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DeMille's film was the last major Hollywood movie about the life of Jesus until the 1960s. Some of the biblical epics of the 1950s may have been set during Christ's lifetime, but they generally avoided showing him directly; in The Robe (1953) and Ben-Hur (1959), he is seen only from behind or from afar, and in Quo Vadis? (1951), he is seen in a brief, static flashback that is also a near-exact replica of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. By keeping the face of Jesus safely out of sight, or by adhering extremely closely to existing religious art in their depiction of him, these films were careful not to compromise his divinity.

The first major film to dramatize the life of Jesus in the sound era was King of Kings (1961), but director Nicholas Ray handled this material very hesitantly. Jesus himself appears in less than half of the film, which largely concerns itself with scenes of Roman authorities, Jewish rebels, and various supporting characters, such as the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. When Jesus himself does enter the story, he is often shot from behind: on some occasions, especially when he asserts his divine power and authority, only his shadow is depicted. As in DeMille's film, we are not supposed to sympathize with this objectified Jesus so much as let his gaze scrutinize us and convict us of our sinful imperfection. In a few scenes, such as when Jesus leans over the table to speak to Judas at the Last Supper or when he flicks his eyes up at Herod Antipas after the latter calls him a "faker," the camera does come in close on the faces of certain characters as Jesus looks at them, but the angle is generally too great to be considered a true point-of-view shot; however, the other characters do seem uncomfortable, and the tight framing of their faces suggests that they feel trapped or caught by Jesus's eyes.

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), directed by George Stevens, goes a different route, but fits very well within the tradition of projecting Jesus's divinity by filming him objectively. Stevens makes frequent use of wide-angle tableau shots, but when he does use close-ups, he often alternates between virtually head-on shots of Jesus and more angled shots of the people to whom he is speaking. This happens when Jesus meets John the Baptist; when Jesus gathers his disciples; when he speaks to the cripple he is about to heal, to the woman caught in adultery, to Mary and Martha before the resurrection of Lazarus, to the disciples at the Last Supper; and finally when Jesus ascends into heaven. In all of these sequences, Jesus looks virtually straight into the camera, while the camera looks at the other people from a point just off to the side; often when the camera looks at Jesus, his face is alone in the frame, suggesting his unique transcendence, but when the camera looks back at the other people, we see Jesus's back or his head somewhere in the shot. So the film encourages us to identify not with Jesus but with his followers, as they behold him.

By the time Stevens's film came out, the biblical-epic genre had pretty much come to an end, and its conventions were already being challenged. The Gospel According to St. Matthew, directed by Italian neorealist Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1964 and released in North America in 1966, was revolutionary on a number of levels. Instead of harmonizing the Gospels and introducing other historical or fictitious elements, Pasolini took his script almost entirely from a single Gospel; and instead of the slow, deliberate pace and frequent wide shots favored by earlier filmmakers, Pasolini shot the film in an active, aggressive style, full of movement and close-ups. The actor playing Jesus often sounds angry or raises his voice in an unconventionally aggressive manner that reflects the filmmaker's background in political activism.

Pasolini makes stunning use of point-of-view shots in the film's very first scenes, as Joseph copes with the shock of Mary's pregnancy, but he never really challenges the basically objective portrayal of Jesus that we see in the earlier Hollywood films. The point-of-view shots typically belong to characters other than Jesus, such as the disciples, who walk behind Jesus and strain to hear the teachings that he gives them over his shoulder. Sometimes the camera lurks in the crowd and beholds Jesus from a distance, as when he utters the "Woe to you!" passages; and during the trial before Pilate and his beating by the Romans, the camera's point of view is explicitly identified with that of the disciples Peter and John. Jesus himself remains a more objectified character, rather than someone with whom we are encouraged to identify.

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