Customer Reviews

Luther

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Some have called this movie "Luther according to Freud." Luther's struggles (spiritual and psychological) are the focus of this film, which was originally a stage play. It is true, Luther did have his struggles, but he also had his triumphs, which are not shown much in this movie. The whole film is done on one set, which gives the viewer a feeling of isolation. Keach does give an amazing performance as Luther the struggling monk and preacher. The ending is puzzling. Though a bit more bookish, the 1953 B/W classic "Martin Luther" gives a broader and more balanced view of his life. 2003's "Luther" with Joseph Fiennes should be out on DVD in Spring of 2004. That one is better yet!

Released in 1973 and all but forgotten now, thank goodness for Kino International who has rescued and revived this film on DVD. 'Luther' is the filming of a stage play written by renowned British playwright John Osborne, who is perhaps better known today for his oft-filmed and staged play 'Look Back In Anger'. 'Luther' was first produced for stage in England during 1962 featuring a young Albert Finney in the lead. It was then produced for Australian television in 1964 and the following year Britain produced the play as part of its TV series 'Play Of The Month'. The presentation seen here is by the American Film Theatre and is an excellent quality production. The entirety of the movie takes place on a single stage which changes appearances and locales throughout that make it fascinating to watch. The scene will slowly sweep to a different area of the castle and a new period of Martin Luther's life as a monk, and later as a theologian, develops naturally. The only disconcerting effect I found was how performers would exit a scene through an open door; as they walk away from the scene they are enveloped by a bright white light becoming blurry and soon non-existent. It doesn't seem necessary but it also isn't a distraction that will bother the viewer.

Stacy Keach gives a memorable and vigorous interpretation of the brilliant theologian Martin Luther. Keach was considered a rising star when cast in the film and indeed he has become a recognizable face in television and films, being known mainly for his portrayal of Mickey Spillane's pulp detective 'Mike Hammer'. Curiously he is the lone American actor amongst a gathering of British stage and film actors that includes Leonard Rossiter, Patrick Magee, Judi Dench and Julian Glover. Rossiter may be recognizable to most American viewers as the title character of the British TV series 'The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin'; he's excellent as Brother Weinand, a fellow monk who befriends Luther in his early days at the monastery. Patrick Magee is equally as good as Luther's father who is disappointed his genius son chose life as a monk over becoming a lawyer. Hugh Griffith, so memorable as Sheik Ilderim in 1959's 'Ben Hur', here plays the nasty and detestable John Tetzel who collects tithes for indulgences. Judi Dench, the only female in the movie, appears for a few brief scenes near the very end of the film playing Luther's wife. By far the most impressionable performance of the film among the supporting players belongs to Glover who plays a knight. He also serves as an onscreen narrator, a sort of Chorus, an implement borrowed from the plays of the Greek classical writers and Shakespeare as well. While 'Luther' is arguably an accurate portrait of the times it does succeed grandly as drama. It is difficult to say with any precision how all the details and matters leading up to the historical period known as the Reformation actually played out; nonetheless the actors here breathe life into their characters and we are soon swept away into those events. We are also reminded that many people were senselessly slaughtered during this dark era and that it wasn't just solely an individual's intellectual effort that forged a new direction in the history of the Christian church. Still, watching this film and realizing what a revolutionary Luther was I recall the often quoted famous line from Robert Browning's poem "Andrea Del Sarto": "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

As usual Kino did a fantastic job with the transfer to DVD. There are also several special features that come with the movie which include a half-hour documentary on how the play was transferred to screen and a brief but informative interview with one of the producers of the film. The special feature I most enjoyed was the inclusion of the playbill given out at the play's premiere in England. It is reproduced here in stills that are easily readable and just as easy to page through with your DVD player. A biography of the playwright John Osborne is an addition that I found educating; I discovered some interesting facts about the mid-20th century history of the theater stage in England.

Worth noting: the British actor Tom Baker who is world renowned for his turn as the fourth doctor in the legendary 'Dr. Who' television series makes a brief uncredited appearance as Pope Leo X. Don't blink or you just might miss him!

