Christian movies: a Jesus film was shot in Palestine in 1912

A Christian movie is a film made about the Christian story or for Christian audiences. That covers Bible retellings, true stories of conversion and modern dramas about faith, and it is a much older category than most people assume. The story of Jesus was filmed in 1912, and Cecil B. DeMille, Hollywood's best-known maker of epics, returned to it in 1927 with The King of Kings.

The audience has also proved large. Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004) took about $372 million in the US and $611 million worldwide on a $30 million budget. Major studios, Sony among the first, later moved in, and critics describe a category that grew from church-led marketing into a studio business. Below are Christian films on Relay, in release order, from silent reels to a Dutch family adventure about Martin Luther.

What makes a Christian movie

• A source in scripture or testimony. Many follow the Gospels closely. Others dramatize a real conversion, or put a believer into a modern story.
• A message the film wants you to leave with. The story usually builds toward a choice, a forgiveness or a change of heart.
• A different route to the audience. Several films below were made outside the major studios.

8 Christian movies to watch

From the Manger to the Cross (1912)

Kalem, an American film company, sent a crew to Palestine to shoot short films against desert backdrops. Filming the life of Jesus was an afterthought. Sidney Olcott directed, and the result tells the story as a series of staged scenes linked by Bible verses. It was shot on location.

The Library of Congress chose it for the National Film Registry in 1998. Reports of its cost differ: TCM gives $35,000, while AFI cites a Kalem advertisement saying $100,000. It was revised in 1938 with close-ups, music and narration.

Drama

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The King of Kings (1927)

DeMille directed and produced it, and it premiered in New York on April 19, 1927. It cost about $1.27 million, though Criterion says press agents inflated the figure to $2.3 million. It is described as the first film to premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

H. B. Warner, who played Jesus, was kept apart from the rest of the company during the shoot. DeMille wrote that Warner used a closed room on each set and wore a hooded cowl between his dressing room and the camera. The opening and resurrection scenes were shot in two-color Technicolor, and the rest of the film is tinted.

Drama

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Hallelujah (1929)

King Vidor, a Hollywood director, made this musical drama for MGM with an all-Black cast, one of the first major-studio films to have one. Daniel L. Haynes plays a sharecropper who becomes a preacher after a tragedy, and Nina Mae McKinney plays Chick. McKinney came from a Broadway revue and sings Irving Berlin's "Swanee Shuffle".

Film historians say MGM thought the project so risky that it required Vidor to invest his own salary. Southern theater owners banned it, and Chicago cinemas refused it too. Vidor was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, and the Library of Congress chose it for the National Film Registry in 2008.

Drama

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The Cross and the Switchblade: 50th Anniversary Edition (1970)

David Wilkerson was a pastor who went to New York to reach gang members, and gang leader Nicky Cruz converted. His book about it sold five million copies and had been published in 23 languages by 1969. The film followed in June 1970, with the pop singer Pat Boone as Wilkerson and Erik Estrada, later the star of the TV series CHiPS, in his first feature role as Cruz.

Don Murray, an actor, made his directing debut, and Wilkerson and Cruz both served as technical advisers. Variety reported a total investment of $1.2 million. The producer, Dick Ross, had spent fifteen years making films for the evangelist Billy Graham.

Drama

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Time Changer (2002)

Rich Christiano wrote and directed this independent seriocomic science fiction film. In 1890 a Bible professor is sent by a colleague, in a time machine, to the future to see where his beliefs lead. The film argues that removing Biblical foundations from society has consequences.

It was shot in Visalia, California, from October 2001, cost $825,000 and earned about $1.3 million. It opened in limited release on October 25, 2002. Variety called it "goofy fantasy hokum".

Drama

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The Life of Jesus (2003)

This is The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John, released in theaters on September 26, 2003. Philip Saville directed, Henry Ian Cusick plays Jesus and the actor Christopher Plummer narrates. The script is a word-for-word adaptation of the American Bible Society's Good News Bible translation and uses only the Gospel of John.

The theatrical version runs about 3 hours, and a DVD set also includes a 2-hour version. Reported budgets range from $10 million (Box Office Mojo) to $20 million (Anglican Journal).

Drama

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The Perfect Stranger (2005)

An attorney receives a dinner invitation from a man who says he is Jesus. It is based on David Gregory's novel Dinner with a Perfect Stranger. Jefferson Moore plays the stranger and co-directed with Shane Sooter.

It was made in Louisville, Kentucky, and Jeffersonville, Indiana, by two production companies, and it spawned two sequels: Another Perfect Stranger (2007) and Nikki and the Perfect Stranger (2013).

Drama

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Storm and Luther's Forbidden Letter (2016)

Martin Luther was a German priest and theologian who became the central figure of the Protestant Reformation. He wrote the Ninety-five Theses in 1517, and Emperor Charles V declared him an outlaw in 1521. This Dutch-Belgian children's film, Storm: Letters van Vuur, is set in Antwerp in 1521 and was directed by Dennis Bots.

Storm, a 12-year-old printer's apprentice, flees with the printing plate after his father is arrested for printing a forbidden letter by Luther. He meets an orphan girl named Marieke. The story turns on printing, which carried Luther's ideas: his Ninety-five Theses spread across Germany within weeks. The film opened in Germany on March 23, 2017.

Action/Adventure

Where to go next

• For more films from the first decades of cinema, see Silent films that survived from a mostly lost era.
• For another film about belief and its consequences, see Folk horror movies and the name they got in 1970.