Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

GazerRise Fantastic!

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

bkoganbing In the tradition of Becket comes The Royal Hunt Of The Sun, a piece of important history reduced to a personal struggle between two men. Only these two, Conquistador Francisco Pizarro and Emperor Atahualpa of the Incas have far more in common than they think.The Royal Hunt Of The Sun was a successful play on Broadway running for 261 performances, written by Peter Shaffer. It won a Tony Award for young David Carradine playing Atahualpa. But in the film version Robert Shaw plays Pizarro and Christopher Plummer who was Pizarro on stage plays Atahualpa. I'm guessing that Plummer's Pizarro was a bit less rough around the edges than Shaw is in the film.He's certainly a fascinating Atahualpa who like the early emperors of the Roman Empire took divinity unto himself. The problem is that when you're supposed to be a god, you have to occasionally do something really spectacular to prove your claim. That's what kind of undoes Plummer in the end.As for Pizarro, he never claimed he was anything, not even a gentleman. He was a soldier by profession, an illegitimate kid who raised pigs as a young man and left to join the Spanish army of Emperor Charles V. Atahualpa was also born on the wrong side of the blanket and defeated his brother in a civil war for the Inca Empire. That's a most human act and Pizarro is quick to notice.He also is a shrewd judge of the Inca psychology. When in that famous event he tricks Atahualpa into captivity, Pizarro realizes the empire built on a godhead emperor can't function without him. The Incas are paralyzed with the fact they're whole belief system is being put to the test and failing badly. Of course in theological discussions with Father Andrew Keir of the expedition, Atahualpa's not doing too bad himself. But these are only academic exercises.This is not a faithful adaption. The whole scene at Charles V's court with James Donald as the Emperor is written for the screen. A whole lot of peripheral characters have been changed as well. Still the spirit of what author Shaffer was trying to say is realized.The Royal Hunt Of The Sun is both entertaining and intellectually stimulating.

cartimandua51 Yes, Christopher Plummer's accent and antics are, to the the least of it, peculiar, but trying to see this as a historically accurate epic seems to be missing the point. The original play was by Peter Shaffer - he of Amadeus and Equus, and this film follows the same themes - the conflict and tension between between (according to interpretation) real and apparent power, or between ability and genius. The tension between Atahualpa and Pisarro is along the same lines as between Mozart and Salieri, or the Boy and the Psychiatrist. One has the trappings of power and success, but who really has the raw power? Seeing it as a historical epic is a mistake - just as "Becket" is a very modern take on a different battle of wills.

juri-nummelin-1 I thought that this was a very interesting, but deeply flawed film. Have to admit that I don't remember much of it, but there was unnecessary playing with film technique, but all in all the film was very critical of the conquistadors and I suppose we should be thinking about parallels between the conquest of the Central America in the 16th century and the Vietnam war in the 1960s. There's one deeply intriguing scene in which the white soldiers massacre a whole Indian tribe and director Irving Lerner (for whom this was the last theatrical film) plays flamenco in the soundtrack! It's as if he were saying: look how we got this cultural heritage, without the conquistadors slaying all the Indians we wouldn't have the American culture. (Which is basically true.)

Bob-45 Producer Phillip Yordan had some pretty tough days in the early 1970s. Yordan was charged with tax evasion, I believe as part of his relationship with Samuel Bronston and Pierre DuPont. Bronston had allegedly comingled Dupont's money on several of his productions (most notably EL CID and FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE). Bronston was finished by the late 1960s and Yordan would fall later, which may explain the erratic production values of BAD MAN'S RIVER and ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN.SUN remains, a tattered quasi-masterpiece, despite Christopher Plummer's rather eccentric performance. One wonders what might have been. No matter, what is on display is good enough for the cheap price of the the DVD. Nevertheless, the quality of the DVD leaves much to be desired. The DVD uses a distracting "baby or royal blue" rather than black for its letterboxing. The interlacing is so bad in some sequences, the film is hardly viewable. The sound is uniformly underrecorded. Surely the masters weren't in THIS bad a shape.Worth a look for students of history AND of good drama.