The screen adaptation of Peter Shaffer's stage play about the intense battle of wills between Inca leader Atahualpa and conquistador Francisco Pizarro, who seeks the golden city of El Dorado in Atahualpa's realm. Read more
| Starring | Robert Shaw, Christopher Plummer, Nigel Davenport |
|---|---|
| Genres | Drama |
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The screen adaptation of Peter Shaffer's stage play about the intense battle of wills between Inca leader Atahualpa and conquistador Francisco Pizarro, who seeks the golden city of El Dorado in Atahualpa's realm.
| Starring | Robert Shaw, Christopher Plummer, Nigel Davenport |
|---|---|
| Studio | PEGASUS ENTERTAINMENT |
| Run time | DVD: 1 hr 28 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Drama |
| Language | DVD: English |
| Released | DVD: 09 Oct 2006 Production year: 1969 |
| Format | DVD |
Peter Shaffer's play is made over, in rather skeletal fashion, into a duet for two egos as Spanish conquistador Pizarro (Robert Shaw) embarks on his South American trek to conquer the Inca god-king, Atahualpa (Christopher Plummer) for the gold he thinks the Incas have. Directed by Irving Lerner, this is surprisingly stagey and static although the acting is extraordinarily powerful.
Deadly literal rendering with nothing to replace the play's theatrical splendour, resembling nothing so much as an opera without the music.
This DVD is bad. It is by far the worst transfer that I have ever seen.
The print shows its age, with scratches and blemishes of various kinds - but it is Simitar's appallingly bad transfer to DVD that makes this good movie unwatchable.
But don't just take my word for it - read the reviews at amazon.com.
Saw this great movie when it first came out in 1969 with its excellent cast of Robert Shaw and Christopher Plummer. I decided to revisit it again just for old times sake. What a disappointment it turned out to be. It looked like an extremely bad pirate copy of a copy . All the colour and sharpness had been bled from the movie by some very incompetent company based in Minneapolis,who had handled its transfer to DVD process. This coupled to terrible sound reproduction completely spoilt this trip down memory lane for me. Avoid this sub-standard DVD copy like the plague.