Word: goya
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...ironic painting, all the author's characters stumble into the ditch of mortality. Satirist Condon is not afraid to set up outrageously improbable situations to achieve his effects. In his first novel, The Oldest Confession (1958), an Achilles among criminals was brought to heel while trying to hijack Goya's The Second of May, from the Prado. In the current fable, a brilliant Chinese disciple of Pavlov-a sort of Marxist Dr. Fu Manchu-directs the capture, brainwashing and reflex-conditioning of an entire American patrol during the Korean war. Before grinning Russian brasshats, he shows...
...Goya, when he tumbled for his ducal doxy, was nearing 50, and totally deaf as the result of a mysterious and paralyzing illness; as an artist, he was a respected court painter to Charles IV, but his searing studies of the agonies of war and the misery of the human condition still lay ahead of him. In the movie (filmed in Rome because the Alba family prevailed on Franco to lock the moviemakers out of Spain), "Paco" Goya is a beardless, hot-blooded youth (Anthony Franciosa) newly arrived in Madrid from the sticks. The duchess (Ava Gardner), a democratic type...
...Naked Maja (Titanus; United Artists) refers to the title of the celebrated nude painted by Spain's great Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) and identified by sentimentalists-though not by art historians-as a well-buffed study of his mistress, the Duchess of Alba. A reproduction of the portrait flashes onscreen briefly along with the titles, but this is just about the last note of authenticity in what may be the most inept movie biography since Cecil B. DeMille tore Cleopatra from the pages of history...
...world is too much with them. La Alba's common touch has drawn deep frowns from the Queen, and to save Goya's neck, the duchess renounces his attentions and ships him back to Madrid. Feverish at the thought of her fickleness, he churns out the agonized, hellborn Caprichos. In the end, the lovers are briefly, sentimentally reunited at the duchess' deathbed...
What atrocities they have not committed on history, Writers Norman Corwin and Giorgio Prosperi have dealt out to the script. Neither evidently thought that an account of the Goya-Alba romance need include mention of her husband, or of Goya's wife and 20-odd children. The characters that do manage to squeeze into the script get lines so cliché-ridden that even the Count of Monte Cristo would wince ("I'll teach her who's the Queen of Spain!" cries the Queen of Spain). Actor Franciosa brings a certain expression to the role of Goya...