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Yet even here, a mystical sensibility prevails. Our first image of the pregnant Mary, seen from the point of view of a distraught Joseph, is startlingly blunt—but note the arch under which she stands, a visual motif that harks back to Renaissance art. Pasolini also heightens Mary's role beyond what Matthew's Gospel tells us, by putting her at the Crucifixion (as per John's Gospel) and the Resurrection (a detail that is included in a number of films, but not in any of the canonical gospels).

The counter-cultural films that followed—Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) and Godspell (1973)—were exclusively concerned with the relationship between Jesus and his hippie-like followers, and never bothered to incorporate Mary into their storylines. But the late 1970s saw, on television, a renewed interest in Mary—as well as, for the first time since the silent era, an intense focus on the Nativity.

Franco Zeffirelli's mini-series Jesus of Nazareth (1977) runs to well over six hours without commercial breaks, and the birth and childhood of Jesus consume nearly an hour and a half of that running time, forming almost a feature film unto itself.

In some ways, Zeffirelli retains the mystical emphasis of previous films. The Mary of his film speaks very few lines that do not come straight from Scripture, and she seems to sense that something is about to happen, well before the angel actually appears to her; as one of the neighbors tells Joseph, "She's always been a bit strange." But Zeffirelli also plays up aspects of Mary's humanity that previous films had ignored completely; this just might be the first film to show Mary going into labor, and feeling the pain that goes with it, as she gives birth to Jesus.

In Zeffirelli's film, the marriage between Mary and Joseph is more of a social contract than anything else, but the TV movies that followed—The Nativity (1978) and Mary and Joseph: A Story of Faith (1979)—emphasized the romantic attraction between their protagonists, with awkward if not embarrassing results (though Mary and Joseph does integrate or allude to other biblical passages in interesting ways, most notably by depicting the rebellion of Judas the Galilean mentioned in Acts 5:37).

If prior decades were marked by piety and romance, the 1980s brought scandal and controversy. Jean-Luc Godard's Je vous salue, Marie (1985) sets the Nativity in modern-day Switzerland, and it was protested at the time by the Pope and others because it frequently depicts Mary in the nude, as she ponders the changes to her body. Ironically, Godard never questions the virginal conception; instead, he explores the idea that God, in becoming human and living within a womb, has affirmed and elevated the human body, and specifically the female body.

Mary also appears briefly in what may be the ultimate scandal film, Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). When Jesus returns to Nazareth and is rejected by his neighbors, Mary begs him to come back to her home, and Jesus replies, "I don't have a mother. I don't have any family. I have a Father, in heaven." As Mary walks away crying, a friend tells her that there were thousands of angels surrounding Jesus as he spoke. "I'd be happier if there weren't," Mary replies.

This may be the only scene in a major film that captures how shocking it might have sounded when Jesus said it was his followers, and not necessarily his relatives, who were his true brothers, sisters, and mothers (Mark 3:20-35). Most films that touch on this episode have tweaked it to eliminate any possible offense. In Campus Crusade's Jesus (1979), Jesus smiles as he recites this line—to Judas Iscariot!—and then he leaves the room, presumably to greet the family waiting outside. In Zeffirelli's film, the line is spoken by Mary herself, when the admiring disciple John visits her. And in Mary, Mother of Jesus (1999), a TV movie produced by members of the Catholic Kennedy clan, Mary calmly explains what Jesus meant by this line.

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