The Agony and the Ecstasy

1965 PG-13 2h 18m

7.1 / 10 152

RATING

7.1/10

152

YOUR RATING

During the Italian Renaissance, Pope Julius II contracts the influential artist Michelangelo to sculpt 40 statues for his tomb. When the pope changes his mind and asks the sculptor to paint a mural in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo doubts his painting skills and abandons the project. Divine inspiration returns Michelangelo to the mural, but his artistic vision clashes with the pope's demanding personality and threatens the success of the historic painting.

Director Carol Reed

Writers

Philip Dunne Philip Dunne Irving Stone

Stars

Charlton Heston Rex Harrison Diane Cilento

Drama History

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User Reviews 2

Geronimo1967 7 Jan 2023

7/10

Depending on the version you see, this film starts with a gorgeously scored trip around some of the museums of Italy and of the Vatican allowing us to put the sheer magnificence of the talent of Michelangelo Buonarroti into context - and the volume and quality of that body of work, condensed into ten minutes or so, makes this worth watching just as a lesson in the history of art! The story is set ...

John Chard 18 Sep 2014

8.5/10

When will you make an end? When I am finished! And so it be that that is the often repeated exchange between Rex Harrison's Pope Julius II & Charlton Heston's Michelangelo, and thus we have the basis for the film version of Irving Stone's novel The Agony & The Ectasy. This is a fictionalised account of how Michelango came to paint his masterpiece on the roof of the Sistine chapel, focusing s...