The Assassination of Trotsky (1972) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error The Assassination of Trotsky ( 1972 ) R | After having been forced to leave the Soviet Union 1929 Trotsky has ended up in Mexico 1940. He is still busy with politics, promoting socialism to the world. Stalin has sent out an ... See full summary » Director: Famous Directors: From Sundance to Prominence From Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino and every Coen brother in between, many of today's most popular directors got their start at the Sundance Film Festival . Here's a list of some of the biggest names to go from Sundance to Hollywood prominence.

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See full summary » Director: Jacques Deray Explores the confrontation between the woman who has everything, including emptiness, and a penniless poet who has nothing but the ability to fill a wealthy woman's needs. Director: Joseph Losey Edit Storyline After having been forced to leave the Soviet Union 1929 Trotsky has ended up in Mexico 1940. He is still busy with politics, promoting socialism to the world. Stalin has sent out an assassin, Frank Jackson. Jackson befriends a young communist and gets an invitation to Trotsky's house. Written by Mattias Thuresson A Web of Intrique A Conspiracy of Terror An Act of Madness See more » Genres: 30 March 1972 (France) See more » Also Known As: El asesinato de Trotsky See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia Charlton Heston had turned down this in 1960, when he was looking for his first lead role after winning the Oscar for Ben-Hur (1959). See more » Goofs A character passes a wall with a graffiti-image of Woody Woodpecker.

The first appearance of Woody Woodpecker was in the cartoon "Knock Knock" which was released 25th of November 1940, two months after Trotski was assassinated. See more » Quotes Gita Samuels : You're in a fine state! God, has someone cut your tongue off? Why do you get like this? Is it the altitude you're in- or is it something you've eaten? (Deming, New Mexico, USA) – See all my reviews When Joseph Losey gets his hands on the right material he can do wonders with it. This doesn't seem to have been the right material, or maybe Losey was just impatient with Burton's boozing or something. First, don't expect a biopic of Leon Trotsky, the stormy petrel of revolution. The title describes the assassination of Trotsky. He's a professorial sort, exiled to Mexico City after Stalin took over and betrayed Lenin's principles by playing footsies with Wall Street. It often happens with extremist ideologies that they split up, because everyone wants to be purer than the next guy. At that, Trotsky was lucky to get out alive. Stalin had ANYONE who represented a threat to his power murdered.

Stalin went about, doing bad. It's an unpleasant movie. We have to sit through a bullfight and learn why movies usually don't show us the final coup, after which the bull drags himself around vomiting blood until he flops down, while the crowd cheers. I know -- the bravery and grace of the matador and all that, but why don't they just let the bull go? Sometimes there is a thin line between beauty and baseness. I understand why the scene was included. The matador does to the bull what Alan Resnais does to Burton, more or less. And instead of dying a neat Hollywood death, Burton staggers up from his chair, a hole in his skull, stares at Resnais and shrieks bloody murder. There are long periods in which we watch Mexicans doing nothing in particular. And the scenes can be confusing. It's not always easy to tell what's going on. The musical score appears to have been made by a thousand chirping electronic crickets. Lots of talent and momentous intentions gone awry. 2 of 2 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes Once a Sdarian...: Every one of us is an actor Every one of us is an actor Leon Trotsky Richard Burton Alain Delon Leon Trotsky was a Soviet Communist official who disagreed with Joseph Stalin. He was exiled to Mexico in 1937. Joseph Stalin considered him a threat and sent an assassin to kill him in 1940. In 1972 a British film company made a film titled 'The Assassination of Trotsky'. The role of Leon Trotsky was played by Richard Burton, a British actor, or a Welsh actor to be exact. The role of the assassin was played by French actor Alain Delon. As the film had to reenact what really happened in history, actor Alain Delon had to pretend killing Richard Burton using an ice axe. I read somewhere that Alain Delon felt really scared. He mentioned of being afraid he might kill the real Richard Burton. Richard Burton replied "There are a lot of French actors, but if you kill me you kill one sixth of all Welsh actors." The writer of the article said Richard Burton was wrong, because to him every Welshman is an actor of sorts. But I think every one of us is an actor.

