Word: atahuallpa
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Screenwriter Philip Yordan tells it, obsessed by his own bastardy. As in the case of T. E. Lawrence of Arabia, the burden of his illegitimacy weighed so heavily that it drove him to deeds of improbable and even reckless heroism. In the bizarre personage of King Atahuallpa (Christopher Plummer) Pizarro encounters a man of his own kind, an implacable and almost superhuman force. Atahuallpa gives short shrift to the rabid Catholic missionaries in Pizarro's party and, looking into the explorer's eyes, says tellingly: "Their God is not in your face." Replies Pizarro: "I see my father...
...ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN. Tired philosophy and an undocumented personal interpretation of the relationship between Conquistador Pizarro and Inca Ruler Atahuallpa are injected into a historical spectacle that pleases visually but fails to satisfy dramatically...
Shaffer has not fallen into the trap of abstract debate, however. He explores his theme by dramatizing a segment of actual history-the Spaniards' conquest of Peru, and more specifically, the period 1529-1532 and the events surrounding the crucial confrontations between Pizarro the Conquistador and Atahuallpa the God-Become...
Shaffer has, however, departed in certain instances from Prescott. Some deviations are inconsequential details, but others are important. Shaffer has moved the murder of Atahuallpa's brother Huascar ahead in time. And he has made Pizarro eventually a more sympathetic character than emerges from Prescott, who rightly stated that "the treatment of Atahuallpa, from first to last, forms undoubtedly one of the darkest chapters in Spanish colonial history." But these changes are invariably justified dramaturgically, Shaffer has retained, compressed, omitted, and changed the right things to insure a better play...
...chief acting burden naturally falls on Christopher Plummer as Pizarro and David Carradine as Atahuallpa. Both performances are stunning. Now there are two kinds of excellent actor. One molds each role into an extension or variation of his own marked personality-like Gielgud, Hawkins, Mastroianni, Robards, Fonda. The other, and greater, is able to obliterate the self and mint an entirely fresh being-like Chaplin, Jouvet, Oliver Guinness, Brando. Plummer belongs to the second type. Having recently seen his Hamlet, Arturo Ui, and Pizarro, I just can't believe they were all played by the same...