Ian (Flash Review)This film paints a picture, pun intended, of the process for how the Sistine Chapel got painted. Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo, who was primarily a sculpture, to tackle this impressive frescoes task. Amusing to think Michelangelo's 2nd best trade was painting vs chiseling figures from stone! During the project the two men banter back and forth upon the direction of the frescoes, time it is taking and compensation, which is actually mildly amusing. Pope Julius II is a beast, odd way to describe a Pope, as he still fought in battles on a horse while wearing battle armor. Overall, it doesn't feel as long as it is while it has an epic feel to it. It has some nice historical scenes of the wax and paint dripping in Michelangelo eyes and face and the exhaustive toll it takes on both men. Additionally, the first 15-20 minutes of the film was an actual documentary of the historical Italian art and artists to set the stage for how magnificent the Sistine Chapel truly is.

Armand a book. its adaptation. great actors. and beauty of nuances. result - not only a film. but a pledge for values. a realistic portrait of a genius. map of relationship between two different forms of power. and remarkable show. it is this kind of movie who becomes memorable because it contains a part of you. you may discover yourself in lines of Julius II. or you can be Michelangelo. important is the fact - you are not out of battle. because each character is more than silhouette of a nice shadow. because , the art of fresco, the taste of epic of Hollywood is only part , instrument for a splendid work of Rex Harrison and Charles Heston. this is its central virtue. to be portrait of a time, out of idealistic web and, in same time, in same measure, mirror for every period of history.

secondtake The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)Coming with the American rush to "love art" in the 1950s and 60s (including the famous visit of the real Mona Lisa to America by boat), "The Agony and the Ecstasy" is a touchstone of how to make a hero of an artist and make him or her human, too. That's the key, you know--the artist has to be ribald and earthy but also transcendent, almost beyond his knowing.That's the flawed paradigm at work here. We learn nothing about how Michelangelo's art was made--how it was painted. Nor how it was devised or inspired--the image of God in the clouds doesn't cut it for me. And we actually learn nothing about the real man--Charlton Heston's interpretation is fair enough, I suppose, but it's really just the necessary cliché of a talented (handsome) man tossed around by forced bigger than him.What is supposed to drive the movie, and in a way saves it as a piece of entertainment, is the presence of the penny-pinching Pope, played by Rex Harrison (of "My Fair Lady" and "Julius Caesar" fame). His haranguing about the ceiling is blithe and fun. And Heston's complaining as he creates his masterpiece (with plaster dripping on his face--actually pudding in the shoot) is a foil for the Pope more than anything. Oddly, the Pope is a stronger character than the artist, and if history is at all right, we get the sense it was the other way around.What is terrific about the movie is the set--a replica of the Sistine Chapel in a nearby movie studio. They gave them freedom to shoot it in all different phases of the painting, with and without scaffolding, night and day, and it's pretty marvelous to see it unfold in a way not so far from what must have been the truth.Another bit of truth snuck in during these last days of the Hays Code: when someone comes looking for Michelangelo in the whore house, the prostitute goes hysterical laughing because, of course, he would never be found there. The artist was gay, and the world knew it then and knows it now, and the filmmakers get a clever wink in.Another highlight is the incredible marble quarry in Carrara, a real place with what really is the best (seamless, pure, easily sculpted) marble in the world. Lucky it was nearby ancient and Renaissance Rome, both.Don't avoid this movie at all, but don't expect anything truly penetrating. It's aggrandizing, it's formulaic, it's well filmed, and Harrison is in great form. But director Carol Reed ("The Third Man") chickened out a bit in a chance to push the boundaries a little harder.

clivey6 Okay, okay, it's not that bad, I just had to use that joke... Then again, it's a close thing in the early days. It begins with a 10-minute rushed bio of Michelangelo narrated by an American who's no Kenneth Clark... it sounds like those awful Disney documentaries. Lots of shots of Michelangelo's sculpture and so on...Then the movie gets underway and it's Heston as the artist and Harrison as the Pope. Except they always play the same types mostly, so it sort of lacks credibility. Harry Andrews wasted in a support role. Adolfo Celi, who played Largo in Thunderball one year earlier, is dubbed (badly) into American. Diane Cilento, Sean Connery's then-wife, is a not very attractive harpy type, a kind of love interest/shoulder to cry on. During one awful moment she bucks up the distraught artist, saying, "And get that ceiling finished!" sounding for all the world like some nagging housewife. "And then you're to fix the garden gate and call round my mother-in-law's!" It gets better as it goes on, after the interval. And it's good to see Harrison playing a more devout type, rather a rascally self-centred rogue. But much of it seems to be about conflict and argument for the sake of it, to create a drama of some kind.