Posted by Assassination of Trotsky Ashley Platz, Greyson Lewis, Joe. J. Garcia, and Murielle Zuker. Photo: Ed Krieger. The Assassination of Leon Trotsky: A Comedy Theater Review In 1972 National Lampoon’s cover featured a version of the iconic poster portrait of beret-clad, longhaired Che Guevara’s face being hit by a cream pie, beneath the headline: “Is Nothing Sacred?” That issue of the satirical magazine also included an article entitled “Che Guevara’s Bolivian Diaries.” I suppose the same anything-goes irreverence animates playwright Peter Lefcourt and the world premiere of his anti-Marxist madcap mishmash The Assassination of Leon Trotsky: A Comedy. (Trotsky’s own artistic sensibility was unorthodox; in 1938 he and Andre Breton co-authored the pro-surrealist Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art.) Like Che, Trotsky — one of the heads of the 1905 and 1917 Russian Revolutions — was an apostle of world revolution and of liberation in the developing world.

In this play within a play within a play, Trotsky arrives in Coyoacán near Mexico City, where the ex-Bolshevik will live in exile with his wife Natalia. Dialogue alludes to the faction fight between Trotsky and his arch-nemesis, Josef Stalin, who — after the 1924 death of the Revolution’s leader, Vladimir Lenin — edged his rival out and, in Trotskyist parlance, established a bureaucratic dictatorship in a deformed workers state (that had some attributes of socialism). Having lost the faction fight Trotsky was forced out of the U.S.S.R. and — somewhat like state-less N.S.A. leaker Edward Snowden today, who is likewise being offered sanctuary by left-leaning Latin American nations — was on the run, seeking safe haven. (The wandering Jew’s brief sojourn in France is dealt with in Alain Resnais’ 1974 film Stavisky, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, with Yves Peneau as Trotsky.)The great painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo interceded on the Trotskys’ behalf and arranged for them to find refuge in Mexico, which under Pres.

Lázaro Cárdenas had a sort of New Deal type government that granted the revolutionary outcast political asylum. Christopher Rivas and Ashley Platz Act I depicts the bohemian Diego and Frida welcoming the Trotskys in 1937 to her La Casa Azul, although I don’t recall this blue-walled house (now the Frida Kahlo Museum) being so named in Lefcourt’s comedy, which is more ahistorical than hysterical (not to mention heretical). The play’s premise provides plenty of fertile material, which Salma Hayek and company explored to great effect in the vastly superior, far more creative 2002 film Frida. Lefcourt merely uses actual annals for a springboard to the derring-do of his feverish imagination, which this Emmy Award-winning writer no doubt considers to be much more important. Facts, schmacts, in two acts! All of the historical characters are caricatured, perhaps Diego, above all. With his faux Mexican accent vaguely reminiscent of Wallace Beery as Pancho Villa in 1934’s Viva Villa! Ovation Award-winning Joe J.

Garcia’s reduces Rivera to a trigger happy buffoon who shoots first and asks questions later. I wonder how Chicanos and Mexicans will react to their brilliant muralist being played strictly for laughs as a clown? Much is (disparagingly) made of Diego’s sex life, but this is true of the other historical figures depicted as well, along with the youthful hired help. Stereotypical “hot Latinos,” the gardener Jesus (Christopher Rivas) and cook/maid/model Guadalupe (Ashley Platz) never miss an opportunity for a tryst in the potting shed. In a curious bedroom scene, Mrs. Trotsky (here called Natalya Sedova and portrayed by Holly Hawkins, whose credits include Tim Burton’s movie Alice In Wonderland) handcuffs Leon (Joel Swetow, who likewise has heaps of stage and screen credits, including Alice) to the bedposts, a riding crop appears and a drawn curtain obscures their sadomasochism.

Lefcourt’s probably fanciful notion that a man who dedicated his life to liberating humanity indulged in S&M may strike some as ironic, others as specious, along with the idea that Trotsky, who led the Red Army, was somehow squeamish around firearms. (And Swetow’s Boris Badenov-like Russian-Jewish accent is thicker than the Iron Curtain. Oy vey, tovarisch!) In any case, when it comes to sex, Trotsky, that goateed old goat, appears to be the odd man out, as the putatively bisexual Frida (who is fetchingly played with great comic panache by the long-legged Murielle Zuker, who, I might add, has a lovely derriere), who is married to Diego, seduces Natalya Sedova. This comedy, obviously, is much more concerned with its characters’ sex lives than, say, with a little thing like Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution (which I don’t believe is ever mentioned by name onstage).

