Daddy Cosmatos made relatively few movies, each time quite in the decade's note, i.e., following the trend of the times; he benefited from a choice cast for the flick we are discussing now. Rappresaglia, played by Burton, Mastroianni, and scored by Morricone, with a copiously bad script and a dreadful assortment of rubbish lines and tirades, abhorrently stilted, so that the characters permanently exchange risible lines and strident precepts.
Burton, Mastroianni are among the ablest actors Cosmatos ever worked with; in the '80s, he went on with Stallone, whom he directed in a cult thriller, COBRA.
Burton was an experienced player of WW 2 officers, and here he delivers a standard performance of a placid, gloomy, bored, tired Nazi, suffering from sloth, devoured by his manifest sloth; while Mastroianni was deemed slick enough to look priestly. In a supporting role you can notice Mme. Sandrelli's daughter from Brass' THE KEY, here 10 yrs before that role of cheated wife.
Burton, the jaded officer, and Mastroianni, the courageous priest, have several scenes together. Some more knowledgeable say that the gloomy and bored, morose Nazi is downplayed, depicted as a nicer and more approachable guy than he ever really was, while the priest is boosted.
See the priest going into the clerical palaces of Vatican, with their ostentatious display of luxe ....
'You will be called to account before the tribunal of God.' Yet Burton was not easygoing with scripts he didn't like. On the other hand, though, during the '70s (--and of course also the '80s as long as he was alive--) his career reached an unconceivable degree of misery and deprecation, Burton, another of the humiliated great actors (sort of like Harris, O'Toole, Finlay, Stamp, Rourke--), becoming a sort of B actor; and he was, unfortunately, not the guy to rescue a movie or a script, he mainly let it sink.
An average WW 2 drama, badly written, rhetorical, tendentious, directed by a hack, yet interesting, MASSACRE IN ROME has the advantage of a first—class cast. Go see Mastroianni in a frock and Burton in his Nazi outfit.
I presume that so many asked so much from Pope Pius the 12th because so many were in fact expecting so much from the Christ' vicar; this is the only way of making sense of so many exigencies.
Burton, Mastroianni are among the ablest actors Cosmatos ever worked with; in the '80s, he went on with Stallone, whom he directed in a cult thriller, COBRA.
Burton was an experienced player of WW 2 officers, and here he delivers a standard performance of a placid, gloomy, bored, tired Nazi, suffering from sloth, devoured by his manifest sloth; while Mastroianni was deemed slick enough to look priestly. In a supporting role you can notice Mme. Sandrelli's daughter from Brass' THE KEY, here 10 yrs before that role of cheated wife.
Burton, the jaded officer, and Mastroianni, the courageous priest, have several scenes together. Some more knowledgeable say that the gloomy and bored, morose Nazi is downplayed, depicted as a nicer and more approachable guy than he ever really was, while the priest is boosted.
See the priest going into the clerical palaces of Vatican, with their ostentatious display of luxe ....
'You will be called to account before the tribunal of God.' Yet Burton was not easygoing with scripts he didn't like. On the other hand, though, during the '70s (--and of course also the '80s as long as he was alive--) his career reached an unconceivable degree of misery and deprecation, Burton, another of the humiliated great actors (sort of like Harris, O'Toole, Finlay, Stamp, Rourke--), becoming a sort of B actor; and he was, unfortunately, not the guy to rescue a movie or a script, he mainly let it sink.
An average WW 2 drama, badly written, rhetorical, tendentious, directed by a hack, yet interesting, MASSACRE IN ROME has the advantage of a first—class cast. Go see Mastroianni in a frock and Burton in his Nazi outfit.
I presume that so many asked so much from Pope Pius the 12th because so many were in fact expecting so much from the Christ' vicar; this is the only way of making sense of so many exigencies.