lyrics - and Lloyd Webber's music at times is note-for-note a precursor to EVITA. The orchestrations have also dated badly - under André Previn's baton the orchestral passages are lush and deep but every time a squalling guitar signals the arrival of the rock musicians, it becomes thin and dated. Only in the cinema can you love a musical but not the score.
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