Reeling Backward: "The Agony and the Ectstasy" (1965)

Charlton Heston and Rex Harrison were both booming screen presences with a decided tendency toward hamminess. They knew the taste of the scenery, and enjoyed it.

But I think both actors deliver some of their best work in "The Agony and the Ecstasy" -- a measure of restraint and disappearance into the character, as opposed to bursting out of the box as was their wont. Neither received Oscar nomination, and indeed the film in general was rather ignored during the awards season, receiving five nods from the Academy in only "technical" categories, winning none.

This, in a weaker year for film, with "The Sound of Music" winning Best Picture -- a film I've still not been able to bring myself to watch all the way through -- and the overwrought "Doctor Zhivago" and the overrated "Ship of Fools" forming its main competition.

I would put "The Agony and the Ecstasy" above them all.

It's a very good, borderline great film that takes a historical subject and muses upon the two men who made it happen: Michelangelo and Pope Julius II (played by Heston and Harrison, respectively). It falls into the category of what we now would call "historical fiction," based upon the book by Irving Stone. The story is part history, part mythology and part dramaturgy.

History is full of ironic inconsistencies. Like the Fourth Crusade, which departed to free Jerusalem from the Muslim horde but instead sacked the allied city of Constantinople. Or Joseph Cinqué, one of the slaves who fought for freedom aboard the ship Amistad later (by some accounts) becoming a slave trader himself.

Chief among fate's little jokes is that Michelangelo is probably best known for his painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, when in fact he labored nearly all of his life as a sculptor. The Pope insisted upon the greatest living artist decorating his chapel, despite Michelangelo's objections. This is the story of their clashing, from which emerged one of the enduring works of mankind.

Julius was known as the warrior-pope who fought many battles to keep the papal lands under Rome's control, rather than being gobbled up by the French and others. The movie depicts him literally sword in hand, wearing ornate plate armor and striking down his enemies in bloody splashes of violence. Harrison plays him as a vainglorious man given to fits of anger, but one who truly believes his mission in life is to exalt God and raise up his church.

The movie takes a little while to get really rolling. Michelangelo is working on the pope's tomb -- 40 statues, all told -- and clashing with Bramante (Harry Andrews), the pope's stiff-necked and territorial architect. Julius decides that his chapel needs some saints on the ceiling, and more or less forces the artist to do his bidding, at cut-rate wages.

There's a nice little speech that Raphael (Tomas Milian), another great artist of that age, gives about two-thirds of the way through in which he nicely describes the economics of artistry in the early 1500s. We're whores, he says, dependent on the wealthy and powerful to provide the funding to do what we are compelled to do.

Michelangelo certainly lives out this description on the film, repeatedly defying Julius only to eventually bend the knee and kiss the ring (quite literally).

His first rebellion is to start the portraits of saints, only to scrape them off the wall or ruin them with buckets of paint in a drunken fit after deciding "the wine is sour," meaning he has no creative will to do anything inspiring. After hiding out as a marble quarryman, he's struck by a vision to do a grand collection of frescoes depicting most of the pivotal acts of the Old Testament, centered by God's creation of Adam.

The image of a bearded old man reaching his hand out to Adam's is surely one of the most enduring images in the public consciousness.

Weeks become months, months become years. "When will you make an end?!?" Julius repeatedly shouts up to Michelangelo, high above the floor of the chapel on his scaffolding. "When I am finished!" the artist replies, equally thunderous. Michelangelo quits, is fired, gives up, but always returns to the task.

The film really gains steam in the third act, where first Michelangelo and then Julius are struck down by ill health -- exhaustion for the painter, war wounds for the pope. Each man is forcefully made aware of his mortality, and finds himself reaching out to the other for understanding. The dynamic of begrudged servant and domineering master slowly evolves into a pairing of mutual respect.

Director Carol Reed helmed a lot of "prestige" projects like this; he's probably best known for "The Third Man" and his Oscar-winning direction of "Oliver!". Screenwriter Philip Dunne ("How Green Was My Valley") turns in a fairly conventional but well-done piece in the "Great Man" tradition of moviemaking.

Diane Cilento has a fairly forgettable role as a matron of the Medici family, the powerful clan that controlled his hometown of Florence and first sponsored his artistry. The idea, a predictable one, is that the pair loved each other in their youth, but he chose sculpting as his expression of ardor, and she married another. Indeed, Michelangelo gives a speech in which it's made clear he essentially lives a monastic existence without sex.

Honestly, it's just an example of a very Y-chromosome movie in which the studio decided to inject a little feminine flavor.