I am certainly not a sexpert on Trotsky’s private life, but according to the movie Frida and other sources, for what it’s worth (as if other people’s personal lives are any of our goddamned business) it was Trotsky (poignantly portrayed onscreen by Geoffrey Rush opposite Hayek) and Frida (much younger than Natalya) who had an affair. This is believed (along, perhaps, with ideological differences) to have led to a falling out between Trotsky and Rivera. In any case, although the Trotskys are depicted onstage as living with Diego and Frida throughout the entire period of their Mexican exile, in 1939 the Trotskys moved to a nearby compound called “the little fortress.” I presume that Lefcourt would plead “dramatic license” to his confining the quartet under one roof, but I suspect that this playwright couldn’t give a flying fuck on a rolling doughnut about historical accuracy. I actually enjoyed the first act of The Assassination of Leon Trotsky: A Comedy.

The work’s conceit is that a group of actors are putting on a play about Trotsky in Mexico, and they in turn mirror that drama’s revolutionary subject matter by rebelling against a strict playwright (played by the incredibly skinny, tall Greyson Lewis, who looks like he just stepped off the screen of a silent slapstick short and who, in a droll bit of casting, also plays Trotsky’s assassin). This is a clever plot device, and reminiscent of Peter Weiss’ brilliant 1963 drama Marat/ Sade, another play about the assassination of a revolutionary martyr and which is mentioned in Lefcourt’s script (Weiss also wrote 1969’s heartbreaking Trotsky in Exile). As part of their revolt against the overbearing author, the play within a play’s actors ad lib lines. However, being actors and not writers (this scribbler noted) their “ad libbing” is mainly or entirely in the form of quoting dialogue written for actors from other plays. Ashley Platz, Joel Swetow, Murielle Zucker The first time this happens, as Trotsky quotes Chekhov at length, it’s imaginative, even ingenious.

But in Act II, as the thesps continued to use the same theatrical device, reciting lines from William Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, channeling Marlon Brando, et al., ad nauseam, along with references to MacBeth (I mean “the Scottish play”!), the charm wore off, like a guest who has overstayed his welcome. The recurring dialogue diversions become repetitive, redundant, unrelenting, superfluous — and did I say they repeat themselves? — as actors flog a long dead rhetorical horse. Just as this play titillates theatergoers with allusions to revolutionary politics, its self-promoting promise of being “sexy” is likewise dubious. Despite the fact that artists waged hard fought battles for the aesthetic freedom to depict sexuality on the page, onstage and onscreen in the 1960s, there is no frontal nudity per se here. Frida makes many references to her handmaiden-cum-model Guadalupe’s magnificent bosom, and the uni-brow painter browbeats her to bare her breasts two or three times, but each time Ms. Platz does so her back is to the audience.

Likewise, Trotsky and Jesus’ genitalia are covered by a helmet, and when lovemaking ensues a coy curtain is usually drawn across the bedroom portions of the set (skillfully designed by Joel Daavid). There is a scene where some of the actors of the play within a play are backstage and disrobe down to their undergarments but for the most part this work’s lack of nudity, despite its ballyhooed “sexy” quality, is cowardly and a copout. At one point one of the characters declares: “Somebody has to get naked — it’s the theatre!” But apparently not in this production. It’s as if the Living Theatre never, well, lived. (Methinks it’s a case of “Paradise Later”?) This pastiche parody is directed by Terri Hanauer, who collaborated with Lefcourt on 2012’s Mutually Assured Destruction. They may be amused by themselves and Trotsky’s notion of world revolution, but seriously folks, consider the fact that in just the past month or so we witnessed mass uprisings in Turkey and Brazil, not to mention what are reportedly the largest protests in human history in Egypt.

Audiences would be far better served by a play that took a sober look at the ideal of and prospects for world revolution (certainly, in the Marxist parlance, the objective conditions exist) than by one mocking it and those who fought for freedom. And finally, a word about the propriety (a word I suspect does not exist in Mr. Lefcourt’s lexicon) of making fun of the murder of any human being, let alone one as significant as Trotsky. The fact is that there is another treatment of Trotsky’s assassination in a comedy: In Czech director Karel Reisz’s 1966 British comedy Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, co-starring onetime real life Trotskyist Vanessa Redgrave, David Warner describes poor Trotsky’s elimination with sly comic effect. So it can be done — but it depends upon how and to what purpose. (See for yourself how this is depicted in the hilarious Morgan, Dear Reader.

