Jesus Christ Superstar Blu-ray Review
The Rock Gospel According to Judas.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, April 29, 2013
Observant Christian believers may not have exactly experienced The Second Coming in the early seventies and some
were in fact downright outraged by what they perceived as unabashed sacrilege, but others experienced
something of a minor miracle at least when not one but two modern musical pieces about Jesus became immensely
popular,
capturing the imaginations of the usually recalcitrant young and storming the pop charts.
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's rock opera
Jesus Christ Superstar debuted as a bestselling two LP album
in 1970, but it didn't take long for wise impresarios to figure out the piece was tailor made for the stage, especially after
the album made it all the way to the vaunted Number One position on the
Billboard charts, spawning several hit
singles in the process. At more or less the same time, a "kinder, gentler" and much smaller scale musical opened off
Broadway and quickly became a major hit.
Godspell was a decidedly more whimsical approach to its iconic
subject matter, but it, too, spawned a major hit single ("Day by Day") and quickly established Stephen Schwartz as one
of his generation's leading new writers. The original Broadway staging of
Jesus Christ Superstar was a
gargantuan and
glitzy affair directed by Tom O'Horgan, the man who had shot to fame with the original version of
Hair, which
itself had begun off Broadway but soon was such a fantastic success it matriculated to a Broadway house for the bulk
of its multiyear run. (O'Horgan's followup,
Dude, featuring a score by
Hair's Galt MacDermot and Gerome
Ragni, is one of the most notorious flops in Broadway history. It was a
really bad year for MacDermot who saw
his
other big musical of 1972,
Via Galactica, go down in even bigger flames than
Dude had just a
few
weeks later.)
O'Horgan was not a man known for his subtlety, and a lot of people were shocked at the
outrageous nature of some of O'Horgan's staging ideas, though virtually everyone seemed to agree that the Lloyd
Webber-Rice score was amazing and that several performances (including Ben Vereen as Judas) were impeccable.
(Ironically that version's Jesus, Jeff Fenholt, became as famous for a confusing parablesorry, couldn't resistinvolving
Black Sabbath and Fenholt's supposed collaboration with them as well as for his televangelism as for anything to do
with the role that first brought him to wide public attention.) The film musical
was in pretty steep decline by the early seventies, with not even major Broadway hits being regularly optioned the way
they used to, but with both
Jesus Christ Superstar and
Godspell having that elusive built in youth
appeal,
they both seemed like sure bets. In a touch of perhaps intentional irony, Norman Jewison, who had just made a film
about
another persecuted Jew with his cinematic version of
Fiddler on the Roof, signed on to direct, working with several people who had
either been associated with the original Broadway production or subsequent tours (and in some cases with the original
concept album as well). Jewison perhaps wisely jettisoned O'Horgan's hyperbolic approach for a stripped down but still
quietly flashy conceit that utilized actual historical Israeli ruins as settings while mixing in a number of contemporary
elements.
In what would seem to be an intentional tip of the hat to
Godspell, the film version of
Jesus Christ
Superstar uses a framing device of people performing the Passion. We see a tour bus arriving at an historical
Israeli
site, a bunch of hippies (remember, this was the seventies) disembark, and to the anachronistic sounds of Lloyd
Webber's
slightly dissonant Overture, begin to assume their various roles. Jewison immediately separates Judas (Carl Anderson)
from the pack. As the so-called "love children" frolic around Jesus (Ted Neeley), Judas looks on suspiciously, perhaps
enviously, from a distance. It is one of
Jesus Christ Superstar's great achievements that it presents what has
been called "the greatest story ever told" resolutely from Judas' point of view, and this was of course decades before
the
lost Gospel of Judas was uncovered and reconstructed.
Hopefully it's not necessary to give an in depth plot summary for
Jesus Christ Superstar and we can instead
focus on some of the decisions, both good and bad, made for this film version. The arid desert settings for much of the
film are really interesting and add an air of verisimilitude, but they also clash, no doubt intentionally, with some of the
other more modern production design elements. While Jesus is clad in a plain white robe and some of his acolytes wear
apparel that
is at least relatively historically accurate looking, Judas for example starts the film in a florid red crushed velvet outfit
that frankly could have been ripped from any given Blaxploitation film of that era while other supporting players wear
perfect examples of
early seventies hippie attire. Jewison's costume designer Yvonne
Blake clad the Romans in something akin to hippie chic meets science fiction, with bright red t-shirts and shiny metal
helmets. Then there's
the
puzzling scaffolding that has provoked quite a bit of commentary through the years. In the commentary with Jewison
and Neeley ported over from the DVD release of the film, they don't really get into the "philosophy" behind its use and
instead simply remark how "cool" it looks. Later in the film
tanks show up as if Jewison himself were involved in
a science fiction time
travel film.
Those of you who have read my
The Phantom of the Opera at The Royal Albert Hall Blu-ray review
know that I have (at best) mixed feelings about Andrew Lloyd Webber, but I have always been adamant that in my not
so humble opinion
Jesus Christ Superstar is a work of towering genius from a musical perspective. Lloyd
Webber gracefully weaves together quasi-classical ideas that range from atonality (that clanging tritone that is so
jarring in the Overture and at other times in the piece) to almost Prokofievian moments of orchestral grandeur to just
flat out great songcraft (how brilliant is it that "Everything's Alright", a song about taking it easy, is in the notoriously
difficult 5/4 time signature, which nonetheless sounds appropriately effortless?). Rice's lyrics are facile without being
overly pretentious, and
at times really smartly reveal
the interior lives of the characters.
Perhaps surprisingly one of the biggest problems with this
Jesus Christ Superstar is the larger orchestral forces
and new
arrangements which came courtesy of the usually reliable Andre Previn (who frankly may have been a little out of his
element here). In this
instance, however, either through the influence of Jewison or producer
Robert Stigwood, he tinkers with Lloyd Webber's original work in unnecessary ways, adding unneeded elements (the
brass at the end of
the Overture, the stupid reconfiguring of the great piano lick in "Heaven On Their Minds") which serves no other real
purpose than to make
an auditory statement of "hey, guess what,
I'm here, too." To be fair, Previn's added percussion element gives
the score new color
and drive in several key moments.
The performances here, especially those of Neeley, Elliman and Anderson, are first rate. Both Neeley and Anderson had
toured and/or
understudied in stage versions of
Jesus Christ Superstar and are ideally cast for their roles. If Anderson frankly
doesn't have the
vocal smoothness of Ben Vereen (or the gritty rock edge of Murray Head from the original concept album), he is an
amazingly visceral
performer who brings Judas' distrust and conflict ably to the screen. Neeley does well in what amounts to yet another
"surfer dude" Jesus
concept and brings an athletic vocal quality to the role. Elliman, who voiced Mary Magdalene on the original concept
album, is a lovely
presence, comforting and romantic without being
outright erotic. The supporting cast is quite colorful, including a nice turn by Josh Mostel (Zero's son) as Herod.
What tends
not to work most of all are the very elements which Jewison seemed to be proudest of when he
recorded his
commentary track,
namely the weird blending of ancient and modern dress, sets and props. One assumes Jewison was going for some
sort of "timeless"
quality but instead simply ended up with a mishmash that is neither here nor there and which now seen from the
vantage point of some
forty years (wow!) just looks awfully dated more than anything else.
