Enrico IV

Based on Luigi Pirandello's 1922 play, Enrico IV explores the nature of reality and illusion by depicting an alternately playful and serious effort to cure a presumed madman who believes (or perhaps only pretends to believe) that he's the medieval German emperor Henry IV--the monarch who performed penance before Pope Gregory VII at Canossa in 1077. On the stage, the mixture of satire and psychological observation can be remarkably effective, but on celluloid it comes across as pretentious and incoherent, or at least that's the case with this updated adaptation by Marco Bellocchio. In fact, the sole reason to endure this effort--visually unimaginative, with threadbare production design and murky photography--is the title performance by Marcello Mastroianni, who endows the character with considerable depth despite its opacity. As one of the friends who attempt to shock him back to reality, Claudia Cardinale looks lovely but appears dramatically lost, and the remainder of the supporting cast is uniformly mediocre. Ultimately, Enrico IV succeeds neither as a screen realization of Pirandello's work nor as a rethinking of its themes in cinematic terms. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)