Customer Reviews

Henry IV (Enrico IV)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Admittedly freely adapted from Pirandello's greatest play, ENRICO IV, this film provides the finest performance of Marcello Mastroianni's distinguished career, while tribute should be made as well to director Marco Bellocchio's "cinema of style" which provides the only possible method for this type of work in this medium to be an artistic success. During a costume pageant, a young man suffers a head injury when thrown from his stumbling horse, ostensibly becoming insane as a result, being then placed in an asylum converted from a medieval castle, occupied only by him and four valets, all paid for by his nephew. His madness takes the form of an apparent delusion that he is Henry IV, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire in the 11th century, with the four valets being his private counselors of the king's chamber, challenged after 20 years when the former inamorata of Henry (Mastroianni), still-desirable Matilda (Claudia Cardinale) visits the castle with a psychiatrist (Leopoldo Trieste) and a convoluted but reasonable scheme to shock her deluded erstwhile love back into the world of the sane. The three characteristics that are present in varying degrees in all humour: incongruity, irony, and surrealism, share a cardinal responsibility for the success of this work, the ironic factor being that all parts cast are portrayed by actors filling roles as actors. Sly Henry, seeming to still seek absolution from Pope Gregory to overturn his excommunication, utters the playwright's salient line that madness occurs only when one wears a mask but does not know it. Bellocchio, who has filmed two of Pirandello's creations from the Theatre of the Absurd, is responsible for the screenplay in this instance, setting about to illuminate the differing manners in which people play their parts in life, and their anguish when their masks are cracked. A psychoanalytic rather than his wonted socio-political motif has captured the creative point of view of the director in HENRY IV, with his aesthetic research bringing about, through his masterful use of colour and camera movement, a panoply of interior realities for us to savour.

Pirandello's celebrated play works well in the theatre, the smaller the better, where its curious distillation of history, psychology, philosophy and metaphysics can be properly savoured. One can conjure up one or two directors such as Dreyer and Bresson qualified to handle this tricky combination on the silver screen; Bellocchio would certainly be missing from this list. He has created a costume pageant that relies on selected passages from the original text and Mastroianni's magnificent acting to do the job for him. His task is a formidable one, but his directorial style does not help his case. Pirandello requires absolute transparency and simplicity of presentation in the production of his dramas, and he does not get it here. The frames tend to be overcrowded; the pace too fast; and the editing too abrupt. The jazzy tango background music clashes with the camera instead of complementing it. These tendencies lead to confusion rather than clarity. Someone not familiar with the original would hardly be able to work out the complicated relationships based on the information provided by the director: that Matilda is a widow and Belcredi her current lover; that Frida ( her spitting image ) is her daughter but the father is not indicated; that the visitation comprising the substance of the play and film was prompted by a request from the recently deceased mother of his nephew who originally organized and paid for the entire sharade that keeps him installed in imperial splendour. In my view, there needs to be an element of the sinister to make this play work. We are after all dealing with a madman who is also a potential murderer. Instead, the prevailing tone tends more in the direction of comedy, jarring with the bitterly sardonic analysis that forms the central core of the final denouement. And this is further diluted by uncertainty about Belcredi's outcome; in stage productions I have seen, Matilda's off-stage scream makes his fate quite clear, and also renders the hero's magisterial resumption of his madness a necessity rather than a choice. As a film, this merits no more than 2.5 stars, but I am upgrading to 4 because this is the greatest performance I have seen from a screen actor I would place in the all-time top 3 of his profession, and his achievement in this movie is not adequately recognized.

Very well acted. Henry IV is brought to life. A very interesting take on the Henry IV character.