Page - 99 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/01

the atonement of Yom Kippur, so with the first Eucharist Jesus announced the deliverance of humanity from the burden of their sins, shouldering them him- self and sacrificing himself for definitive atonement. The Kol Nidre is a historic act that must be repeated each year; the Passion of Christ is an unrepeatable meta-historical event which breaks the cyclical nature of Jewish time. These musical motifs clearly do not make up the entire soundtrack of Pasolini’s film. They are, however, the most important semiotic elements on this level (to- gether with the dialogues), and the ones most closely woven into intertextual relations as the result of precise aesthetic and expressive choices on the part of the director. AN EXAMPLE OF AUDIO-VISUAL SYNTAX By way of conclusion, it is worth looking at the scene of the Massacre of the Innocents as an example of audio-visual syntax. Here we find a general associa- tion between the musical theme, the film Alexander Nevsky, Piero della Franc- esca’s fresco Battle between Heraclius and Chosroes and the representation of the bodies. The soldiers on horseback, lined up in a row on the ridge of the hill in their armour recall the Roman knights of Heraclius in Piero’s fresco in Arez- zo. Some of the hats, especially the hemispherical ones, echo that model. But the great variety of helmets framed one by one is not an aesthetic whim on Pasolini’s part, but a visual element in line with Prokofiev’s musical motif. The same kind of shots and the same variety of helmets can be found in the open- ing scenes of Eisenstein’s film about the Battle on the Ice. Furthermore, there are similarities between the spatial arrangement of the knights in Piero’s fresco and the initial charge of the Teutonic knights, a static visual relationship that extends here onto the sound plane and that of the bodies, creating a multiple contacts marker. Continuing with the scene, the acceleration of the foot soldiers, as they chase and slaughter the children, is another type of visual indicator. This new semiotic element is introduced by a modification of state, not by a change of form (e.g. the aging of Mary). The speeded-up film and the shots of a broad, fixed field with scenes of violence are reminiscent of Fascist newsreels from the war, an impression that becomes even more powerful when we look at the soldiers’ clothing. It is as obvious as it is necessary to say here that all the bodies in the film are dressed: they are covered bodies, but this expressive masking is a reve- lation of content, significant insofar as it is a sign-of. The costumes, the clothes, are the communicative code with which viewers gain access to the characters, another semiotic cluster linked to the visual and audio elements. Unlike the knights, the foot soldiers are a visually coherent group, with the same uniform The Soundscape of The Gospel According to St. Matthew | 99www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1