And BTW, Jacob Tierney’s 2009 movie The Trotsky is also quite humorous, while Ernst Lubitsch’s 1939 Ninochtka starring Greta Garbo and 1940’s Comrade X with Hedy Lamarr, which both spoofed Soviets prove that parodying Bolsheviks can be amusing, even if from a bourgeois perspective.) Christopher Rivas, Ashley Platz, Joe J. Garcia, Murielle Zuker, Holly Hawkins, Greyson Lewis, and Joel Swetow But Lefcourt’s rendition of poor Trotsky’s slaying is, like much of this mess, questionable. To be fair much of the audience seemed entertained by this spectacle and I suspect that the less one knows about the actual personages depicted the more one is likely to enjoy this slapped together slapstick bagatelle. Making light of an ice pick or modified alpen stock piercing the skull of a human being is no laughing matter. What is the team of Lefcourt & Hanauer’s next exercise in poor taste — 9/11, The Musical Comedy?

(In Joseph Losey’s 1972 The Assassination of Trotsky Richard Burton plays the doomed title character, while Alain Delon portrays the assassin.) Brutally murdered by a Stalinist agent in 1940, the play makes no mention of the fact that Trotsky was eliminated at the height of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, when Berlin and Moscow had a non-aggression treaty that for the most part sidelined worldwide Communist parties from the anti-fascist struggle. By assassinating Trotsky Stalin was, among other things, announcing to the world that the Soviet Union was renouncing its revolutionary heritage and that the Kremlin’s new czars had become “just one of the guys” and were now playing ball in the international game of realpolitik — Bolshevik principles be damned. Ed Rampell Lefcourt’s cream pie in the face of the old Bolshevik is the second assassination of Trotsky.

As for Leon Trotsky’s liquidation in reality and in this botched staged version, to quote Marx in 1852’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “First time tragedy, second time farce.” If you must: The Assassination of Leon Trotsky: A Comedy plays Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays 3:00 p.m. through July 28 at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. , Los Angeles, CA. For more info: (323) 960-7735. Ed Rampell The Assassination of Trotsky Reviews & Ratings - IMDb IMDb 31 out of 37 people found the following review useful: Much better than vote indicates from United States 10 June 2002 I saw this film when it came out, in 1972, and it made such an impression on me that I have a clear recollection of it now. I just visited the Trotsky Museum in Mexico City, the house where he was assassinated.

He was in fact killed with an ax--there are photos in the museum of the actual murder weapon that is exactly like the one depicted in the film. So the commentator who makes such a big point about it being an ice pick is uninformed. This commentator may also be unaware that Joseph Losey was one of the great British filmmakers of his generation, so it's perfectly natural that he make films in English. What is good about the film? Richard Burton's ability to convey the charisma of Trotsky, the combination of visionary and pragmatic politician who had the misfortune to be outmaneuvered by two equally powerful men with far fewer scruples, Lenin and Stalin. Alain Delon's portrayal of the ice-cold assassin, motivated not by ideology nor even by money, nor in fact any discernible force other than his own profound emptiness. One of Delon's best roles ever. The cinematography is extremely powerful. As I say, 30 years later, the images are clear in my mind. Time to rehabilitate this film, folks. There's a lot of trash out there with higher ratings than this 4.6, so if you've seen it, add your vote.

If you haven't, try to see it, and vote what you think it's merit is. Was the above review useful to you? 15 out of 17 people found the following review useful: Painfully realistic 22 October 2007 *** This review may contain spoilers *** I have mentioned this comment contains a spoiler. This is a tricky matter as the viewer of this film must certainly knows how it ends (much as a viewer of any film about the Battle of the Alamo or the Battle of Little Big Horn has to know, before seeing the film, the ultimate end); nonetheless, to be absolutely frank and forward I will state that my comment contains a spoiler or two. A lot of viewers of historical films complain that some (if not all) films do not show things "as they actually happened" or is "historically incorrect". Well, they are correct, but usually the changes are made in order to make the film more desirable to the audience; after all, the various films (such as "Titanic") were made not for historians but for movie audiences. Therefore, the directors of most films will take a little "artistic license" during the production of the films.

