Ready for His Closeup? Pasolini’s San Paolo and Paul, Apostle of Christ (2018)

Abstract The article uses Sunset Boulevard (1950) and the cinematic Paul pattern to reflect on San Paolo, Pasolini’s script for an unrealized Paul film, and on Paul, Apostle of Christ (2018). Typical Paul films, including television and church-use productions, present Paul in terms of a repeated pattern including 1) a spectacularly conceived Acts, 2) his martyrdom, 3) hagiography, and 4) biopic film structure. Despite focusing on Luke’s writing of Acts, rather than the content of Acts, Paul, Apostle of Christ follows the cinematic pattern quite closely. Even though it follows Acts more closely, San Paolo deviates from the cinematic pattern extensively, primarily because it transposes Paul to modernity where Paul struggles weakly and apocalyptically, rather than spectacularly or hagiographically, against dominant institutions. Unlike most films about early Christianity, San Paolo is not about the triumph of Christianity. Sunset Boulevard makes a nice foil for Paul’s cinematic history and these two films specifically because of its story of a forgotten film star who fantasizes about a glorious cinematic return and because of its use of a dead, scriptwriter narrator to tell its story. Paul, too, still awaits cinematic celebrity. In San Paolo and Paul, Apostle of Christ, scripts, scriptwriters, and dead narrators dominate the tales.