In King of Kings and The Greatest Story Ever Told both Jeffrey Hunter and Max Von Sydow read lines from the New Testament as part of the dialog because the messenger is of course an integral part of the story. But in those films Jesus was not the central character.

The figure of Jesus in both The Big Fisherman and Ben-Hur is seen from the rear and is not heard at all. Still even laboring under that handicap, when it opened in 1976 there were still protests. We never hear Mohammed, we see him on two occasions in long-shot and he's not recognizable. Anthony Quinn, Irene Papas, Michael Ansara and the rest of the players talk to the camera as if Mohammed was like Philip Marlowe in Lady of the Lake, that famous noir film shot in the first person. What we have in The Message is a cast playing to a vacuum. It was by arms as well as faith that Islam triumphed in the Arabian peninsula and was spreading elsewhere when the Prophet died in 632. He was not only a great religious teacher, but apparently quite the military strategist. He would have to have been to have accomplished what he did. The Message is about the early days of Islam, but as a film it labors under the insurmountable handicap of us not seeing the messenger.īy all accounts the messenger was one charismatic fellow. Reviewed by bkoganbing 5 / 10 Labors Under A Handicap Of No MessengerĪpparently when Mohammed founded Islam he never factored in the great use that motion pictures could be made for spreading the faith.

The message 1976 movie