Agony and The Ecstasy, The (1965)

This is, notionally, the biographical account of Michelangelo’s troubles while painting the Sistine Chapel at the urging of Pope Julius II. But the movie’s historical inaccuracies are abundant.

There is no record of Michelangelo having been ministered to in times of illness by any contessinas, beautiful or otherwise, and most Renaissance historians agree that the real Michelangelo would probably have been more interested in a male nurse anyway.

Other fanciful or fraudulent moments in Agony include Michelangelo’s angry destruction of his first attempt at the chapel and his vision of what the true completion of his work should look like, which is glimpsed one morning in a gloriously arranged mural of cloud banks.

Meanwhile, Rex Harrison – one of those charmed actors who can make any part seem like the star role – turns a film about Michelangelo into a film about Pope Julius II.

Time and time again, it is the soldierly pope, not the painter (actually a frustrated sculptor), who commands the screen with the rasping authority and the whimsical tetchiness that are the hallmarks of Rex Harrison.

Michelangelo
Charlton Heston
Pope Julius II
Rex Harrison
Contessina de Medici
Diane Cilento
Bramante
Harry Andrews
Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino
Alberto Lupo
Cardinal Giovanni de Medici
Adolfo Celi
Paris De Grassis
Venantino Venantini

Director
Carol Reed