(There are implicit references to other user reviews in this review)
The film is worth seeing for the final close-up alone. Other reviewers have been impressed by its horror and its power, but I need to go a step further. In my fairly long and extensive history of a cinema- goer this was the very first time that I caught myself thinking "No actor can ever do this, not even a genius. This is just not humanly possible". A reaction that stunned me, since, having seen so many excellent actors at their defining moments, I somehow took it for granted that great acting has no limits. And then, during just one scene, to become aware of those limits even as they are crossed and broken I have watched the scene many times now, the sense of uniqueness, of a miracle has not faded. Gérard Philipe himself has never surpassed it in cinema - though a few photos give an intimation this might have happened on the scene, particularly in "Caligula".
A French critic wrote when the film first came out: "there is he ... and then there are the others". He being Philipe-Myshkine, of course, and not only in the closing frame. Philipe was reportedly given the task to play Jesus, and he did, admirably. Not the canonical, tamed, Jesus of Christianity, but that gentle strange young man, sometimes scary in his gentle strangeness, that shines through the Gospels both canonical and apocryphal, one that makes ordinary people profoundly uncomfortable. Drawn to him, yes, but not comforted.
Because they are all ordinary, the eccentricities of a traumatized courtesan or the follies of a man obsessed with passion notwithstanding. Not even the notorious "Russian soul" would have saved them from their ordinariness- and the other actors would have been saved only if Philipe had failed - which he did not. His Myshkine is just as extraordinary, just as pure, and just as authentic as the Jesus he stands for. Just as charismatic/sensually seductive, too. (Anyway, depriving Philipe of his sensual seductiveness is a hard task, and as "La Ronde" shows, not really worth the effort). And just as unpredictable.
Even his sins are unpredictable - giving a known alcoholic money, of all things, something ordinary sinners would not dream of doing (probably thinking of what a perfect waste of money it would be). Come to think of it, that very alcoholic is the one man in the film that Myshkine befriends.
Among the deviations from the book there is a telling one: in the original, Anastasya Filippovna is killed by Rogozhin (that deep Russian soul at work, perhaps?), in the film she is, to all intents and purposes, killed by Myshkine - the hand that actually held the knife is almost immaterial - via her jealous reaction, again a perfectly ordinary human one, to Myshkine telling her the truth. An innocuous truth from his point of view, one that he does not at first even see the need of mitigating. Because he always tells the truth. Something ordinary humans - the present writer included - never think they can afford to do. Perhaps rightly so, as in the world preoccupied with the vanity of vanities - be it Russian or French-Maupassantian - too much truth and purity tend to lead to tragedy, as it did with Jesus, as it did with Myshkine. A tragedy that hits us with the force of an almost physical blow, as it does in the words "Father, father, why have you left me?", and as it does in that haunting final close-up of the film.
The film is worth seeing for the final close-up alone. Other reviewers have been impressed by its horror and its power, but I need to go a step further. In my fairly long and extensive history of a cinema- goer this was the very first time that I caught myself thinking "No actor can ever do this, not even a genius. This is just not humanly possible". A reaction that stunned me, since, having seen so many excellent actors at their defining moments, I somehow took it for granted that great acting has no limits. And then, during just one scene, to become aware of those limits even as they are crossed and broken I have watched the scene many times now, the sense of uniqueness, of a miracle has not faded. Gérard Philipe himself has never surpassed it in cinema - though a few photos give an intimation this might have happened on the scene, particularly in "Caligula".
A French critic wrote when the film first came out: "there is he ... and then there are the others". He being Philipe-Myshkine, of course, and not only in the closing frame. Philipe was reportedly given the task to play Jesus, and he did, admirably. Not the canonical, tamed, Jesus of Christianity, but that gentle strange young man, sometimes scary in his gentle strangeness, that shines through the Gospels both canonical and apocryphal, one that makes ordinary people profoundly uncomfortable. Drawn to him, yes, but not comforted.
Because they are all ordinary, the eccentricities of a traumatized courtesan or the follies of a man obsessed with passion notwithstanding. Not even the notorious "Russian soul" would have saved them from their ordinariness- and the other actors would have been saved only if Philipe had failed - which he did not. His Myshkine is just as extraordinary, just as pure, and just as authentic as the Jesus he stands for. Just as charismatic/sensually seductive, too. (Anyway, depriving Philipe of his sensual seductiveness is a hard task, and as "La Ronde" shows, not really worth the effort). And just as unpredictable.
Even his sins are unpredictable - giving a known alcoholic money, of all things, something ordinary sinners would not dream of doing (probably thinking of what a perfect waste of money it would be). Come to think of it, that very alcoholic is the one man in the film that Myshkine befriends.
Among the deviations from the book there is a telling one: in the original, Anastasya Filippovna is killed by Rogozhin (that deep Russian soul at work, perhaps?), in the film she is, to all intents and purposes, killed by Myshkine - the hand that actually held the knife is almost immaterial - via her jealous reaction, again a perfectly ordinary human one, to Myshkine telling her the truth. An innocuous truth from his point of view, one that he does not at first even see the need of mitigating. Because he always tells the truth. Something ordinary humans - the present writer included - never think they can afford to do. Perhaps rightly so, as in the world preoccupied with the vanity of vanities - be it Russian or French-Maupassantian - too much truth and purity tend to lead to tragedy, as it did with Jesus, as it did with Myshkine. A tragedy that hits us with the force of an almost physical blow, as it does in the words "Father, father, why have you left me?", and as it does in that haunting final close-up of the film.