Word: zeffirelli
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...What "It's a Wonderful Life" is to Christmas, and "Yankee Doodle Dandy" to Independence Day, this Franco Zeffirelli miniseries (6hr.26min. in the DVD version, of which the Passion section takes about an hour) is to Easter: definitive TV entertainment for a holiday, or holy day. Lusciously pictorial, elaborating on the Gospel narrative while tightroping above controversy, the film is the fullest standard text from which more extravagant versions like Pasolini's and Gibson's are encouraged to meander freely...
...Robert Powell, Zeffirelli found the Jesus of a million dining-room icons: agate-blue eyes, cheeks that didn't need to be sucked in for that dishy aesthetic look, a strength to match the facial sensitivity. For a while Powell had the lock on brainy charisma; he played Gustav Mahler, Henry Higgins, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Victor Frankenstein. After months on the Zeffirelli film, Powell said, "I hope Jesus Christ will be the last in my line of sensitive young men for quite a while...
...Zeffirelli stuffed his cast with stars of varying aptness: Laurence Olivier rolling his eyes as Nicodemus, Rod Steiger spuming as Pilate, Ernest Borgnine in the John Wayne role. Olivia Hussey, less than a decade after Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet," is Jesus' mother (another movie where the actors playing the son is older, here by seven years, than the actress playing his mother). Anne Bancroft is Magdalene - the casting director must have mixed up the two Marys...
...scourging lasts only eight or nine lashes, but they snap and sting; the soldiers wind up for their work like Olympic discus throwers. At Jesus' death there's no earthquake, only rain. Zeffirelli suggests that the response to a Savior's death would be the tears of angel, not the rumblings of subterranean spirits...
...architecture preservation foundation, Save Venice. Although based in Washington, D.C., for tax purposes, the group of 140 people raises and spends money to preserve Florence's artistic legacy. It helps that Brandolini can tap some of her real-estate clients, such as Bette Midler and Mel Gibson. Sting, Franco Zeffirelli and Zubin Mehta all sit on the Advisory Committee. "They are Florence's best friends," says Antonio Paolucci, a former Italian Culture Minister who is now Florence's superintendent of fine arts. "They have already spent more than $3 million helping us conserve the city's works...