This movie stays pretty much on course historically and has been criticized by a lot of people for that; people who probably would have also criticized the film had it been historically inaccurate. Sometimes you just can't win...And, that sums up the plot of this film (and historical drama). There is no way that either Trotsky or Jacson (his assassin) will win. Trotsky is convincingly played by Richard Burton. He shows Trotsky as a man who has refused to run any more from Stalin; no matter that this will inevitably doom him. Alan Deleon (the French version of Richard Gere) portrays the assassin in a way the allows the audience to sympathize with him; even if not approving of what he is about to do. Romy Schneider portrays Jacson's mistress; a fellow communist. In real life a few years before DeLeon and Schneider had been a real life unmarried couple; then, after a couple of years their relationship had ended and they went on to marry different people. Deleon did help Schneider to get some parts afterwards and this was one of them. Knowing this makes viewing this affair (of Jackson and his mistress) on screen difficult as one knows that these actors had actually been in this situation; loving and fighting.

Sometimes close; sometimes hating each other. A viewer watching some uncomfortable emotionally charged performances can insulate him or herself by the fact that the performances are simply acting; not real. Yet, in this case that emotional insulation is not there. These people were playing out a true relationship on screen, and it is painfully realistic to watch. The nature of the murder is foretold in the movie by the bullfight. I have been to a number of bullfights and this one shows a sloppy end with a bloody and prolonged death of the bull. Though bullfight affecionados would like for you to believe that a bullfight ends with a skillful and swift sword stroke by the matador (such as seen in the movie "Fail Safe") the reality is that quite a few bullfights end up as little more than butchery. Which is a good reason to continue to ban those exhibitions in the United States. Well, I digress but not by much. The fact is that assassination is not a particularly noble affair and the film does leave one wondering why Jacson used a pick axe instead of his pistol. The film shows the murder in painfully realistic detail. Nothing glorified.

This movie shows it like it was, and it was gruesome.It does put into perspective the nature of assassination. Some additional points about this movie: It was made in 1972 and at that time no one knew how the Cold War would end (the Communists were winning in Southeast Asia then). Trotsky is shown in this film as a Communist of a different sort; with some humanity much as we would later view Premier Gorbochev, but this was made years before anybody had heard of Gorby. Anyway, one underlying theme of the movie is how different things might be by 1972 if Trotsky had not been killed. Perhaps he would have thrown enough of a counterweight to Stalin that the Cold War might not have begun. Of historical interest is the portrayal of the American guards of Trotsky; Communists who did not have an accent! Most people do not know or remember that there were some very genuine Americans who were openly Communist before WWII and were proud of that. In fact, 1940 represented a high water mark of sorts of the membership of the American Communist Party.

After WWII, when the excesses of the Stalin regime became known in the West, most of the American Communists dropped their membership in that party and joined the Democrats. The movie is painfully realistic; hence the low ratings is sometimes receives. Yet, history is painful at times and this movie does not pull punches. It does not give us a typical Hollywood sugar coated ending because, quite frankly, that was not the type of ending in this matter. Jacson was a murderer who, like most murderers, could only discover how horrible murder is by actually committing it. Painful and realistic is how I would describe this forgotten jewel. Was the above review useful to you? 15 out of 18 people found the following review useful: Just an effort from Spain 5 March 2007 Stalin hated Trotsky for many reasons, one among them is that Lenin in his famous testament strongly criticized Stalin as a tough and badly educated leader while recognized Trotsky as the most intelligent politician among the Bolcheviks. In that way Trostky was a kind of impediment for Stalin to seize the whole power in Soviet Union.

The party trusted Stalin and the first thing he did was to start a snare campaign against Trotsky among the high bosses of the party as Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, who finally supported Stalin in this deed. As a result Trostky was declared a traitor and expelled from USSR, living first at the border of USSR, then in Turkey and finally in Mexico. He continued writing and had an increased number of people following him, a fact enough for Stalin to order his assassination. To this end Stalin and his KGB tools used Mexican communists led by the famous muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. They attempted to kill Trostki once unsuccessfully, then decided to change for another way, i.e. to introduce the agent Jacques Mornard, who in fact was not from Belgium as he claimed to be, but Spanish citizen Ramón Mercader del Río, son of mother born in Cuba. Mornard or Mercader finally killed Trostky, but not his ideas. In fact Stalin made a big mistake because trostkism increased and gained a lot of popularity in several countries after the death of Trostky.

The present film is just an effort to show something of this fatal happening, but it is not the best in my opinion. There is no introduction to Trostki, how he was expelled from USSR, why this happened, how he arrived in Mexico. Not knowing the history, it will be very difficult to guess that Stalin was behind this assassination. The relationship of Trostki with some communists, as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is neither shown at all. The role of Trostky is played well by Richard Burton although he looked fatter than the real Trostky, but Alain Delon as Mornard or Mercader did not play this role convincingly. Mercader was a Stalinist fanatic, and this characteristic is not seen in the role played by Delon. He looked as schizophrenic rather than a man with political convictions. Was the above review useful to you? 9 out of 10 people found the following review useful: "Whatever happened to Leon Trotsky?..." from United Kingdom 29 January 2007 Remember that opening line from The Stranglers' great song from the late-70s, 'No More Heroes'?