Quibbles aside, though, I enjoyed "The Agony and the Ecstasy" a lot more than I thought it would. It's an exploration of how men accomplish great things, usually by sacrificing some large part of their personal happiness to rededicate to a noble endeavor.

Reeling Backward: "Hombre" (1967)

Paul Newman, of course, looks about as much like an American Indian as I do an Aboriginal chieftain. Even as half-breed Apache John Russell, it's an entirely unconvincing portrait -- the bad wig and bandana he wears briefly during the opening scene doing nothing to help.

But Russell is a compelling anti-hero in "Hombre," notable for two reasons. First, he's a powerful advocate for a revisionist look at how Indians are portrayed in Western films, delivering a stern uppercut to white characters who look disdainfully down on his people. To the snooty upper-crust woman who talk in horrified tone about seeing some Apaches eat dog meat, he tells her she's never known real hunger. "You'd eat dog, and fight for the bones."

And that line gives a clue to the other aspect of the character: He is one of the unkindest, most unlikable men  you're apt to meet in a mainstream film. He kills without enjoyment, but he does so with a total lack of hesitation or compassion. Russell is not above shooting a man in the back after he's come to parley if he thinks the other a threat.

Lots and lots of men of this ilk are portrayed in movies, particularly Westerns, but their grimness is always a front for a fairly typical heroic outlook ... or, at the very least, their severity is eventually triumphed by altruistic feelings. Think of the Man with No Name, whose trilogy was recently profiled in this space. Clint Eastwood wears the visage of a selfish killer, but almost from the get-go he's looking to help out the downtrodden.

Not John Russell. Newman's steely performance makes quite clear that he gives not a fig for the Caucasians (and one Mexican) with whom he shares a stagecoach. when they find out he's half-Indian, Russell is forced to ride up top with the driver. When the coach is stopped and robbed by bandits -- one of them hidden among the passengers -- Russell is ready to let them all die so long as he's not harmed.

In the end, of course, Russell does sacrifice himself for the greater good. But it's damn clear he's not happy about doing it. It's an act of heroism, but executed with a sneer and resignation rather than a kind heart.

Elmore Leonard must hold some kind of record for most novels turned into films, due in part to the fact that he leapt through genres gleefully. Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch adapted the book for the screenplay, turning in a spare, economical script with surprisingly little dialogue. Russell himself rarely speaks more than a sentence or two at a time.

Director Martin Ritt was a well-regarded journeyman who had previously worked with Newman on "Hud," "The Long, Hot Summer" and and several other pictures. Visually "Hombre" isn't terribly novel, though Ritt has a flair for extreme close-ups of faces that is in some ways reminiscent of Sergio Leone.

His real strength as a filmmaker, I think, was in eliciting sharp, strong performances from his cast. All the characters in "Hombre," from the lead to the smallest supporting role, have a resonance and authenticity that's gripping. Even a Mexican bandit (Frank Silvera) -- who's only credited as "Mexican bandit" -- gets a few choice lines and a dramatic death scene.

It's no surprise that Ritt, who scored only one Oscar nomination during his long career, saw his films garner an astonishing 11 Academy Award acting nominations, with two wins.

The plot is pretty bare, though it bears some similarities to an updated version of John Ford's classic "Stagecoach."

A party of disparate souls are packed together for a journey through dangerous lands, with one of them an outcast. Russell, who had been corralling horses in the mountains with other Apaches, learns the white father who adopted him has died and left him a boarding house. He takes one look at it and the harried, soulful woman running the place and decides to sell it for a herd of horses.

Jessie (a terrific Diane Cilento), acts as the moral conscience of the group, repeatedly trying to shame Russell into helping the others instead of just looking out for himself. Jessie has her own problems. In addition to just losing her livelihood, she proposes marriage to her boyfriend, the local sheriff Braden (Cameron Mitchell), and is told, "Not a chance." By her own reckoning she's been married, widowed, used and abused, but she has a strong sense of self and is in some ways hardier than Russell himself.

Fredric March plays Favor, an elderly professor and Indian agent who's been robbing Russell's tribe blind, carrying $12,000 in cash along with his much younger refined bride, Audra (Barbara Rush). Also along for the ride are Billy Lee (Peter Lazer) and Doris (Margaret Blye), a very young and recently married couple whose lives seem headed toward misery. Mendez (Martin Balsam) runs the coach line and is the closest thing in the world Russell has to a friend.

Last and least is Cicero Grimes, the head of the robber gang who poses as a passenger (by intimidating a soldier into giving up his ticket). Richard Boone has a splendid turn as the amoral Grimes, who's relentless and folksy at the same time. He's a loathsome man -- at one point he makes a semi-serious rape attempt on Doris -- but the movie only hits its highest gear when he's around.

3.5 stars out of four