AMERICAN BIBLE FILM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19832, 30 December 1927, Page 9

AMERICAN BIBLE FILM.

EXHIBITION IN LONDON.

COMMENT BY NEWSPAPER. LONDON, Dec. 23. The Times, in commenting on " The King of Kings," the new American film showing the life of Christ, says the saving consideration of the film is that Christ's sayings will bo brought nightly before thousands less conversant with the Bible than our fathers. " Wo cannot lie wholly ungrateful for access to the New Testament through an easily appreciated medium," says the paper. '* It can hardly be harmful and conceivably it. will do good." Clergymen, who have written to the newspaper, generally welcome the film. They chiefly criticise it because there is too much sentiment. The film critic of the Times, commenting on the first showing of the film to an audience composed largely of bishops and clergy, says as a delineation of Christ the film is contemptible. " There is no spiritual fire, merely conventional reverence in tho meanest tradition," he says. " Jesus is a timid, meek figure in the film, incapable of inspiring an enduring faith. The outstanding impression is that of the producers' sickly presumptuousness."