Well this film provides us with a precise answer to that question, rather than the song's own rather flippant retort ("He got an ice-pick that made his ears burn"). 'The Assassination of Trotsky' is a fascinating story and one that deserves telling. At first Richard Burton seems a bit one-dimensional but as the film develops his performance evolves to reveal the revolutionary's personal charisma, his considerable intelligence, and his devotion to Marxism and his beloved wife. Alain Delon is simply riveting as the emotionally retarded Jacson - ultimately revealing him to be a pathetic individual, and Romy Schneider is brilliantly passionate in her role as Jacson's lover and Trotsky's devoted secretary. Although flawed in parts (with a script that was clearly chopped by the studios), this is an intense, realistic examination of Trotsky's last few months, with a quite stunning murder, where Losey puts the viewer in Jacson's shoes to devastating effect. A genuinely chilling moment in very fine, though admittedly patchy, film. Was the above review useful to you?

11 out of 15 people found the following review useful: THE ASSASSINATION OF TROTSKY (Joseph Losey, 1972) **1/2 from Naxxar, Malta 4 August 2007 While this certainly doesn't deserve to be included in Michael Medved's "50 Worst Films Of All Time" book, it's nonetheless a disappointment when considering the talent involved! An unconvincingly made-up Richard Burton is a good Trotsky (even if director Losey had originally wanted Dirk Bogarde); the film takes pains to depict the family-man (embittered by the Stalinists' extermination of his children) as well as the politician. Though struggling with the often unwieldy English dialogue, Alain Delon is ideally cast as the slick but icy and enigmatic assassin; still, his final break-down comes across as absurd more than anything else. However, the feminine roles in the film result in being no more than perfunctory: Romy Schneider carries on a tedious romance with Delon (they were once lovers in real-life), while Valentina Cortese appears as Trotsky's dowdy wife.

Also notable in the cast is Giorgio Albertazzi as the police inspector investigating an earlier attempt on Trotsky's life; Luis Bunuel regular Claudio Brook appears unbilled in one scene as Delon's 'contact man' in Mexico. The subject matter, in itself, isn't exactly appetizing  but some of Burton's speeches are undeniably compelling (one of which mentions that Trotsky feared he'd succumb to a brain hemorrhage  the uncanny irony is that Burton himself died in that manner, and at approximately the same age as the Russian leader!) and the interaction between him and Delon towards the end generates a reasonable amount of tension (culminating in Trotsky's bloody and protracted assassination). Still, at the end of the day, Losey's treatment of events is surprisingly lifeless (especially for a Hollywood exile from the anti-Communist days!) and of a seriousness which is oppressive (including the obvious use of symbolism via a gory bullfight sequence). P.S. Incredibly enough, the afore-mentioned Bunuel (my personal favorite film-maker) once spent a night in a Mexican jail  with none other than Trotsky's real-life killer as his cell-mate! Was the above review useful to you?

9 out of 14 people found the following review useful: 2 men, 2 women, but one with a 1000 sorrows and 1001 faces from amsterdam 21 November 2001 This is probably not the best picture ever made, even though we have the joy of seeing Richard Burton and hearing him almost twice, thanks to the recordings he makes during this cynical interlude in 20th century history. For the voice of Burton alone, any film should be worth watching. But there is more, much more. Speaking in strange tongues there are also Alain Delon, much more convincing here than in his standard-macho appearances in French Film, and ... Romy Schneider. This wonderful woman and superb actress shows here once more what a gem she really is. Was, unfortunately. What a fantastic performance once again. Why is this not a superb film than ? It is not the difficulty of tongue; all the people on screen are exiles, they have to manage somehow with the words they find and the accents they have. Nor is it the fact that three, no four actors play lovely.

