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The Assassination of Trotsky
The Assassination of Trotsky
	Film poster
Directed by	Joseph Losey
Written by	Nicholas Mosley
Produced by	Norman Priggen; Josef Shaftel (executive producer)
Starring	Richard Burton; Alain Delon; Romy Schneider; Valentina Cortese; Jean Desailly
Cinematography	Pasqualino De Santis
Edited by	Reginald Beck
Music by	Egisto Macchi
Production; companies	Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica; Compagnia Internazionale Alessandra Cinematografica; Cinétel
Distributed by	Cinerama Releasing Corporation
Release date	20 April 1972;
Running time	103 minutes
Countries	Italy; France; United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	£1 million ($2.4 million)
Box office	561,109 admissions (France)

The Assassination of Trotsky is a 1972 British historical drama film directed by Joseph Losey with a screenplay by Nicholas Mosley. It stars Richard Burton, Romy Schneider and Alain Delon.^[3]

Plot

Exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929, Leon Trotsky travels from Turkey to France to Norway, before arriving in Mexico in January 1937. The film begins in Mexico City in 1940, during a May Day celebration. Trotsky has not escaped the attention of the Soviet dictator of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, who sends out an assassin named Frank Jacson. The killer decides to infiltrate Trotsky's house by befriending one of the young communists in Trotsky's circle.

Cast

Richard Burton as Leon Trotsky
Alain Delon as Frank Jacson
Romy Schneider as Gita Samuels
Valentina Cortese as Natalia Sedova Trotsky
Luigi Vannucchi as Ruiz
Jean Desailly as Alfred Rosmer
Simone Valère as Marguerite Rosmer
Duilio Del Prete as Felipe
Jack Betts as Lou (credited as Hunt Powers)
Michael Forest as Jim
Claudio Brook as Roberto
Joshua Sinclair as Sam
Giorgio Albertazzi as Commissioner

Production

In 1965, Josef Shaftel optioned the novel The Great Prince Died by Bernard Wolfe. The film was a co-production between the French Valoria Company and Dino De Laurentiis. It was originally to be shot in England,^[4] but was eventually filmed in Rome. The movie used Isaac Don Levine's book The Mind of an Assassin as a source.^[5]

According to author Melvin Bragg, the director Joseph Losey was so drunk and tired that he relied on long monologues by Burton to carry the film, in some cases even forgetting what was in the script. Burton himself wrote that he, or the continuity girl, would have to remind Losey of things that would have caused continuity gaffes.^[6]

Reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Disconcertingly, any summary of the bizarre circumstances of Trotsky's death – the old man, once a prime mover in great events, screened from the world behind walls and watch towers until his confrontation with his impenetrable executioner – reads like a parody of a Losey movie. It is even more unsettling to find that The Assassination of Trotsky goes some way towards heightening this sense of parody, at times approaching the hyper-refined allegory of Boom!, with an overcrowded texture thrusting its meanings on to the surface of the film. This erratic intensity is in part the inevitable result of the material, partly the result of a collaboration that has not achieved the harmony of Losey's work with Pinter. We are no longer in a milieu where the steady accumulation of physical and behavioural details reveals a world continuously rebuilt by its inhabitants on a dream of perfect self-sufficiency, and where the currents of disruption are felt only to be approaching in a heavy ground-swell. By comparison with The Go-Between, the characters in Trotsky seem to belong to no specific place or time: their relationships are founded on no shared code or natural necessity, but on the absurd chances of war and on blind collisions arising from their attempts to heave obsessions into actions that will move and change the world outside."^[7]

The Assassination of Trotsky was included as one of the choices in the book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time.^[8]

References

^ Chapman, J. (2022). The Money Behind the Screen: A History of British Film Finance, 1945-1985. Edinburgh University Press, p. 263.
^ Box office information for film at Box Office Story.
^ "The Assassination of Trotsky". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 20 August 2024.
^ A. H. WEILER (27 June 1971). "Joseph Losey Looks at Trotsky: Joseph Losey". New York Times. p. D17.
^ From staff reports and news dispatches. (3 September 1971). "Is It Worth a Trip to See?: Personalities". The Washington Post. p. B3.
^ Bragg, Melvin (1988). Richard Burton: A Life. Little, Brown and Company. pp. 358, 379. ISBN 0-316-10595-3.
^ "The Assassination of Trotsky". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 39 (456): 227. 1 January 1972 – via ProQuest.
^ Medved, Harry; Dreyfuss, Randy (1978). The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (And How They Got That Way). Popular Library. p. 31. ISBN 0-445-04139-0.