The Titan (The Michelangelo Company) is an extraordinary documentary that recreates the work, life and times of Michelangelo without showing a glimpse of a human actor. The film is at once an exciting tribute to the art of the Florentine master and an impressive tour de force in the art of the cinema.
Filmed mostly in Rome and Florence in 1938-40 by Swiss Producer Curt Oertel, the original version of The Titan was snapped up by German companies and palmed off as a product of Nazi Kultur. After the U.S. Army discovered the film in France, a copy found its way to Manhattan and caught the paternal eye of Robert J. Flaherty, whose classic Nanook of the North (1922) made him the granddaddy of documentary movies. Flaherty set out to get the picture’s U.S. rights.
In its original 95 minutes of footage, the Swiss film was a diffuse blend of travelogue and art catalogue, distinguished mainly by its sensitive photography. A group of young film craftsmen—Producer Robert Snyder, Director Richard Lyford, Writer Norman Borisoff—took it apart and put it together again. Their new script uses a tighter story continuity, thumbnail art critiques, a telling musical score and a narration spoken by Fredric March.
The 70-minute result does a resourceful job at what only the movie camera can do: give motion and meaning to inanimate things. The picture sets the Renaissance stage for Michelangelo’s emergence, shows the influences of contemporaries and ancients, carries the unseen hero through papal and princely intrigues, the bloody uprising of Savonarola, the siege of Florence and the sack of Rome. Out of the turbulence of the age and the passionate rigors of Michelangelo’s genius flowers the beauty of his masterworks: the David, the Medici monument, the Moses, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the Last Judgment, the soaring dome of St. Peter’s.
The narration knits together a visual story built out of piazzas, palaces, cathedrals, old maps and prints, the rugged Italian landscapes and, above all, the sculptures, painting and architecture of Michelangelo. The picture gains dramatic immediacy from the rhythm of its cutting, actors’ voices offscreen, turning wagon wheels, clashing swords, such shots as clouds racing over a jutting tower. Lighting moves across the screen like an actor, the camera tilts awry at an assassination, the focus blurs as if with pain when Michelangelo’s nose is smashed in a brawl.
But the art lover’s major reward is in Michelangelo’s feelingly photographed sculptures. They are superbly lighted to bring out all their dimensions. The camera caresses them in detail from perspectives that the unaided eye could never reach; yet details never obscure the whole conception of each work. These scenes build up an exalting impression of Michelangelo’s prolific greatness and the abundant beauty he willed to the world.
Last week The Titan opened at Manhattan’s little (400 seats) Little Carnegie Theatre—the first movie about art to be offered to the public as a feature film. So far, there are no further bookings, but The Titan will undoubtedly be shown in other art theaters in major U.S. cities. For years to come, it is sure to find eager, appreciative audiences. If the audiences are also large enough, Trail Blazer Flaherty believes that the picture will blaze a new trail for documentaries devoted to capturing the world’s great art and artists on film.