Character Education Plays

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Admin
Character Education Plays

Character Education Plays

The release of a new movie version of Paradise Lost in 2012 will see Bradley Cooper take on the role of Lucifer, becoming the latest in a long - but not always distinguished - line of actors to portray the devil on film.

The Devil in Early Cinema

The character of Mephistopheles appeared a great deal in early cinema, as the story of Faust was filmed several times in the early years of the twentieth century. However, although that name is often used as a moniker for the devil himself - in the same way as Lucifer for example - in the Faust legend he is more properly a demon. At any rate, the devil himself was undoubtedly present in the early years of film. H.Agar Lyons played the role as early as 1914 in The World, The Flesh and the Devil, a movie otherwise notable as the first to be photographed in colour. The following year Edward Connolly played the eponymous character in a film called simply The Devil. A.B. Imeson then featured as Satan in a 1916 version of the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Grey.

The Devil in Horror Movies and Religious Epics

Not surprisingly, the Devil has been a staple character in the horror genre. Notable recent performances have come from the likes of Viggo Mortensen in The Prophecy (1995) and Jeremy Yost in Hellraiser Prophecy (2006) An equally predictable home for the character has been in religious epics. Leo Marks provided the voice of Satan in the Martin Scorsese movie The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) which drew outrage from some Christian groups for the way in which it departed from the gospels, while Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) which featured Rosalinda Celentano as Satan, was a surprise hit despite differing in some respects from the traditional passion story.