Over all the film is just not knitted tight enough, which is a pity, because now it is already worth all of our attention. Was the above review useful to you? 12 out of 21 people found the following review useful: Historical film! from Campina Grande, Brazil 10 January 2004 There are times you go to a video rental and don't know exactly what to get, so you just take a look at the shelves and try to get the best films you can. Today I had one of these moments. While I was there, I saw "O Assassinato de Trotsky" (Assassination of Trotsky, in Portuguese).When I saw it was starred by Richard Burton, Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, I decided I should try it... thanks goodness I did. Although it's a bit slow, the film is really good. It's pure history (and I LOVE historical movies). The performances are great, the direction is memorable and the soundtrack is touching. In some moments we feel shocked (the scene of the bull fight, for example) but it's really worth watching.

My rate 8/10 from Deming, New Mexico, USA 22 November 2014 When Joseph Losey gets his hands on the right material he can do wonders with it. This doesn't seem to have been the right material, or maybe Losey was just impatient with Burton's boozing or something. First, don't expect a biopic of Leon Trotsky, the stormy petrel of revolution. The title describes the assassination of Trotsky. He's a professorial sort, exiled to Mexico City after Stalin took over and betrayed Lenin's principles by playing footsies with Wall Street. It often happens with extremist ideologies that they split up, because everyone wants to be purer than the next guy. At that, Trotsky was lucky to get out alive. Stalin had ANYONE who represented a threat to his power murdered. Stalin went about, doing bad. It's an unpleasant movie. We have to sit through a bullfight and learn why movies usually don't show us the final coup, after which the bull drags himself around vomiting blood until he flops down, while the crowd cheers.

I know -- the bravery and grace of the matador and all that, but why don't they just let the bull go? Sometimes there is a thin line between beauty and baseness. I understand why the scene was included. The matador does to the bull what Alan Resnais does to Burton, more or less. And instead of dying a neat Hollywood death, Burton staggers up from his chair, a hole in his skull, stares at Resnais and shrieks bloody murder. There are long periods in which we watch Mexicans doing nothing in particular. And the scenes can be confusing. It's not always easy to tell what's going on. The musical score appears to have been made by a thousand chirping electronic crickets. Lots of talent and momentous intentions gone awry. Was the above review useful to you? 5 out of 8 people found the following review useful: Good starting point... from United States 5 March 2012 Doubtless, one of the greatest tragedies ever inflicted upon mankind was the rise and spread of communism in the 20th century. For the ideology to control the masses, millions were killed and large segments of the population were imprisoned or sent to labor camps.

Several countries were destroyed and the hatred among classes became the basis of the "International movement" for world domination. A big mess like that should never be forgotten and that's why I encourage everybody, especially young people, to be well informed on all matters pertaining to the communist horrors. Now for the film review I must start mentioning that "The Assassination of Trosky" is not an anti-communist film, nor is it anti-Soviet or anti-Stalin or anti-anything. I can't even vouch for its historical accuracy but I still recommend it for the importance of the subject matter. In short for those who totally ignore who Trosky was and his place on the Soviet debacle this could be a good place to start. The 1972 film boasts a prestigious cast of actors and an intelligent director but somehow those ingredients don't add up to a good movie. I can't place my finger on it but it could be the sometimes vague script, the slow moving start or even some of the performances. I may get grief for saying this but I found Richard Burton totally miscast as the Russian revolutionary and you can tell he's wearing a fake goatee a mile away.

As the movie progresses there are some moments in which he shines but overall he comes through too Shakespearean to be credible. Meanwhile the character of the assassin, as played by the great Alain Delon, is never given the opportunity to be for real. Mr. Delon plays it full of nervous ticks like he doesn't understand what motivated Mercader, the real killer, to embark in such a gruesome mission. Maybe there was no research that could inform him that his character was the son of Caridad, a Cuban lady who has gone down in history as the ultimate mother from hell. The lady, who after her marriage to a Spanish rich guy, showed signs of mental instability, raised all her sons to be servants of the communist international movement. (For an excellent presentation of the Mercader character and the whole Trosky affair try to see the 1996 award winning documentary "Storm The Skies", a real gem.) As much as I love Romy Schneiner, I have to guess that her character is a total fabrication in order to pair her again with real life ex-amour Delon and to show them again loving and fighting.

