Sunday, May 31, 2009

Assigned Film for 5 June 2009

GODSPELL
For June 5, 2009


Godspell (David Greene, 1973) is a film musical based on the Gospel of Matthew. Music and lyrics are by Stephen Schwartz, who was only 22 at the time the original Broadway show opened. Schwartz would later win an Oscar for "When You Believe" (The Prince of Egypt) and shared Oscars as lyricist for "Colors of the Wind" and the song score for Pocahontas.

Godspell
as a film has some interesting ideas in its modernization of the Gospel story. But it runs out of steam and loses inspiration in its last half, where it seems more like filmed street theatre than filmed drama.

Nonetheless the film can be studied from several angles, including costume design, music, cinematography, editing, and the sound track. The sound track can be divided into human voices, music, and sound effects.

Through intercutting, the opening sequence shows John the Baptist calling Jesus' apostles from their social routines one by one. (In the gospels it is Jesus who calls the apostles.)

This opening sequence is nicely staged and cut, showing, through diverse personal mishaps (a novel being defaced by coffee, etc.), how worldly concerns are not fulfilling, evoking St. Augustine's famous words addressed to God: "You have made us for Yourself and our souls are restless till they repose in You."

Montage is also used in several parables, notably "The Parable of the Seeds" and "The Prodigal Son," which intercuts a simulated Silent Film with Jesus' apostles telling the story.

Cutting on action is most visible in the sequence of hostility among the apostles, when each assaults his neighbor, until Jesus arrives to halt them.

The songs cover a wide variety of musical styles, most notably the vaudevillian soft shoe style used in "All for the Best," with its comic counterpoint of fast and slow melodies. "On the Willows" has an especially haunting melody, while "Day by Day" became the show's only pop hit.

Some of the lyrics are taken directly from, or are paraphrases of, Scripture; while some arrangements use a rinky tink piano style consistent with the pastiche approach of the musical as a whole.

Stop-motion photography is used in the opening intercut sequence, showing John appearing to Jesus' future disciples; it's also used during the vaudevillian sketch with Jesus and John the Baptist, when Jesus shows John how to make a dancing stick materialize out of thin air.

Costume design evokes the 1960s Hippie (youth) generation in its colorful patterns, setting Jesus' disciples apart from ordinary (worldly) reality (a point already made in the opening sequence) and by having the disciples and Jesus the only people we see through most of the film. By face painting his apostles, Jesus symbolically anoints them with new identities. Their new particolored outfits suggest Jesus' saying that one cannot put new wine in old bottles. These youth need new clothes for their new identities.

The design for the evil Pharisee is mechanical, in order to oppose the human freedom of Jesus' apostles to the machinelike mechanism of his Pharisaic opposition, representing the dead letter of the Law, which is itself spoken mechanically.

Stage props of discarded items suggest that the world has been superseded by another reality ("the former things have passed away"). The old things of the world remain, but for new uses (mainly to illustrate Jesus' parables).

The world has become a junk shop of discarded things ("a heap of broken images," to quote T. S. Eliot), including a hollowed automobile, making more effective the arrival of a real automobile to arrest Jesus after Judas (played by the same actors who plays the Baptist) has betrayed him.

Even so, specific symbolism is used, as when Jesus lays down a door as a table for the Last Supper, suggesting the Gospel of John's saying, "I am the door."

Jesus' Superman costume is consistent with the film's generally irreverent costume design. But it also uses the letter "S" on the costume to suggest "Savior" as well as "Superman." In fact, in the comic book design of the production, the two are really one.

But the most notable cinematic element in the film version of the musical is the use of sound, including dialogue and sound effects. The different voices that characters assume throughout evoke both cartoon and film characters (Donald Duck, Mae West, W. C. Fields, Peter Lorre of M, Afro-American preaching, etc.). It is, after all, Jesus' voice (his call) that is the main subject of the gospels, and his voice is heard as one among a diversity of voices, all familiar to our culture. Different voices also evoke Jesus' different temptations and give meaning to an otherwise weak sequence.

Another noteworthy use of voices is the apostles' successive denials, in humorous accents, since they think that Jesus is only joking when he warns that one of them will betray him.

Sound effects, vocal cries, and instrumental accents (toots on toy horns) are used throughout to underscore the meaning of, or human reactions to, Jesus' parables. The opening ambient sound of car horns and subway trains contrasts against the film's initial quiet. Finally, the clanging metal of the fence on which Jesus is crucified evokes the evil behind the Crucifixion (and barbed wire fences of military prisons and concentration camps) while also referring back to the earlier use of the fence in a more benign context.

Silence is creatively used after the scene with the Pharisaic Machine when Jesus retreats to solitude and while his apostles look on.

New York City locations, including the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Towers are used throughout. Baptism becomes real child's play in water, consistent with the youthful reading of the New Testament as a message of joyous freedom ("Behold, I make all things new").

Conveniently, the Statue of Liberty in the background suggests true liberty. In this way, New York represents the world though also freedom from the world following Jesus' "new" Testament.

The movie moves symbolically (as does the Gospel of John) from day to the night of Jesus' betrayal, as it is written in John's Gospel: "As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night" (13:30). After Jesus' death, his apostles awaken to a new day of promise, for Jesus (as John's Gospel asserted) is "the light of the world." The new day also refers to the show's pop hit, "Day by Day," evoking St. Paul: "Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day" (2 Corinthians 4:16). In fact, the song is heard in the medley that is sung afterwards.

Though the apostles return to New York's bustling streets at the end, we assume (using the phrasing in the Gospel of John), that they are now in the world but no longer of the world.

Because one cannot illustrate sound with images, there are no Study Pictures this week and this brief essay takes their place.

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