Man of La Mancha movie review (1972)

The best movie musicals never have depended on bailing-out operations by their directors. The truly great musical directors like Vincente Minnelli, Stanley Doren and Gene Kelly usually were concerned with creating a fantasy outside the camera and then photographing it.

When a dancer like Astaire is working, you undermine his artistry if you move the camera a lot, and edit incessantly. Audiences need a stable visual base to appreciate good choreography. They don't get it in "Man of La Mancha."

The mystery of Peter O'Toole deepens with the release of this movie. He is a film actor of considerable talent, granted. But what possesses directors to cast him in musicals?

He can't sing and he knows he can't sing. So he was in "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (1970), which was good anyway because they stuck to the compelling story line and rarely showed him singing. They did low-keyed voice-overs instead, and let Petula Clark handle the real musical stuff.

But now O'Toole is back in another musical; he's the busiest musical star in movies! Why?

The only performance that really survives the movie is Sophia Loren's. She can sing, more or less, and she can also radiate warmth and concern.

She has kind of a thankless role (they've cast her as the whore with the heart of gold again), but she concentrates on acting; she doesn't relax because it's only a musical. So her role works because we care about it.

The people who made "Man of La Mancha," and who were no doubt filled with the best of intentions, made two mistakes.

The first was to make a film out of an essentially uninspired musical play. The second was not to believe that Cervantes really meant it when he wrote "Don Quixote."

There's a message there, but it isn't to dream the impossible dream. It's to tilt at windmills instead. Windmills can't tilt back.

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