Movies in Brief

The Agony and the Ecstasy. Agony almost, ecstasy no. The title refers to Love, and the hero, Michelangelo (Charlton Heston), is presented as a classic case of sublimation. A pretty Medici lass (Diane Cilento) waits patiently, but he has only paint in his veins, and presumably only marble in his breast. He is also presented as an instrument of God, and while she waits he quarrels with the Pope (Rex Harrison) over the Sistine ceiling, and finally gets it covered. The high point of this spectacle comes when Michelangelo falls off the scaffold. Most of the rest, including that moment when the Pope almost falls off, too, does not quite come off. But from this 150-minute block of a film (counting intermission), a good editor might cut a fairly impressive ninety minutes about the artist as God, and the relationships of artist with patron, of subject with Pope, and of both with God—not counting those discussions of the meaning of things. Carol Reed produced and directed. He should have left it unfinished.

JULIET OF THE SPIRITS. 8½ in color. Federico Fellini wonders whether his audience will understand, because much of the symbolism is personal; but nobody understood 8½, and the implication that he himself understands this one is absurd. To be sure, there is a story for the symbols to hang from, and the story thuds across clearly enough. Giulietta (Giulietta Masina) is a rather childish woman who lives in a doll-house. Her husband is leaving her. This takes him over 130 minutes. Meanwhile, she sees personally symbolic visions. There is a happy ending, though; finally, she just hears voices. Her spirits cannot often be distinguished from the rest of the cast; both protoplasm and ectoplasm come in very fancy dress, and Giulietta sees things —everything—in a most peculiar way. Fellini is wearing his glamorous, wacky vision very thin, but if we must have sustained irrationality, he is the man to sustain interest in it. There are not many scenes here that are not good to watch. Too bad there are so few scenes good for anything else.

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The Agony and the Ecstasy. Agony almost, ecstasy no. The title refers to Love, and the hero, Michelangelo (Charlton Heston), is presented as a classic case of sublimation. A pretty Medici lass (Diane Cilento) waits patiently, but he has only paint in his veins, and presumably only marble in his breast. He is also presented as an instrument of God, and while she waits he quarrels with the Pope (Rex Harrison) over the Sistine ceiling, and finally gets it covered. The high point of this spectacle comes when Michelangelo falls off the scaffold. Most of the rest, including that moment when the Pope almost falls off, too, does not quite come off. But from this 150-minute block of a film (counting intermission), a good editor might cut a fairly impressive ninety minutes about the artist as God, and the relationships of artist with patron, of subject with Pope, and of both with God—not counting those discussions of the meaning of things. Carol Reed produced and directed. He should have left it unfinished.

JULIET OF THE SPIRITS. 8½ in color. Federico Fellini wonders whether his audience will understand, because much of the symbolism is personal; but nobody understood 8½, and the implication that he himself understands this one is absurd. To be sure, there is a story for the symbols to hang from, and the story thuds across clearly enough. Giulietta (Giulietta Masina) is a rather childish woman who lives in a doll-house. Her husband is leaving her. This takes him over 130 minutes. Meanwhile, she sees personally symbolic visions. There is a happy ending, though; finally, she just hears voices. Her spirits cannot often be distinguished from the rest of the cast; both protoplasm and ectoplasm come in very fancy dress, and Giulietta sees things —everything—in a most peculiar way. Fellini is wearing his glamorous, wacky vision very thin, but if we must have sustained irrationality, he is the man to sustain interest in it. There are not many scenes here that are not good to watch. Too bad there are so few scenes good for anything else.