The Agony and the Ecstasy

Charlton Heston - Michelangelo
Rex Harrison - Pope Julius II
Diane Cilento - Contessina de Medici
Harry Andrews - Bramante
Alberto Lupo - Duke of Urbino
Adolfo Celi - Giovanni de Medici
Venantino Venantini - Paris De Grassis

Every ingredient in The Agony and the Ecstasy seems on an epic scale except its level of imagination and intelligence. Synthetic as it is, Irving Stone's book has historical and biographical sweep covering Michelangelo's life from the age of thirteen to his death at eighty-eight and conjuring up the tangled, faraway universe of sixteenth-century Italian life with precision and density. The movie turns Stone's wide-angle lens into a zoom and concentrates exclusively on the four-and-a-half year period in which Michelangelo brought his immortal frescoes into being. Perversely, the film refuses to take the giant steps that seem natural to the epic, selecting instead an essentially static subject - the creative process - as its core. One has the sense of a mincing Cyclops, as the movie attempts to brood over and exult in Michelangelo's artistic struggle.

To offset the lack of dynamism in the story, the filmmaker’s pack as much pomp and spectacle around the edges as they can. Pope Julius 11 (Rex Harrison), a warrior pontiff trying to unite Italy under the aegis of the Vatican and drive out the French. Julius is seen leading his troops off to battle and returning at night, the hypnotic white expanse of the renowned quarry is the background for a scene in which workers who are trying to divert the Pope's soldiers so that Michelangelo can escape. The Pope conducts mass in the newly completed chapel of St Peter's for a large, resplendently attired collection of worshippers. Elsewhere there is even an anemic love interest interpolated: after a fall from the scaffolding. The ravishing Contessina de Medici (Diane Cilento), who harbours an unreciprocated passion for the great sculptor, nurses Michelangelo back to health.

None of these episodes, however, is much more than a temporary distraction from the crucial drama, the titanic and tiresome conflicts between Julius, who wants his chapel completed as quickly and inexpensively as possible, and Michelangelo, whose progress can only be determined by his genius. Evidently audiences were supposed to be entertained and engrossed by the contrast of worldly, urbane Harrison in his lavish papal vestments confronting intense, single-minded Heston in his drab, unwashed rags. The two even have a running gag that could almost be a textbook example of tautology. 'When will you make an end of it?’ asks the Pope. 'When I have finished', the artist replies firmly.

The historical inaccuracies in the movie are abundant. There is no record of Michelangelo's having been ministered to in times of illness by any contessinas, beautiful or otherwise, and most Renaissance historians agree that the real Michelangelo would have probably been more interested in a male nurse anyway. On the homosexual issue, the movie is aggressively dishonest, compelling its Michelangelo to disavow any sexual interest in men. Other fanciful or fraudulent moments in Agony include Michelangelo's angry destruction of his first attempt at the chapel and his vision of what the true completion of his work should look like, which is glimpsed one morning in a gloriously arranged mural of cloud banks. The military engagements which thunder dimly in the interstices of the movie are historically accurate, though curiously enough, Reed, who appears unable to enlighten us about why - for instance - the French are invading Lombardy or the Germans are massing at the Brenner Pass or Milan is under siege.

The dour Pope Julius of Stone's novel had been brightened up to suit Harrison's gifts, and there was not much Reed needed to coax a gay, high-stepping performance out of him. On the other hand, it was hard to coax anything out of Heston, an actor who has always seemed as if he would be very much at home on Easter Island. With his strapping, barrel-chested good looks and stolid personality, Heston is surely the antithesis of Michelangelo, or any other artist. As the sculptor's would-be mistress, Cilento makes an inappropriately slatternly noblewoman. These performances are persuasive evidence of how much of Reed's famous skill with actors was dependent on having good ones to begin with, performers who were at least halfway suitable to their parts. When a lump of marble like Heston was thrust on him, he could not sculpt any better a performance than Heston's other directors.