Films Resurrect Christ’s Passion : The Getty Museum, in conjunction with its manuscript exhibit, is screening three very different movies that explore the Easter story

No other story continues to inspire artists as deeply and dependably as the suffering of Christ.

During the Middle Ages, Christian artists depicted the Passion with the confident belief that Christ’s terrible death was essential to God’s plan to redeem a sinful world. Today, when belief takes many forms and even disbelief is possible, it has been filmmakers, rather than graphic artists, who have tended to turn to the Passion of Christ, not necessarily as a declaration of faith but as a still-powerful way of exploring both religious and secular themes.

Three very different movies that deal with the Passion will be screened at the J. Paul Getty Museum starting Wednesday. The films--”Ben-Hur,” “Jesus of Montreal” and “The Last Temptation of Christ”--are being shown in connection with the museum’s exhibit, “The Passion of Christ in Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.”

It was Thom Kren, the Getty’s curator of manuscripts, who thought that a film series would be an effective supplement to the manuscript exhibit. The centerpiece of the exhibit is a prayer book from around 1530 that includes more than 25 full-page miniatures devoted to Christ’s suffering and crucifixion. Considered a masterpiece of late medieval illumination, the book, about seven inches tall, was painted by Flemish artist Simon Bening for Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenberg, then the powerful archbishop of Mainz.

As Kren points out, Albrecht is the cleric who enraged Martin Luther to the point of schism. Albrecht sold indulgences, shamelessly collecting the vigorish on spiritual debts. “Albrecht was one of the more egregious transgressors in this domain,” said Kren, who noted, however, that the practice allowed His Eminence to commission some remarkable art.

The miniatures in the prayer book, many of which show a radiant Christ being tortured by inhuman brutes, constitute a powerful account of what Albrecht and his Christian contemporaries regarded as the single most important event in human history.

“One of the things I found when I first held this book 10 years ago was that it was incredibly moving to turn the pages,” Kren recalls. Although movies are obviously on a vastly larger scale, they share some of the manuscript’s ability to present its resonant story in a dramatic and moving way, he says.

Unfortunately, as art historian Ruth Mellinkoff points out, the Albrecht prayer book and many other religious works of the period had a terrible dark side. They are part of a process whereby Jews were stereotyped and demonized. These works helped promulgate a murderous anti-Semitism that cost millions of Jewish lives, traditionally at special risk at Easter time.

In putting together the film series, Kren drew up a list of 20 or so movies that deal with the Easter story, including one of his favorites, “The Gospel According to St. Matthew” (1964) by the late Pier Paolo Pasolini. Film writer Stephen A. Farber, who will introduce the films, made the final cut.

As Farber points out, the story of Christ has been a Hollywood evergreen, a feature of the movies at least since D. W. Griffith’s “Intolerance” (1916). Although it is unlikely that any of the three movies will generate the interest centuries from now that the prayer book does, each is fascinating in its own way.

One of the most hyped movies of all time, “Ben-Hur” (1959) is the most conventional in its treatment of the Passion of Christ. Farber says he chose to include it because “it’s a big, glossy movie from the ‘50s, when there were a lot of pious, straightforward versions” of Bible stories that allowed Hollywood both to indulge its love of spectacle and to appeal to traditional values. Farber picked “Ben-Hur” over “King of Kings” and other turgid options “because it’s the least painful to sit through.”

In “Ben-Hur,” director William Wyler never lets the audience get a clear look at Christ. His back is shown as he walks in the hills, and his matted hair covers his face when he stumbles along the path to Calvary.

But Christ’s divinity, relentlessly underscored by the soundtrack, is suggested by indirection in its ability to turn Ben-Hur from a vengeful lion to, if not a lamb, at least a man of peace. It’s hard now to imagine anyone but Charlton Heston in the role of the princely Judean, but the part was first offered to several other actors, including Marlon Brando and Rock Hudson. Stephen Boyd, as the wicked Messala, is said to have been urged by Gore Vidal to look at Heston’s Ben-Hur as if he were the last hunk in the provinces. Boyd’s Messala continues to be a glorious example of the Roman as one of the movies’ most durable villains (great uniform, great sneer).

One of the most interesting facets of the film is the respectful way that it deals with Ben-Hur’s Judaism. Although little is made of the fact that Christ was a Jew, much is made of Judah’s religious faith. Each time the star-crossed Judean enters the house of Hur, he touches the mezuza--the little scroll on the doorpost that is a constant reminder of the Jewish homeowner’s faith--and touches his fingers to his lips. At least a few of the specifics of observant Jewish life are presented in a dignified, respectful manner that dampens the potential for anti-Semitism that is a constant danger in depictions of the Passion.

The least well-known of the films is “Jesus of Montreal” (1989), directed by Denys Arcand. This funny, effective French-language movie is about the efforts of a motley group of actors to put on a Passion play in modern Quebec. It deals with many of the themes raised in the biblical account of Christ’s death, including the corruption of the religious Establishment. And it suggests that people today are still seeking solace and the hope of eternal life.

Farber says he wanted to include at least one film that showed how the story could be reinterpreted in modern terms. Among the charms of “Jesus of Montreal” are the contemporary equivalents that it finds for events in the life of Christ. Instead of throwing the money-lenders out of the temple, Jesus (Lothair Bluteau is the star and director of the quirky Passion play) trashes an audition for a beer commercial in Montreal, very much a provincial capital just as Jerusalem was. And this modern Jesus is tempted, not by Satan, but by a sleazy attorney/career planner, who dangles such post-modern temptations as a house in Malibu.

The most controversial of the three films is Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which presents what Farber terms a counter-myth to tradition. Desperately opposed by some fundamentalist groups when it was released in 1988, the film is true to Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel, in which divinity, like less absolute forms of virtue, is presented as a choice--an act of will, not of fate and, thus, an act of heroism.

Written by Paul Schrader, the film is a sometimes uneasy blend of the traditional and the sort of speculation that charges of heresy are made of. Harvey Keitel’s Judas has the red hair that tradition says the man who sold the Savior had, but he is Christ’s truest ally in this vision, no villain. And while Willem Dafoe has the Northern European good looks that bring to mind the Jesus of a medieval manuscript, his final temptation is the decidedly unorthodox one of getting down from the cross to live the life of an ordinary man.

Scorsese’s film is a vivid reminder that the story of Christ’s death is one that cries out for visual interpretation. Despite centuries of secularism, the cross continues to be an image of enormous power, one that speaks of a remarkable moment, historical or not, when death was defeated and God and man were one.

The film series begins Wednesday with “Ben-Hur.” “Jesus of Montreal” will be screened April 22, and “The Last Temptation of Christ” on May 7. All screenings are in the museum auditorium at 7 p.m. The films are free, but reservations are required. Those who come to see the films can visit the manuscript exhibit between 6 and 7 p.m. The manuscript exhibit continues until July 5. The J. Paul Getty Museum is at 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. Museum admission is free, but reservations are required. Call (310) 458-2003 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.