clanciai

This is a wonderfully human film about the true story of the simple village fool who happens to become a saint. As he is not good for anything on the farm except the simplest rough work, he is sent to the monastery to at least get some ecclesiastical education. This has unforeseen consequences through the most unpredictable and capricious coincidences, which cause a priest to funnel him into a priestly training, which leads on to a landslide of impossible coincidences and phenomena that make him famous as a saint. Maximilian Schell, of all the actors who usually play tough heroes and villains, makes the lead role endlessly moving in all his awkward innocence, and he himself said it was the best of all his films. It goes very well with Rossellini's film about Saint Francis, "Francesco giullare di dio" in 1950, it is the same boundlessly naïve holy stupidity that permeates the entire film with a breathtaking humanity without limits, and you can only love it.

Was it worth it? That's the eternal question which every practitioner of show business constantly has to answer and put to himself, which here is pushed to the extreme, as "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" Evelyn Nesbit (Joan Colllns) causes her multi millionaire husband (Farley Granger) to murder renowned architect Stanford White (Ray Milland) for having been his wífe's former lover. The case was the ultimate scandal of the times in 1906, the multi-millionaire murderer had his life ruined as branded for life as the crazy assassin obsessed with his wife's earlier relationship with a much older man, and there was this great film made about it, originally intended for Marilyn Monroe but finally featuring Joan Collins, somewhat romanticised making both Ray Milland and Farley Granger appearing more noble than they were, and on such a story it is not a bad film, in technicolor and superb settings. But the truth is always more interesting and revealing.

This film was planned as a documentary, and its style is definitely documentary all the way, sticking carefully to actual details, everything being filmed on location in Ottawa and Montreal, so there is little space left for acting and cinematography, although Harry Townes portrays Gouzenko very well and makes him perfectly convincing, something between Henry Fonda and Mel Ferrer; and the documentary strictness makes the film notable for meticulous and impeccable realism. This is a sequel to the vitally important "The Iron Curtain" seven years earlier with Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney, which carefully told the whole story of the drama of the defection, so this is valuable as a compliment to that film carefully exposing the consequences of the drama and why Gouzenko practically for the rest of his life had to continue appearing masked whenever he had to make a public performance or put himself visibly at risk.