Wherever it was shown, Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation Of Christ caused controversy and sometimes violent demonstrations, whether in Protestant America and Great Britain or Catholic Italy.
In America, there were pickets outside the cinemas where it was shown and militant religious groups threatened to use bombs.
After similar protests at the Venice Film Festival and a condemnation from the Vatican, trouble then flared up in France when five Catholics set fire to a cinema for daring to show the film.
What caused such passions to be aroused? Principally it was the dream-on-the-cross sequence, during which Jesus imagines himself making love to Mary Magdalene, and dreams of the companionship of marriage and a family.
Scorsese wanted to show Christ as a man suffering human doubts and desires and to present audiences with a Christ for the 1980s.
Far from being blasphemous, this portrait was reconcilable with the Bible’s notion of the Son of God made man.
Jesus Christ
Willem Dafoe
Judas Iscariot
Harvey Keitel
Mary Magdalene
Barbara Hershey
Saul/Paul
Harry Dean Stanton
Pontius Pilate
David Bowie
Mary, mother of Jesus
Verna Bloom
Jeroboam
Barry Miller
Andrew
Gary Basaraba
Zebedee
Irvin Kershner
Peter
Victor Argo
John
Michael Been
Phillip
Paul Herman
James
John Lurie
Nathaniel
Leo Burmester
John the Baptist
André Gregory
Martha
Peggy Gormley
Mary
Randy Danson
Lazarus
Tomas Arana
Director
Martin Scorsese
