Pilate in CinemaScope, or Notes on Roman Camp

If the small-screen television dramas of the 1950s showed Pontius Pilate in a more intimate light, a depiction more overblown and distancing would be found in the overheated genre of Hollywood film. In the big-screen performances of the mid-century, the figure of Pilate would grow more baroque and brash. While Richard Boone in The Robe may act his part in a candid and straightforward manner, there is an ironic quality to the Pilate of Basil Sydney playing a first-rate third wheel to lovers Rita Hayworth and Stewart Granger in Salome. With Frank Thring in Ben-Hur at the decade’s end, however, and Hurd Hatfield in King of King as the 60s begin, we find performances of the Roman prefect that are notable for their exaggerated gesturing and stagey affectation. If they do not “out-Herod Herod,” as Hamlet would have it, they certainly out-Pilate Pilate—Thring’s Pilate is an ironic ham in the overwhelming sincerity of Ben-Hur, while Hatfield is the villain of Nicholas Ray’s film, desiring to persecute Jesus because, as he intones, “He is different and refuses to behave like the others.”