MovieChat Forums > The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) Discussion > The Palm Sunday/Temple scene : did Jesus...

The Palm Sunday/Temple scene : did Jesus abandon his flock?

posted 10 years ago by buttsronc
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I just watched the movie the other night on TCM and felt I had to post this.
I always felt the palm Sunday entry/cleansing the temple scene did not work.

Basically it looks like Jesus after clearing out the money changers stages a sit in and fires up the crowd with his sermon that appears to run till after sundown. He then concludes his sermon and just leaves. The Romans then come in and start killing people. We then have two of the disciples calmly cooking the Passover meal waiting for Jesus to arrive. No one mentions that a bunch of people were just killed in the temple. The film King of Kings did the same thing. Barrabbas stages his uprising and fights a big battle with the Romans and gets arrested. We then jump to the Last supper and once again no one mentions the fighting in the city.

My thing is It looks like Jesus just leaves the temple and slips out the side door leaving the crowd to get killed. It seems like director George Stevens just wanted to hurry up and get on with the Passion. So we get Palm Sunday in the morning and Jesus' last supper and arrest that evening.

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

Emphassis on "it looks like" Jesus leaves his followers to get killed:

Agreed - it's not good editing/storytelling. Of course, Jesus himself is exonerated because he doesn't know that the soldiers are going to march on the praying crowd, but in terms of character description/development and general narration, it's clumsy. Also implying that the Last Supper took place on Palm Sunday is a major gaffe. I, for one, didn't get any impression that Jesus was preaching in the Temple courtyard for a period of days before the time of the Last Supper. Of course, a lot of material must have been cut in order to keep the film down to create a watchable theatrical release. Maybe there were scenes planned that had Jesus teaching in Jerusalem between Palm Sunday and Holy Thursday...?