Opposite Heston is Rex Harrison, a Hollywood and stage veteran who had just come off playing Henry Higgins in the film adaptation of My Fair Lady (1964). Heston made sure that his makeup was based on portraits of MIchelangelo as he tossed and turned and overacted his way through the shooting of The Agony and the Ecstasy. Heston, playing an emotionally tormented Michelangelo who confesses his lack of mastery with painting, was easily the most enthusiastic actor working on set and worried about the historical accuracy of the final product. Christian overtones are largely absent as Carol Reed only allows religious practices and customs to be featured as filler material for the interpersonal drama – from Julius II’s limited coffers due to his European military adventures and a flustered Michelangelo’s decision to play hooky and evade the papal truancy police – and medium- to short-range glimpses of Heston’s Michelangelo brushing the ceiling with his paints. Biblical stories are only mentioned briefly in terms of what Michelangelo and Julius II want depicted on the chapel’s ceiling. One could not call The Agony and the Ecstasy a Catholic film, nor a Christian film. Unlike some Hollywood films of the 1950s and 60s that require a knowledge of one of the three major Abrahamic monotheistic religions, The Agony and the Ecstasy largely sidesteps religiosity for a war of attitudes and words between a Pope and an artist working in spiritual inspiration. Julius II approves of the design, but the process will take years as Michelangelo and his helpers must work long hours – even during papal mass. “When will you make an end of it?” is Julius II’s refrain. “When I’m finished!” replies an equally impatient Michelangelo. It is here that Michelangelo, who has eluded the Pope’s forces, has an artistic epiphany to outline what will be the final design for the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. Michelangelo becomes frustrated after painting one apostle, destroying his work and fleeing to Carrara – a Tuscan city notable for its marble quarries that sculptors like Michelangelo purchased their marble from.
So Michelangelo goes straight to work with his assistants, using a scaffold of his own design and multiple assistants and pupils partaking in the process. Michelangelo is in no place to refuse because what the Pope wants, the Pope gets. Florentine Michelangelo Buonarroti (Heston), already commissioned to construct Pope Julius II’s (Harrison) tomb in Rome, is ordered to take to the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling and depict the Twelve Apostles. The first twenty minutes of The Agony and the Ecstasy showcase Michelangelo’s most famous artworks with the reverence of a mid-20th century American travelogue – an interesting decision, but one that contributes to a 138-minute runtime that feels like three hours. Two central performances – especially Harrison’s, where Heston’s tendency to overact is not everybody’s cup of tea (it certainly is mine) – and the production design rescue this dramatically inert, overlong effort from Reed. Reed’s film is not so much a celebration of Michelangelo’s work than it is a clash of combustible personalities that plays out over the not-so-intimate widescreen processes of Todd-AO and CinemaScope. Based on Irving Stone’s biographical novel of Michelangelo of the same name, Carol Reed’s The Agony and the Ecstasy stars Charlton Heston as the Italian sculptor-painter (though primarily a sculptor) and Rex Harrison as the temperamental “Warrior Pope”. Michelangelo’s work, which contains nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, is considered a high watermark to Renaissance art, drawing numbers of visitors – Roman Catholic or otherwise – to marvel over his artistry more than a half-millennium later. From 1508 to 1512 with a commission by Pope Julius II, Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.
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