There have been at least three big screen productions of the life of Martin Luther. 1953: classic black and white Martin Luther as hero; 2004: Martin Luther as rebel; and this production with the excellently cast Stacy Keach as Luther the psychoanalyzed. Keach does a great job and this is well told. The problem is that the psychoanalyzing gets in the way and seems dated. It ends with a bewildered Luther unsure of himself. This is worth seeing but I think it will, with time, seem like the dated product of an age briefly (thankfully, because Freud was proven wrong on almost every point) obsessed with Freud. It is a good thing that a movie about Luther was not made during the sex revolution or we would have had to see this brilliant doctor of the church reduced to his sexual desires. Luther was a genius, a great man, a man of courage and integrity, a great Christian, and one of the most important figures in Western history and culture. Three movies about his life do not seem enough.

I remember seeing this movie in the local movie house and really enjoying it. Stacy Keach does an excellent job as Martin Luther as tortured soul and spiritual leader. When I first saw this film of the play, LUTHER, I enjoyed it because I love history. When I watched it about 5 years ago, as a practicing Roman Catholic, on VHS it made me appreciate and understand Luther, the man. And while I may not agree with Luther's theology, I am sympathetic to his search and understanding of God's grace. I especially like the way this film develops the relationship between Luther and his mentor, Fr. Johan Von Staupitz, who, by the way, never became a follower of Luther, remained in the Roman Catholic Church, and as a result was sent into a type of house exile by the Church, because of his relationship with the reformer.

If you like good acting, history, and a good story you will enjoy Luther.

LUTHER is the first American Film Theater (AFT) movie I've seen, and, according to the extras on this disk - especially a twenty minute interview with one of the producers - it's pretty representative of the dozen or so films put out in its two years of existence.

Stacy Keach plays the 16th century German monk turn church reformer in the 1973 big-screen adaptation of playwright John Osborne's LUTHER. The play follows the career of Luther from troubled novitiate to a questioning and critical priest to a somewhat settled old age. Osborne's LUTHER is a character study rather than a hard-edged chronicle of great events. That's not to say that LUTHER ignores totally the swirl of history surrounding the title character. Indeed, the play includes indulgence-selling priests and a diet in Worms met to insist that he, Luther, recant of his heresies. They're here in service of history and, more immediately, to provide the cause for Luther's rebellion.

And there's the rub. There's an intimacy to LUTHER that I'm sure works better on my five-inch Philco than it did on the big screen. Just as I'm sure it worked much better on the live stage. Although in a contemporary (2002) videotaped interview Edie Landau argues convincingly the merits of making movies out of stage plays, the results are mixed. The wife and business partner of the American Film Theatre founder Ely Landau, Edie Landau's 26-minute videotaped interview is a fascinating look behind the scenes of the AFT and the novel `subscription' concept that allowed them to film almost a dozen plays in its two-year existence. For all the highbrow appeal of an examination of the inner Luther, and even the strong performances by the cast, especially Keach, film demands action, while live theater rewards introspection. LUTHER is interesting, although not terribly involving. Paradoxically, although I haven't much desire to watch the movie again I would be the first in line if LUTHER is ever revived as a live stage play,

I was excited to get this video, as I am a long time fan of both Osborne and Keach...I must say, however, that I was somewhat disappointed in the movie as a whole...Overall, I found the pace pedantic, and the premise off base historically....The more recent Luther with Finnes is by far a better overall production....The 1950's production, is perhaps the best overall portrayal of Luther to this date...All in all, I would not recommend this movie...It is a poor rendition of a stage play, which, by the way, is a mesmorizing experience...

Martin Luther was a passionate, truthful, scary, disturbed and corrupt man--a paradox of an individual if ever one has existed. The Protestant Reformation is one of those defining moments in history which could never happen again if Luther had to go through the considerable torment of being it's vehicle: he was so neurotic, so unstable, so prone to indulging his own emotional whims in the name of God that one meeting with a vocations' director in the Catholic Church would have ended his religious career altogether.

