This fine work by Berthold Brecht and directed by Joseph Losey is brought to us
by about a 20 year delay period. That was because of the House Un-American
Activities Committee and the blacklisting of both.
Brecht kind of, sort of made his case for HUAC as he went back to East Germany
where he was acclaimed a cultural icon. Joe Losey took off for Great Britain where he worked for the most part until his death.
You can see why the mossbacks of HUAC thought Galileo by Brecht was
highly subversive stuff. Question church authority and by implication the
state because religion was established. No more so than in Italy and its many
Catholic city/states.
Galileo Galilei scientist/engineer was a popular well respected fellow who got
a hold of a spyglass invented by the Dutchman Hans Lippershey and saw the
possibilities for it in astronomy. Already a believer in the theory advanced by
Copernicus about the sun being a center of the universe. The telescope allowed Galileo to observe and make more findings. If the Earth is the center
of things than what are those bodies orbiting Jupiter for instance?
The Roman Catholic now engaged in a counter attack against all that Protestant type heresy took a dim view of this stuff. Galileo got vigorously
questioned for these theories.
Israeli actor Topol plays the bluff and hearty Galileo. He's a man used to
his creature comforts and not built for martyrdom as is shown in the play.
The fine cast Losey assembles includes Clive Revill and Georgia Brown as
cabaret singers, Michael Lonsdale as Pope Urban, and Edward Fox as the
Cardinal Inquisitor. John Gielgud has a great cameo as a cardinal who is
beside himself with indignation that anyone would question the workings
of the universe, their universe.
Galileo's epitaph despite his failure to martyr himself is the best of all. No
amount of proclamations from the state or the pulpit will change the way the
universe works.
That IS subversive stuff.
