SOURCE: "Greatest Story Ever Told … by a Communist," in Film Comment, Vol. 3, No. 4, Fall, 1965, pp. 22-24.

In the following review, Butcher asserts that "The Gospel According to St. Matthew is incomparably the most effective picture ever made on a scriptural theme."

Almost from the beginning of the commercial cinema, it was discovered that the religious film, preferably a religious epic or spectacular, was one of the most foolproof formulas for box-office success. From the earliest Quo Vadis or Ben Hur, the religious picture has packed them in and even in this materialistic age still does.

Those interested in religion, and even those interested in the cinema, have become increasingly despondent about this. It was not, we felt, Cecil B. DeMille's ingredients of sex and scripture that were really going to fire people with the love of God. Indeed, most of the really good religious films have not been...