Silent Saviours: representations of Jesus' Passion in early cinema

In The Bible on Film: A Checklist, 1897–1980, Richard H. Campbell and Michael R. Pitts mention close to seventy silent films released between 1897 and 1930 that deal with topics related to the New Testament, including blockbusters such as Ben-Hur or Quo Vadis? Most of these films were either produced in France (17) or the USA (37). The rest elsewhere in Europe (Denmark: 1, Great Britain: 3, Italy: 6, Germany: 3). The majority of these films feature scenes from the life of Jesus, with a large number focusing exclusively on the Passion, a theme which continued to resurface well into the sound era. Apart from the Passion story, the Nativity was also quite popular and so were the miracle stories. A few films even have Jesus perform a miracle in modern times, such as the raising of a dead girl struck by lightning in The Mysterious Stranger (France, 1911). Although most films utilising the New Testament relate to Jesus, some of them foreground other characters, notably Salome, Mary Magdalene, Paul and Satan. From the very beginning, however, the Passion narrative attracted most attention. Of the seven films that according to Campbell and Pitts came out before 1900, six were recordings of Passion plays, some of which have unfortunately been lost. This seems to be the case with a short film directed by Léar [Albert Kirchner] (La Passion, France, 1897), and with another film that was produced by Gaumont (La Passion, France, 1898). The first actual filming of a Passion play took place in Horitz, Bohemia (in what is now the Czech Republic) and was produced in 1897 by Marc Klaw and Abraham L. Erlanger. It was followed in 1898 by two other Passion plays produced in the USA, one by Sigmund Lubin (The Passion Play), and the other by Richard Hollaman, entitled The Passion Play of Oberammergau, which was in fact shot on the roof of the Grand Central Palace in New York.