The Agony and the Ecstasy

Make that mostly Agony….

If, at this late date, we come to the inescapable conclusion that movie-making is not only an art, but an art of considerable alchemy and artistry, we must also come to the conclusion that most filmmakers can not use that art to make movies about art.  Nearly every film about our significant painters, composers, sculptors and actors are sad affairs – either pompous with a feigned “significance,” or so self-consciously “arty” as to become ridiculous.

One of the most egregious offenders is Carol Reed’s 1965 film The Agony and the Ecstasy, about the sparring between Renaissance master Michelangelo and Pope Julius II during the painting of the Sistine Ceiling – one of the most significant achievements in the history of art.

It is precisely because of that significance that Reed, usually a deft and gifted filmmaker, failed so miserably.  Because here was a story of importance and significance, by gum, and nearly everyone involved was so busy posing with importance and significance that they all forgot to make a movie that was human, moving and alive.

The problems start with the source material.  Michelangelo would be a magnificent subject for a film if movie-makers were not cowed by his lofty reputation and wanted to say something significant about this brilliant, difficult, conflicted man.  But screenwriters Reed and Philip Dunne (1908-1992) decided instead to adapt Irving Stone’s (1903-1989) utterly puerile and unreadable book of the same name instead.  To their credit, they jettison much of Stone’s material and try to craft an original screenplay, but the rot had already set in.

Add to that calamity the casting of Charlton Heston (1923-2008) as Michelangelo.  Perhaps the finest looking and sounding bad actor in the history of cinema, a role like Michelangelo demanded subtleties that were beyond Heston.  He sure looked fine in a beard and artist’s rags, but once he opened his mouth to emote, the effect was ruined.  A dull pall of earnestness squeezes his performance of any juice it might have had, and one longs for just that touch of ham Heston exhibited in less demanding roles.

Heston is not helped at all by the film’s conception of Michelangelo.  After making a decorous claim that our hero is not homosexual (“no, not that,” he says, nodding at one of his drawings of a male nude), they also render him strangely neuter by saddling him with a sexless romance with Diane Cilento (1933-2011) – as the Contessina de Medici, yet!   So, poor Heston is forced to mope around the wonderful Sistine Chapel sets, or look at the fresco recreations by painter Niccolo d’Ardia Caracciolo and mummer banalities about the hand of God and whatnot. 

What Heston does have going for him, aside from a classically handsome look and a fine voice, is that remarkable ability to be acceptable as a figure from the past.  His most significant roles – Michelangelo, Moses, Ben-Hur, General Gordon – were all figures of a dim and romantic past; it would be inconceivable to cast one of his contemporaries, say Paul Newman, and get away with it.

Other supporting players do not help.  Adolfo Celi (1922-1986) is a reptilian Giovanni de Medici, but the most egregious turn is Harry Andrews (1911-1989) as the great architect Bramante (1444-1514), playing with all the subtlety of an Agatha Christie red herring in a provincial rep company.  I couldn’t help thinking that if Michelangelo ended up with a knife in his back, Harry Andrews did it.

How could Reed, who made such wonderful films as Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and The Third Man (1949), been responsible for such a flaccid mess? 

Well, the good news is that the film is not a complete mess.  Sharing nearly equal screen time with Heston is the divine Rex Harrison (1908-1990) as Pope Julius.  Harrison was simply the finest light comic actor of his (or any other) generation, and his casting as the Pope is a stroke of genius.  Though a straight, dramatic role, Harrison infuses the Pope with all of his customary charm and Shavian wit.  Indeed, the first scene pitting the Pope against the Artist is all weighted in God’s favor simply by the delight we have watching Harrison twinkle from behind his designer robes.  Harrison dances throughout the entire film on the balls of his feet, and if a contemporary Pope had that much devilish esprit, it would be enough to interest me in religion.

The Agony and the Ecstasy opens with a brief voice-over narration talking about Michelangelo and his works:  surely something more necessary today than in 1965.  The film was also lavishly shot in Cinemascope and Todd-AO; it was a wonderful picture to look at, if not watch.   Somehow it was nominated for five Academy Awards.  It won none.

Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling

Most contemporary mainstream, popular books that seek to put the significant people and events of the past into some kind of narrative often fail because, for a variety of reasons, we have managed to collectively fail to appreciate or understand that the past was … fundamentally different.

Many of the social constructs we take for granted are, historically speaking, of recent creation.  So too are our notions of hygiene and cleanliness, our sense of responsibility to society and to one another, our sense of where and when to recourse to violence.  Changed, too, are our appreciation of fidelity to a particular faith or credo, the way we dress and our social expectations, and (sadly) our sense of honor.

In short, the people of the past could not be more different than we if they were Martians.  The reasons for our lack of intellectual and emotional empathy with the past are many and far-ranging.  The ubiquity of a distancing technology, the many and beneficial effects of social mobility (at least while it lasts in this country) and the impact of science to wipe away the superstitions of a millennia are but a few of the reasons.  For a popular historian to truly become simpatico with the distant past requires a deep knowledge of then-prevailing opinions, politics, social norms and day-to-day living.

For those of interested in the Renaissance and many of the gigantic figures who loomed so large within it, I recommend Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King without reservation.  It tells the story of the often stormy relations between the artist Michelangelo and his patron, Pope Julius II.  Other historical figures who play a part in the history are Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Savonarola, Erasmus and Martin Luther.

For those of us who expect our popes to be gentle vicars of Christ, men who spearhead the message of peace (or intolerance) of the Church, Julius II will come as a great surprise. A warrior Pope, Julius spent nearly on battlefields of Italy trying to regain control of once-Papal lands now under French rule as he did in the Vatican. Along with his host of occasionally murderous cardinals and courtiers, and sometimes with the advice of his daughter (I did say popes were somewhat different then), Julius sought to use the Church as a means by which he could restore all of Italy to the grandeur and international influence it held in the age of Caesar.

Needless to say, such a titanic character had a titanic ego.  To help refashion the world around him, and to leave a lasting artistic legacy forever attached to his name, Julius selected Michelangelo as one of his leading artists and visionaries.

This selection was not an easy one.  Every bit as arrogant, egocentric and difficult as Pope Julius, Michelangelo had no use for the warrior Pope and hoped to continue building his career in Florence.  However, refusal of a Papal commission could have fatal consequences, and with great misgivings the great artist went to Rome.

Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling masterfully tells the story of how Michelangelo painted the magnificent frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, and the four years of misery, fear, intimidation and frustration he suffered while doing so.  A suspicious, nasty, ungenerous, physically dirty and fairly rancid individual, Michelangelo did not work happily under duress, threats or discomfort.  The fact that Raphael – younger, better looking, popular, beloved – was creating rival masterpieces (e.g. The School of Athens) a few away at the same time did little to improve his mood.

Most amazingly to us – who now, after centuries of looking at the iconic images of the Sistine ceiling as one of the most magnificent artistic achievements of the western world – Michelangelo insisted that he was a painter of no ability at all, and that his effort was doomed to failure.  Draw whatever parable of artistic self-blindness you want here.

Sometimes a name looms so large in history – like Michelangelo – that it is almost impossible to think of a flesh-and-blood human being in there as well.  Ross King manages to bring these huge historical characters to life in a real and vibrant way, and makes us understand both the richness and strangeness of the Renaissance.

Here, for example, is the warrior pope about to leave for battle following negative omens:  “Julius was undaunted by the omen, and for the next week Rome bustled with preparations.  Finally, before dawn on the morning of the twenty-sixth of August, after an early Mass, he was borne in his litter to the Porta Maggiore, one of Rome’s eastern gates, where he gave a blessing to those who had risen to cheer him on his way.  With him were five hundred knights on horseback and several thousand Swiss infantry armed with pikes.  Twenty-six cardinals accompanied them, together with the choir from the Sistine Chapel and a small army of secretaries, notaries, chamberlains, auditors – a good part of the Vatican bureaucracy.  Also among the company was [artist] Donato Bramante, who served among other duties, as the pope’s military architect.”

King (born 1962) is also the author of Brunelleschi’s Dome and the novel Ex-Libris. We will revisit his work soon.