The Mark of Zorro (1940) — PICK

Last Days in the Desert (2016) — PASS

The first superhero and the most recent screen Jesus are both new on Blu-ray — but one is much more Catholic than the other.

The Mark of Zorro isn’t the first Zorro movie, but Zorro is arguably the first superhero. And The Mark of Zorro, starring Tyrone Power, may be the first movie that follows the entire superhero arc.

Don Diego’s milksop act is a bewildering disappointment to his family, but also to family friend Father Felipe (Eugene Pallette). Later, coming to Father Felipe by night and finding him praying Compline with the peons (a rare glimpse of a liturgical service in an action movie), Diego gives him the wealth stolen by Zorro from the alcalde to be returned to the poor. At another point, Zorro dons a Franciscan habit to pass unseen — only to come upon his enemy’s niece, Lolita (Linda Darnell), just as she is praying to the Blessed Virgin for a suitor to save her from the convent to which her ruthless, superficial aunt wants to consign her. So Zorro’s appearance is like an answer to prayer!

As strange and austere as The Mark of Zorro is thrilling and romantic, Last Days in the Desert is an art-house curio starring Ewan McGregor both as Jesus (or Yeshua, as he’s called here) and Satan during Jesus’ 40 days of wandering in the wilderness.  The canonical temptations aren’t depicted; instead, the demon harasses Yeshua with blasphemies and unsettling remarks, not all of which may be lies — though he does frankly admit, “I am a liar; that is the truth.”

What I most appreciate here is the physical rigor of Jesus’ ascetical journey — not only the fasting, but the harshness of the desert. But in portraying Jesus’ human limitations, the film falls too far short of the divine reality. At one point, Jesus even demands that Satan show him the future of a family he meets in the desert. Seeking knowledge of the future from demonic powers? That might be the gravest Christological issue in any Jesus movie I’ve seen, short of Last Temptation.