I’m watching old movies once in a while with my brother, though we’re
socially distant so we only see each other on our screens. Last week we
saw Man of La Mancha, which I’d always heard was good but somehow I’d never seen, and indeed it was quite good.

As you probably know, it’s based on Don Quixote,
the 17th-century novel by Miguel de Cervantes. It’s considered one of
the first modern novels, and I tried and failed to read it once. It’s
long, dense, and allegorical.

In the movie, Cervantes is imprisoned for heresy, and as he’s taunted
by his fellow inmates, he tells them tall tales of being a knight, Don
Quixote, a/k/a the Man of La Mancha. In the most famous scene from the
book and movie, he loses a comical battle against a windmill he’s
mistakenly perceived as a monster.

It’s a surreal story that keeps you unsure what’s supposed
to be real and what’s fantasy, and it all adds up to nonsense in the
end, but it’s lovable nonsense. There are several klunky but painless
songs and a few great ones.

It stars Peter O’Toole, Sofia Loren, and Sofia Loren’s breasts. I’m
abnormal in many ways but when it comes to boobies I’m an ordinary
heterosexual man, but this was too much, too calculated, and too distracting. In virtually
every scene that Sofia Loren is in, she’s bending over in a low-cut
dress sharing her ample cleavage. Her cleavage must have been had
an hour of screen time, often front and center. Give me a glimpse once
in a while, sure, please — but I don’t need the camera swooping over
endless mountain vistas.

O’Toole is great in the title role, which is to be expected — he was
always great in semi-demented roles like this. Loren is a spitfire,
sometimes fierce, and makes her way past the stereotypical confines of
her role as a hooker with a heart of gold. As Don Quixote’s sidekick,
James Coco is suitably comical.

If I have any complaint beyond the boobage overload, it’s that the
movie’s first ten minutes — in which Cervantes/O’Toole is tried for
heresy — is staged as an illusion instead of reality. Everyone’s wearing
theatrical masks, and we see Cervantes on a stake surrounded by flames,
but they’re stage flames — ribbons blown by air, not actual fire. I
guess it’s meant to imply that his imprisonment, and even his trial and
arrest for heresy, are all only in the author’s mind? So there’s not to
be a shred of believable reality or jeopardy to anyone in the entire two hours? I don’t really
understand how that helps the drama, versus having him actually arrested and imperiled.

But that’s a quibble, and it’s all fiction anyway. It’s fiction that
keeps telling you it’s fiction, and that’s unusual, but after the first
10 or 15 minutes I found my footing in this fictional world of fiction,
and everything else mostly made sense to me. itsdougholland.com ← PREVIOUS          NEXT →