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By
NICK ZEGARAC
After a decade of declining
profits in Hollywood where Biblical epics were
concerned, Twentieth Century Fox's "The Agony and
The Ecstasy" (1966) managed to recapture much of
the glory, if not the box office, of that sort of
'50s storytelling without getting too religious.
Charlton Heston and Rex Harrison star as two of
the Renaissance's most explosive and emotional
titans: the great sculptor/painter, Michelangelo
and Pope Julius II. Julius is a tyrannical, often
crass dictator whose true aspirations are for the
ultimate glory of Rome and preservation of the
Catholic Church. To this end he will stop at
nothing to inspire his people and ignite
controversy amongst the clergy. Michelangelo's
career as sculptor par excellence is sidetracked
when Julius orders him to paint the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel. "But I'm not a painter,"
Michelangelo explains, all evidence to the
contrary.
The battle of wills that ensues is heavy on
melodrama but rather flat on inspiration. As
Michelangelo, Heston is solid, stoic and virtuous
-- a sort of Moses with a paintbrush. What he
ultimately lacks is any real conviction as one of
the artsy set. Also, knowing as we do today that
Michelangelo was not interested in women
romantically, Heston's faux romance with
Contessina de Medici (Diane Cilento) is grossly
misleading from a historical perspective. What is
compelling about this sometimes stagy, rather
longwinded film is the way in which Heston and
Harrison's unique acting styles spar off one
another.
Director, Carol Reed, whose greatest contribution
to cinema will forever be "The Third Man," on this
occasion, fills the vast expanse of Panavision
with lush photographic set pieces that strangely
are cold and disengaging. Overall the film falls
short of expectations, but it remains immaculate
craftsmanship from an era in filmmaking in which
such attention to every detail was simply par for
the course.
Fox's DVD faithfully returns the film to its
original visual vibrancy. The color by DeLuxe is
rich and very nicely balanced. For decades this
film's magenta layer had been so severely faded
that for most of its running time the flesh tones
and backgrounds looked as though they were
suffering from severe sunburn. These oversights,
as well as shortcomings in film grain and
age-related artifacts, have all been corrected.
What is still obtrusive about the picture quality
is its excessive edge enhancement. On widescreen
televisions it is barely noticeable. On regular
picture tubes, horizontal and vertical lines on
much of the Italian architecture shimmer
uncontrollably. It is quite distracting.
The audio is 5.1 surround, remastered from the
original six-track recording. Yet the audio falls
short of expectations. It's slightly muffled and
not very aggressive even when the swell of music
grows from the side and rear channels. Extras
include theatrical trailers for several Fox
releases, as well as this one. Overall, then, this
presentation of "The Agony and The Ecstasy" is
still something of a compromise for the home
theater audience, as much of a compromise as the
film is itself with regards to taking history
directly and seriously. |