Stacy Keach is one of my favorite actors, and his portrayal of Luther as a man torn by conscience, madness, and an initial ruthless search for authenticity is to my mind the best ever filmed. He exudes the manly nobility that Luther possessed and also the frightful disturbance which was ultimately his downfall. One cannot help but be amused by the early scenes with his Augustinian superior, Johann von Staupitz, played by Maurice Denham with a kind of a quiet irony. During prayer, Keach's Luther breaks out into sweats and constantly begs forgiveness for imaginary sins and both complains and boasts about the his gastrointestinal problems. Cleaning the latrines was a matter of sheer agony for Luther: his mind was dominated by intrusive thoughts, consisting for the most part about feces and doubt about his faith. What a combination!

Fittingly, the entire film is narrated by a peasant who joined the revolts that Luther provoked with his break from the Catholic Church. Never having had any intention of aiding the peasants or joining any kind of revolt against authority, he himself had a number of them slaughtered while they invoked his name against poverty and injustice. Smearing blood on the tortured Luther's cassock, he says: "There. Now you even look like a butcher."

He serves as a kind of reminder that Luther's heroism consisted solely of condemning the practice of indulgences and nailing the 95 tenets to the door of the Catholic Church in Wittenburg. And that's all she wrote, folks: after that he became as bad as the wealthiest, most corrupt member of the Papacy.

Luther's painful relationship with his father is driven home well by the exchanges between Keach and the always fantastic, red-faced Patrick Magee. Expressing his disbelief in transubstantion, he seems less interested in being a skeptic than enraging the young Luther, chastising him for choosing the monastic life when he could have been anything else--something that would have made the family lots of money.

Luther was a zealot: and like all zealots, he could be particularly cruel when he wanted to be. At the end of the film, when the narrator/peasant wheels in the corpse of a peasant killed in his name, Keach's facial expression turns to stone and he instructs the peasant to take him out of his newfound "House of God". Instead of consummating his original strain of thought and relegating Christ to the soul of each man without a mediator, he simply founded a new religion which on whose throne he sat. (Uncomfortably, I imagine.)

Fortunately for Protestant viewers, John Osborne elected not to include Luther's raging anti-semitism, a lot of which would later be recycled for the arrival of the Third Reich.

An accurate and moving portrait of a tragic figure.

There is supposed to be a new film on Martin Luther done by the director Till with Alfred Molinari, and financed by the Lutheran Churches. I think Martin Luther is one of the greatest historical figures, and few people today realise just how revolutionary it was to break away from the Universal Catholic Church which controlled Church and State throughout Western Europe, and before the split with the Orthodox Church, Christendom was quite monolithic.

For a man who did not want to break with Rome, but wanted Rome to be scripturally-based rather than a multinational commercial enterprise; he it was who brought individual conscience when relating to God in place of Church and a hierarchical priesthood to the apex of God's representative on earth, the Pope; who combined this with being a Prince amongst nations.

If the West and its industrialisation, liberty, and split between Church and State can claim any one man as its initiator, it was Martin Luther; but as we all know, Luther was but the leading actor in a cast of many.

Martin luther single handedly has put conscience over authority and his conscience over the bible too. this man called the book of James a book made out of straw. his anti-semetic attitude towards us jews is deplorable and appalling. he told the germans of his time to burn synagogues, the talmud, and drive us jews out of germany if possible even murderous death to get rid of us jews. It was because of Martin luther that the Nazis caused Krystalnacht right before and on his brithday. His anti-catholic and anti-jewish rheotric sparked violent persecution among the people of his time. And Martin Luther gave rise to the Nazis that came later on in germany's future.
Like that peasant said in this film and he is right Martin Luther is a murderer. Martin even told the catholic princes of deutschland to stop the peasant revolt by any means necessary.
martin luther was mentally ill having these fits that he had. plus he was no role model christian. anyone who disagreed with his brand of christianity and did not convert to it like us jews he would speak all kinds of profanity and condemnation. Stacy Keach does a great job of showing martin's anger problem and his raving language of crude words about pope and anything catholic. you do not see his crude words about us jews in this film. martin luther was anti-semetic. this film does not show that but it is the truth.