The Assassination of Trotsky ** (1972, Richard Burton, Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Valentina Cortese, Jean Desailly) – Classic Movie Review 5839

Something has gone wrong here with director Joseph Losey’s plodding, unmoving 1972 film about the last days of Leon Trotsky (a somewhat miscast Richard Burton) in a Mexican fortress in 1940.

Alain Delon plays his nemesis, Frank Jackson, the ice-pick man hired to kill the Russian rebel in self-imposed exile. The main problems are that the tortuous screenplay cannot stir up enough fire or interest in the subject and also that there is little scope here for director Losey’s symbolical and psychological insights to flourish or for Burton’s acting to bloom.

With flashes of insight and moments of great intelligence, though, this is an honorable historical drama, but a near-total failure – certainly at the box office – and it made good projects for all the worthy participants that much harder to find.

Overall, it is a glum, frustrating experience. The problem definitely is the unresolved screenplay by Nicholas Mosley and Masolino d’Amico.

Also in the cast are Luigi Vannucchi, Dullio del Prete, Simone Valere, Carlos Miranda, Peter Chantel, Mike Forrest [Michael Forest], Claudio Brook, Enrico Maria Salerno, Marco Lucantoni, Hunt Powers [Jack Betts], Gianni Lofredo and Pierangelo Civera.

Losey offered the part of Trotsky to Dirk Bogarde, who turned it down, but Burton, who worked with Losey on Boom! (1968), accepted.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5839

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