Joseph on screen : from role to man

Portrayals of Joseph in cinema are rare, as directors prefer the Passion to childhood when filming the life of Jesus Christ. There are some notable exceptions, however: Lucien Nonguet and Ferdinand Zecca's The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ , a film from 1902-1903, Roberto Rossellini's Il Messia in 1975 and Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth in 1976. Not forgetting the most famous, Pier Paolo Pasolini's Il Vangelo secondo Matteo, from 1964. While the former tend to illustrate or even complement the Gospel narratives - from the 1902 film, a series of paintings based on engravings from Gustave Doré's Illustrated Bible, to Zeffirelli's production, which devotes an entire seven-hour film to Joseph - the latter is a work of striking simplicity and extreme fidelity to the text of St. Matthew. Since the beginning of the ^20th century, Joseph has been portrayed on screen in a wide variety of roles. Yet only one, Pasolini's, shows us, beyond his role in a story - even a holy one - the man who embodies it, quite simply a man.