After having mastered much of the world film production of the 80s and 90s as an actor, from the cult trilogy of the Mad Max and the tetralogy of Lethal Weapon, Mel Gibson finds his second artistic youth behind the camera. For his third experience as a director, Gibson gets a mystical inspiration that leads him to reproduce the biblical events of the Passion of Christ on the big screen, with the homonymous film of 2004.
To tell the last hours of the Messiah’s life, the American filmmaker, at the suggestion of the Italian producer Enzo Sisti, chooses Matera which, due to its evident landscape similarities with the Holy Land, 40 years earlier had already inspired Pier Paolo Pasolini to his very personal rereading of the “Gospel according to Matthew”.
Except the trip to Craco, Gibson shoots all the exteriors of the film in the city of the Sassi and in the province of Matera, and then finishes shootings in Cinecittà, in Rome.
In the collective imagination, the place of Matera most linked to “The Passion” is the Belvedere of Murgia Timone, or Golgotha, the point in the Murgia Park where the final sequence of the Crucifixion was filmed, but also that of the Sermon on the Mount.
The poster of “The Passion of Christ” (2004)
Not far from there, Masseria Radogna is the place where Jesus still moves as a child, while more glimpses of the Sassi represented the scene of other memorable events: vico Solitario, in the Sasso Caveoso, hosted the market and the houses of Jerusalem; via Madonna delle Virtù and piazza Porta Pistola were chosen for the Jerusalem Gate. A little above, via Muro was the scene of the Via Crucis, while the nearby complex of Madonna delle Virtù and San Nicola dei Greci hosted the Last Supper and the Washing of the Feet.
Released in Easter of 2004, the film was a success, but also a battlefield for Catholics, due to the crudeness with which the director reproposed some moments of Jesus’ martyrdom, and Matera came out – perhaps still unconsciously – reinvigorated, so much that since then the city began its rise towards becoming one of the most popular emerging tourist destinations.
If the city is what it is today, even before the title of the European Capital of Culture in 2019, it owes it to this film, to Gibson and to the winning intuition of the producer Sisti who, since then, has brought other great blockbusters to Matera: above all,the latest 007 with Daniel Craig, “No time to die”.
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