Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40640 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-04-01
• Rating: G (General Audience)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 199 minutes

From Amazon.com
The life of Christ got an excessively long treatment (260 minutes, later trimmed to 195) in this 1965 film directed by George Stevens (The Diary of Anne Frank). Max von Sydow does beautiful work as Jesus--his spontaneous mourning at discovering his friend Lazarus has died is not like anything in other New Testament epics--and Stevens renders the familiar tale with a handsome authenticity. But the project is nearly undone by an unwise gimmick in which seemingly half of Hollywood's living stars at the time make brief (often very brief) cameo appearances, some of which are ridiculous. But there is a lot to like in the film, and Von Sydow's sensitive nobility sticks in the memory. --Tom Keogh

Additional Features
For any fan of George Stevens's expansive epic on the life of Christ, this restored version returns the film to its cinematic splendor. The print quality is magnificent. In one important way, the film even plays better decades after it was produced in 1965: the bevy of cameos is not as distracting. This mellowing-over-time approach was apparently part of Stevens's plan as revealed in one of two documentaries. A 20-minute segment made in 1965 is thinly veiled public relations but works as an intriguing time capsule capturing how massive moviemaking once was, with its large tent cities built to house cast and crew--in this case, in the remote areas of the Southwest. The new documentary is longer but is pieced together from the older featurette and interviews made for the 1984 documentary George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey. This film--labeled the "Roadshow Edition"--plays 199 minutes, just a smidgen longer than the standard cut. It's still an hour shorter than Stevens's rarely seen original cut. --Doug Thomas