Godspell (1973) 3/10
Jesus (Victor Garber) comes to New York with big clown feet and paints the faces of his followers. Then he dies.
I’m trying to decide if Godspell is the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Maybe not. But it’s a contender. Yet, it’s the kind of bad movie I’m fascinating by, as I attempt to understand the choices that the filmmakers made. In other words, what were they thinking?
Now, I’d heard that Godspell was a bad movie, but when I know the score of a musical, I like to see it, because I like to see the songs in context, and this leads me to seeing some real turkeys. Like A Chorus Line. And less than halfway through Godspell, I realized there is no context. All these songs that I know so well, that I’d wondered about—where in the story of Jesus do they fit?—don’t fit anywhere. They’re just sung by a traveling troupe of Jesus clowns.
The movie opens with a bunch of ordinary New Yorkers doing ordinary, frustrating things. Getting stuck in traffic, serving coffee at a lunch counter, using the public library. Then John the Baptist calls them to come and worship the Lord. As they gather in Central Park, their ordinary clothes are transformed into hippie clothes. Okay, I can get behind that. Certainly the idea that Jesus was a hippie of sorts in his own era is not unheard of, and was popular in 1973. Rejecting the material and all that.
Then the group finds a junkyard, and there they find the makings of clown costumes (apparently this is where the circus dumps its stuff when it leaves town). They dress up, act goofy, and Jesus paints everyone’s faces with cute little clown stuff.
The whole time this is going on, it’s very shticky, very over-acted, with lots of big gestures and wide-eyed facial expressions. I’m thinking, I guess they’re making a case for innocence and childlike openness to the wonder of God. The problem I’m having is that they’re not really distinguishing between childlike innocence and actual brain damage. Some of these people are acting innocence so broadly that I fear they will wander out in traffic. Maybe they’re suffused with the joy of the Presence, but they seem more like they’re off their meds.
But hey, innocence. Gentleness. Love. I’m still suspending disbelief mightily. And then Jesus delivers his first message. And it’s about the importance obeying every letter of the law. Well, thud. That’s definitely not about love and innocence.
The entire movie takes place all over New York City, in locations empty except for the Jesus clowns, as diverse as Lincoln Center, Ward’s Island, and the top of the World Trade Center (still under construction at the time). The group walks from spot to spot, acting out parables. The parables don’t relate to the locations, nor do they flow one to another. Each is entirely separate, as if each was a part of a different performance. No flow, no plot (not even, y’know, Jesus’s life), no sense of who the characters are. Meanwhile, who they are is a group of the shtickiest overacters ever born. Each parable is acted out with “funny” voices; often more than one per character, AND broad movements, AND silly props, AND mime. It’s like it’s their last day at Clown School, and they have to use everything they’ve learned. Everything. Over and over.
There were some charming moments; the All for the Best number was wonderfully done, and Jesus in the Garden in his moment of doubt is quite touching, although by that point in the film I was too impatient to appreciate it. But everything is so broad that the enjoyable moments get buried.
And yes, the music is excellent. In my own mind, I am judging the movie entirely separate from music, since the music pre-dates it. And maybe that isn’t fair, since some movie musicals certainly do butcher original scores. The vocal performances are outstanding, although it’s hard to pay attention to Lynne Thigpen‘s magnificent rendition of “Bless the Lord” while she is wearing a funny hat and face paint and a choker made of giant beads in rainbow colors and ruffled sleeves and a polka-dot vest and lavender tights and funny shoes.
I’m going to listen to the soundtrack and try to forget I saw this.
This was your funniest movie review to date.
Victor Garber sure was cute with his hippie afro, though.
I saw this probably a year after it came out – I found it terrifying.
I performed in a production of Godspell for about a year when I was 20 – it was a community theater production that wouldn’t end. I had the best time because our cast just clicked perfectly. But the show itself is not good. The movie is slightly worse, but the stage show at least makes that vaudevillian sort of broadness more acceptable.
I played Sonia – my song was Turn Back, O Man.
Maurinsky, I thought that song was absolutely ruined in the movie. It’s a seduction song, and I imagined it as somehow addressing sexuality; Jesus and the prostitute, temptation, something like that, but the actress plays it like a joke, like “Can you believe I’m being sexy? Ha!” It’s awful.
