Faithful to the script: John's Gospel on film
In 1964 the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini created a new mode of presenting Jesus in film. His The Gospel according to St. Matthew is a word-for-word rendering of Matthew’s Gospel. It contains no additional dialogue and shows only the scenes described by Matthew. The film was a radical departure from the Jesus genre, which typically (as in the stolid 1965 The Greatest Story Ever Told) blends various gospel accounts into a screenplay, freely rendering and harmonizing the story in order to present a more satisfying dramatic portrayal.