The producers must have thought that including her would give the film an extra boost at the box office and maybe it did. Although she gets briefs chances to display her histrionics as Delon's lover and Burton's secretary she seems to belong in a different movie. Of the actors only Valentina Cortese seems credible as the devoted Trosky wife. In short I recommend this film with reservations. Some of you might even like the scene where Trosky gets killed and the premonition at the bull ring with all its cinematic gore but I really hope that it will turn you on into a deeper understanding of Soviet cruelty and the horrible things that happened not to long ago. It could happen again, you know? Was the above review useful to you? 9 out of 16 people found the following review useful: all part of everyone's history from Portland, Oregon, USA 10 March 2007 As I understand it, "The Assassination of Trotsky" has been considered by many a rather crummy movie. I didn't find it such at all (of course, after you've seen pieces of crap like "Everyone Says I Love You" and "Baryshnya-Krestyanka", almost anything seems good).

The movie focuses less on Leon Trotsky (Richard Burton) than on his assassin, the enigmatic Frank Jackson (Alain Delon). I thought that a really effective scene was the bullfight: we know that the matador is eventually going to kill the bull, though the emphasis is on everything leading up to it (sort of like what happens in the movie). Overall, I thought that the movie was worth seeing. It shows how although Trotsky felt betrayed by what the Soviet Union had turned into under Stalin, he hadn't abandoned his mission of promoting international socialism. I wonder what he would have thought of the Soviet leaders after Stalin, had he lived to witness the changes there. Also starring Romy Schneider and Valentina Cortese. Was the above review useful to you?

Page 1 of 2: Movie Review - - Film Fete: 'Assassination of Trotsky' - NYTimes.com Film Fete: 'Assassination of Trotsky' By ROGER GREENSPUN Published: October 14, 1972 Joseph Losey's career in recent years has vacillated with quite wonderful agility between distinguished motion pictures, like "Accident" and "The Go-Between," and odd-ball movies, starring one or more of the Burtons: "Secret Ceremony" and "Boom." I'm sure that any student of Losey could argue for the thematic continuity of all his work (even the failed allegory of "Figures in a Landscape"), but for their audacity and imaginative density I prefer the odd-ball movies. And among these I would place "The Assassination of Trotsky," which stars Richard Burton as Leon Trotsky, and is a very odd project indeed. The movie deals with Trotsky's last months, mainly from May, 1940, when a night-time raid on Trotsky's Mexican compound failed; until August of the same year, when an incredibly clumsy assassination attempt by a man known as Frank Jacson succeeded.

Jacson (Alain Delon) was a secretive, even shy man, who gained his access to the compound through Sylvia Ageloff (Romy Schneider), an intimate of the family; and much of the film is given to developing not a motive, but a private world-view, for the assassin. As you might expect, history weighs heavy over such a movie, not least in a performance by Burton that almost looks historical. Much of the dialogue is taken from journals or accurate accounts of Trotsky's life, and it sounds as if he spent his life polishing up speeches for the movies. Thus, a nostalgic Wordsworthian Trotsky, to his grandson: "You should have been with us in the old days. What happiness it was to be alive! Storming the Winter Palace. . ." Or, in a hopeful mood: "Ah! It's a long time since I felt so well. . . Today I could climb mountains. . ."—this is, of course, the morning of his assassination. The mere fact that Trotsky may have said such things doesn't excuse them in a movie.

There is a lot more not to be excused in "The Assassination of Trotsky," but to be borne with by anybody who cares about the often beautiful things that Losey does with his camera, his always superb feeling for décor, his ways of placing his characters in a time scheme that is not simply historical. I suspect that what goes on beneath the narrative in "The Assassination of Trotsky" is very complex. I can only say at this point that it has to do with a fantastic use of corridors, with continually shifting levels of reality, with a penchant for turning mirrors into murals—the murals of Orozco and Rivera, the very structure of Losey's Mexico City and of the agony he is dramatizing. All the actors are made up to resemble their originals with extraordinary accuracy, and none seems more accurate than Valentina Cortese as Natalia Sedov, Trotsky's wife. Her role is comparatively small, but I think it is the loveliest performance in the movie. "The Assassination of Trotsky" played last night in the New York Film Festival, and it opens Sunday at the Coronet Theater.

The Cast THE ASSASSINATION OF TROTSKY, directed by Joseph Losey; screenplay by Nicholas Mosley; editor, Reggie Bech; cinematographer, Pasquel De Santis; produced by Mr. Losey and Norman Priggen; released by Cinerama Releasing Corporation. Shown at the New York Film Festival. Opens Sunday at the Coronet Theater. Running Time: 103 minutes. This film is rated R. Leon Trotsky . . . . . Richard Burton

Question: Which British actor played the role of Leon Trotsky in the 1972 film ‘The Assassination of Trotsky’?
Answer: Richard Burton