I always think of the movie as an interesting cultural artifact. It’s one of the only surviving examples of what “hippiedom” originally was. It didn’t last that long (gone long before 1973, I think, so the movie was probably dated even when it came out), but the word “hippie” got so overused even it it’s time that it lost all meaning even then. The combination of extreme innocence and silly put-on about sums it up. It makes me think about your post (or was it Roberta’s?) yesterday over on Basket of Kisses about just when media-savvy snarkiness made it into the mainstream. Godspell might have been one of the earliest examples. (I wonder what the famous Toronto production was like. The cast was full of comics that later became famous on Saturday Night Live and SCTV)
It’s also weird to see Victor Garber 35 years ago. The man has aged so little, I almost think he’d look the same if you washed off the clown makeup and removed the ‘fro.
That was Roberta.
I’ve never liked Victor Garber, he gives me the creeps. I couldn’t stand him in the dreadful Matthew Broderick production of The Music Man a couple of years ago.
Oh, Gods, don’t get me started on that dreadful, wooden, unmoving stick of Matthew in The Music Man. I HATED it.
I watched Godspell here recently. My Chorus teacher in High School loved Broadway Musicals, so I knew many of the songs, could sing them from memory, even if I didn’t know where they came from. And then I saw this…. I quickly grew bored and stopped watching, even though it was on in the background. Heck, the movie “The Ruling Class” was better at portraying Jesus than this one was.
I have to admit I couldn’t get past the Peter Max-ish video box cover…… just couldn’t pick it up off the shelf!
I don’t like Matthew Broderick in any kind of musicals. Musicals require energy, and I don’t think he has enough energy as an actor. But Victor Garber is a little bit of divine.
I love this film and always have. I dunno, the music really make sit for me and I agree it is one of the few films to capture the essence of hippiedom as Melville puts it…
I ran into Victor Garber in Boston one day a few months ago. He has indeed aged but is still very recognizable as Victor Garber. I told him I loved his work, starting with Godspell, hee hee…
Wait. I thought I commented. Did I never finish my comment?
Now I’m too tired.
Bad movie.
(okay I can do this)
Show is bad too, now. I’d have liked to see the reworked revival… a new concept. When it’s done in community theater they just do floppy playground clowns. Which is like, crazy. Because the last bit of context was that floppy playground clowns vaguely resembled hippies. Now they just resemble crazy.
I don’t know my gospels, but I believe Godspell is a musical retelling of the gospel according to someone. As opposed to Jesus Christ Superstar, which is a musical retelling of the gospel according to someone else.
Oh and sorry I love Garber. Hot as Daddy Warbucks in Rob Marshall’s Annie (a made for tv musical NOT ruined the way most of them are).
Ken, I’m surprised you could resist, you’re such a theater whore and the songs are so great.
Roberta, I was surprised you didn’t comment, and I’m sorry, but I’m flippin’ SCARED of Garber. Creeeee. Peeeee.
Godspell is based on the Gospel according to Matthew (says so in the title, but apparently there’s a Luke reference in there too). JC Superstar is more interpretive of Jesus in a way that isn’t strictly Gospel at all.
Maurinsky, Broderick was full of charm and delight on Broadway in The Producers. But he SUCKED as Professor Henry Hill.
Even in Sleepless in Seattle? Even cree. pee. in that?
Ken, I’m surprised you could resist, you’re such a theater whore and the songs are so great.
On the other hand, I’m so not a person interested in religion, I don’t know the songs so I’m not drawn to see the show, I really didn’t like Jesus Christ, Superstar the movie although I love the music, I didn’t like anything about Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and I really disliked the movie version of Hair (not religious, but a hippie stage show made into a bad movie). Not to mention the gratuitous condemnation of A Chorus Line as the worst stage-to-movie musical ever.
…but I’m flippin’ SCARED of Garber. Creeeee. Peeeee.
Agreed. I’ve been trying to come up with a description of his creepiness. He doesn’t frighten me as someone who would be violent – not a serial killer or a child molester. He’s more the kind of guy who would spy on little girls undressing, then steal their underwear to sniff while masturbating. And I’m a little disturbed that I can even visualize that…….
Roberta, I don’t remember him in SiS but you know I hate that movie.
Ken, you’re a little disturbed? I had to read it!
Having been in a stage production of Hair I have to say I think the film is a big improvement. I mean, it has a plot! (the screenplay was written by playwright Michael Weller) and the re-contextualization of the songs works beautifully.