Italian cinema director Franco Zeffirelli has added a crude note of anti-Semitism to the continuing controversy over Martin Scorsese’s film “The Last Temptation of Christ,” saying that “Jewish cultural scum” who want to denigrate Christianity are behind it.
Zeffirelli, a self-acknowledged Catholic activist, issued a statement Tuesday announcing his intention to withdraw his own film. “The Young Toscanini,” from this year’s Venice Film Festival, where “Temptation” will have its first main public showing.
“I have seen Scorsese’s work,” the statement said. “I consider it truly ugly; completely crazy, phony, 15 years behind the times.
“As far as I am concerned–speaking as someone as open as possible, which I believe is the most philo-Semitic as possible–I can say that the film is the work of that Jewish cultural scum in Los Angeles that is always lying in ambush to strike a blow at the Christian world.”
Added Zeffirelli, “I find the provocation that this work wants to represent relative to the Christian and Catholic world insupportable.”
Scorsese, who is Catholic, is directing the Universal Pictures film from a script by longtime collaborator Paul Schrader, a member of the Dutch Reform Church.
Schrader based the screenplay on a novel by the late Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis, who was himself excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church after its publication.
MCA CHAIRMAN TARGETED
Nevertheless, bitter protests in the United States that followed a preview of the film for church leaders targeted Lew Wasserman, the Jewish chairman of MCA, which owns Universal.
Much of the sharpest criticism came from religious figures, like former Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell and Rev. Robert L. Hymers of Los Angeles’ Baptist Tabernacle, who had not seen the film, which is scheduled for a Sept. 12 release.
Objecting to the film’s portrayal of Jesus as an indecisive man who in a dream sequence makes love to Mary Magdalene, Falwell and Hymers warned of an “anti-Semitic backlash” if the film is released.
In his statement, Zeffirelli, who in the past directed a reverent television spectacular about the life of Jesus, explained his decision to withdraw from the Venice festival: “I don’t have the slightest intention of getting mixed up in the scandals, the controversy, the denunciations, which distinguish the upcoming Venice Film Festival,” he said.
He added that the festival’s directors “made a colossal error” in selecting the Scorsese film.
Zeffirelli’s intentions may be at odds, however, with those of his own producers, who issued a second statement later Tuesday that was cosigned by Zeffirelli.
According to the statement, “The Young Toscanini” is still being edited in hopes of being shown at Venice. It stars Elizabeth Taylor, a convert to Judaism. The statement said if it is not technically possible to show the film, “it will certainly not be because of the controversy surrounding the festival.”
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