In filming his very literal approach to the Gospel of St. Matthew, Pasolini employed a cast of non-professional actors, and settings of rugged Southern Italian landscapes and hill towns, shot with a mixture of cinema-verité techniques and expressive close-ups. His Christ is anguished and determined, a peripatetic preacher against the afflictions of social injustice. His miracles are matter-of-fact. Yet what was seen in 1964 as a daringly direct, almost reportorial account set against the everyday life of the times, looks today more like a stylized classic. The faces Pasolini chooses evoke parallels with Italian religious art; the imagery is drawn from works of Masaccio, Giotto, Pero della Francesca and others; the music is a mixture of Bach, Mozart, black spirituals and the Congolese Missa Luba. Pasolini has stated: “It's only externally that the film has the characteristic features of a Catholic work.... (M)y tendency (is) always to see something sacred and mythic and epic in...even the most humdrum...and banal objects and events...even though I don't believe in the divinity of Christ....” (in Oswald Stack, Pasolini on Pasolini)