Everyone knows that Jesus Christ Superstar was a great musical and cinematographic phenomenon in the world, but perhaps not everyone knows of his difficult impact in Italy and why.
Film of 73 directed by Norman Jewison, before being distributed it was, in fact, also subjected to the preventive screening of the Osservatore Romano and this because the very famous musical, I would dare to say the most famous Rock Opera ever which represents the last 7 days of life of Christ, also disturbs the Church, given the absolutely blasphemous consideration that Italian public opinion had of it at the time.
The film had the audacity to even want to approach the Gospels to the Hippye culture, to propose a Jesus who does not perform miracles, to depict the last week of Jesus’ life without the Madonna and reached its maximum and most evident desecration in the overturning of the role between Judas (even represented as the first character in the film) and Jesus… only second….!
… “Only” these then the news? But not at all.
Least but not least the setting, also certainly unconventional for the time, for which Mary Magdalene is represented as clearly in love with Jesus (remember the passage I don’t know how to love him) and the representation of crowd inciting the crucifixion…. at the time perceived as a clear symptom of anti-Semitism.
In short, that musical whose authors, so agnostic as to consider only Judas to be wise, that same work that under the musical profile was the top, expressing itself most of all in the fantastic and intoxicating “Superstar” passing through the enthralling “The Last Supper”, did not cinematically speaking an easy debut, appearing too pretentious in costumes and too hippye in culture.
How could he not pass for blasphemous in the very bourgeois Italy of 73… ..a text like that?