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The Assassination of Trotsky

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The Assassination of Trotsky
Film poster
Directed byJoseph Losey
Written byNicholas Mosley
Produced byNorman Priggen
Josef Shaftel (executive producer)
StarringRichard Burton
Alain Delon
Romy Schneider
Valentina Cortese
Jean Desailly
CinematographyPasqualino De Santis
Edited byReginald Beck
Music byEgisto Macchi
Production
companies
Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica
Compagnia Internazionale Alessandra Cinematografica
Cinétel
Distributed byCinerama Releasing Corporation
Release date
  • 20 April 1972 (1972-04-20)
Running time
103 minutes
CountriesItaly
France
United Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£1 million ($2.4 million)[1]
Box office561,109 admissions (France)[2]

The Assassination of Trotsky is a 1972 British historical drama film directed by Joseph Losey with a screenplay by Nicholas Mosley. It stars Richard Burton, Romy Schneider and Alain Delon.[3][4]

Plot

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Exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929, Leon Trotsky travels from Turkey to France to Norway, before arriving in Mexico in January 1937. The film begins in Mexico City in 1940, during a May Day celebration. Trotsky has not escaped the attention of the Soviet dictator of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, who sends out an assassin named Frank Jacson. The killer decides to infiltrate Trotsky's house by befriending one of the young communists in Trotsky's circle.

Cast

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Production

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In 1965, Josef Shaftel optioned the novel The Great Prince Died by Bernard Wolfe. The film was a co-production between the French Valoria Company and Dino De Laurentiis. It was originally to be shot in England,[5] but was eventually filmed in Rome. The movie used Isaac Don Levine's book The Mind of an Assassin as a source.[6]

According to author Melvin Bragg, the director Joseph Losey was so drunk and tired that he relied on long monologues by Burton to carry the film, in some cases even forgetting what was in the script. Burton himself wrote that he, or the continuity girl, would have to remind Losey of things that would have caused continuity gaffes.[7]

Reception

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“The film offers only a sketchy account of Trotsky as a political figure. Losey’s character is curiously disconnected from the past—his legendary legendary association with Lenin, his sustained and prophetic criticism of Stalin, his importance as political thinker and orator are alluded to only briefly.—Biographer Foster Hirsch in Joseph Losey (1980).[8]

Reviewer Vincent Canby registered dismay at the rejection of this “very fine film” by critics. He reminds readers that The Assassination of Trotsky is not a genuine biopic, but “a movie about an event.” As such, “one doesn't come away from the theater full of someone else's ideas about Trotsky's place in Bolsheviks history, or about the ferment he caused among the Left Opposition of the 1930s and 1940s.”[9]

Canby considers the integration of passages from Trotsky’s professional and personal papers into the dialogue to be particularly evocative. A Shakespearian theme may be detected in Losey’s treatment, in “the peculiar bond between the victim and his assassin.”[10]

Making the general observation that Losey’s oeuvre lacks “thematic continuity,” critic Roger Greenspun at the New York Times praises The Assassination of Trotsky for its “audacity and imaginative density.” Greenspun notes that there are numerous devices in the film “not to be excused, ” among these the inclusion of “nostalgic Wordsworthian” excerpts from Trotsky’s personal journals inserted into the script.

The reviewer adds that the makeup artists transformed the actors with “extraordinary accuracy” to resemble the historical figures they portray. Greenspun adds that “none seems more accurate than Valentina Cortese as Natalia Sedova, Trotsky's wife. Her role is comparatively small, but I think it is the loveliest performance in the movie.”[11]

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Disconcertingly, any summary of the bizarre circumstances of Trotsky's death – the old man, once a prime mover in great events, screened from the world behind walls and watch towers until his confrontation with his impenetrable executioner – reads like a parody of a Losey movie...the characters in Trotsky seem to belong to no specific place or time: their relationships are founded on no shared code or natural necessity, but on the absurd chances of war and on blind collisions arising from their attempts to heave obsessions into actions that will move and change the world outside."[12]

Retrospective appraisal

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Critic Dan Callahan at Senses of Cinema registers this assessment: “The Assassination of Trotsky is an almost uniquely unappealing movie. The camerawork is uncertain and modish, and Richard Burton is ludicrously miscast as the Russian exile. Losey seems to be trying to mask his indifference to the subject by retreating into a numb loftiness.”[13]

Calling the film “a cold, unpleasant work,” arts editor David Walsh at the World Socialist Web Site disparages Losey’s characterization of the historical Trotsky: “Richard Burton is directed to play Trotsky as a pedantic, self-important and irritable windbag.”</ref>

In contrast to his critique of Burton’s performance, critic Foster Hirsch confers fulsome praise on actor Alain Delon, in the role depicting Stalinist assassin Ramón Mercader (under his alias Frank Jacson in the film version):

As the assassin, Alain Delon gives what is probably his finest performance, cold-eyed, wary, a figure of insinuating nervous energy. And yet, as he ingratiates himself with Trotsky, he becomes, in fleeting moments, an appealing character. We can understand Trotsky’s attraction to him.[14]

The Assassination of Trotsky was included as one of the choices in the book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time.[15]

Footnotes

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  1. ^ Chapman, J. (2022). The Money Behind the Screen: A History of British Film Finance, 1945-1985. Edinburgh University Press, p. 263.
  2. ^ Box office information for film at Box Office Story.
  3. ^ "The Assassination of Trotsky". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 20 August 2024.
  4. ^ Palmer and Riley, 1993 p. 163-164: Filmography
    Hirsch, 1980 p. 241: Filmography
  5. ^ A. H. WEILER (27 June 1971). "Joseph Losey Looks at Trotsky: Joseph Losey". New York Times. p. D17.
  6. ^ From staff reports and news dispatches. (3 September 1971). "Is It Worth a Trip to See?: Personalities". The Washington Post. p. B3.
  7. ^ Bragg, Melvin (1988). Richard Burton: A Life. Little, Brown and Company. pp. 358, 379. ISBN 0-316-10595-3.
  8. ^ Hirsch, 1980 p. 189
  9. ^ Canby, 1971
  10. ^ Canby, 1971
  11. ^ Greenspun, 1971
  12. ^ "The Assassination of Trotsky". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 39 (456): 227. 1 January 1972 – via ProQuest.
  13. ^ Callahan, 2003:
  14. ^ Hirsch, 1980 p. 191
  15. ^ Medved, Harry; Dreyfuss, Randy (1978). The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (And How They Got That Way). Popular Library. p. 31. ISBN 0-445-04139-0.

Sources

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