The Agony And The Ecstasy Details

One of the best

Not your usual Sir Carol Reed fare of “The Third Man” and “Odd Man Out” ilk, nevertheless the master’s hand is as evident in this huge spectacle as it was directing his first musical, the incomparable “Oliver” three years later. A lavish epic based on the Irving Stone best-seller “The Agony and the Ecstasy” is a rich dramatization, moving, fascinating and never dull despite a running time of 2 hours and 20 minutes. Although Michelangelo is the film’s principal character this is definitely not a “biopic” per se. The director has wisely opted to concentrate on just very few incidents of the artist’s life and so produced a lucid and powerful tangled web of ambition and greed nicely interspaced with scenes of action, love, drama, and art that remains one of the finest of the genre to come out of Hollywood, and which now, 40 years on, still outshines many of today’s digitalized so-called “spectaculars”.

Charlton Heston and Rex Harrison, both excellent actors brought out the best in one another as they gamely sparred in this immortal film - one as the driven and haunted artist, the other as the austere Pope fighting to preserve the temporal power of the papacy against all odds, and although Heston is very, very good as Michelangelo he is easily outclassed by Harrison who dominates the entire production by his superb portrayal of Pope Julius II, one every bit as outstanding as his Academy Award Winning Professor Higgins of 'My Fair Lady'. Definitely worth seeing.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Like watching paint dry...

Okay, it's not that bad, but it never quite gets going. The first 10 minutes is taken up with a factual documentary telling us about Michelangelo and showing his amazing sculpture, it's a bit hokey and a far cry from Kenneth Clark's Civilisation. Then it kicks off the movie proper, but Heston is always just Heston while the Pope of the time is played by Rex Harrison, who is always mainly himself, though it's good to seem his less than the skirt-chasing, wily rogue than usual, his reverence for the artist's work is rather moving.

It picks up after the 'Interval', which isn't really necessary as it's not a long film. Some lovely shots of north Italian landscape. The romantic subplot is a bit rubbish; at one point Diane Cilento encourages him by yelling, 'Go finish that ceiling...!' like some nagging housewife getting him to do the home decorating.