The Gospel According to St. Matthew

Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Italian: Il Vangelo secondo Matteo) won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1964 and the OCIC Prize from the International Catholic Organization for Cinema, an unusual recognition given Pasolini's atheism and Marxist politics. The film was Pasolini's third feature, after Accattone (1961) and Mamma Roma (1962), and is widely treated as the most accomplished cinematic adaptation of the Christian gospel ever made.

The screenplay uses only Matthew's actual gospel text, taken in literal Italian translation from the Vulgate Latin — Pasolini's deliberate decision to add no additional dialogue and no narrative dramatisation beyond what the gospel itself provides. The cast is composed almost entirely of non-professionals from the southern Italian regions where the film was shot, including the writer Susanna Pasolini (Pier Paolo's mother) playing the older Mary in the closing sequences. Cinematography is by Tonino Delli Colli, the master who would also shoot Pasolini's Salò a decade later.

The locations were shot in the rocky landscapes of Basilicata, Puglia and Calabria — Pasolini deliberately avoiding the conventional Holy Land or Italian-Renaissance visual references that dominated cinematic representations of Christ at the time. The score combines Bach's St Matthew Passion, Mozart's Mass in C Minor, Odetta's recordings of African American spirituals, and Luis Bacalov's original orchestrations. Sight & Sound's 2022 critics' poll placed the film on its Greatest Films of All Time list.