The Assassination of Trotsky (1972)

User Rating:

5.9/10   

Director:

Joseph Losey

Writer:

Nicholas Mosley (writer)

Release Date:

20 April 1972 (Italy)

Genre:

Biography | Drama | History | Thriller

Tagline:

For one moment, they hold history in their hands. With one terrible blow, they make it

Plot:

After having been forced to leave the Soviet Union 1929 Trotsky has ended up in Mexico 1940. He is still busy with the politics...

Plot Keywords:

Communist | Assassin | Mexico | Politics | Male Female Relationship

Cast

Richard Burton	...	Leon Trotsky
Alain Delon	...	Frank Jackson
Romy Schneider	...	Gita Samuels
Valentina Cortese	...	Natalia Sedowa Trotsky
Enrico Maria Salerno	...	Salazar
Luigi Vannucchi	...	Ruiz
Duilio Del Prete	...	Felipe
Jean Desailly	...	Alfred Rosmer
Simone Valère	...	Marguerite Rosmer
Carlos Miranda	...	Sheldon Harte
Peter Chatel	...	Otto
Michael Forest	...	Jim (as Mike Forrest)
Marco Lucantoni	...	Seva
Claudio Brook	...	Roberto
Jack Betts	...	Lou (as Hunt Powers)

Also Known As:

L'assassinat de Trotsky (France)
L'assassinio di Trotsky (Italy)
Life of Leon Trotsky (Philippines: English title)

Runtime:

103 min | Australia:106 min

Country:

Italy | France | UK

Language:

English | Spanish

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | UK:12 | USA:R | Iceland:16

Filming Locations:

Italy

Company:

Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica

Trivia:

One of the films included in "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way)" by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: A character passes a wall with a graffiti-image of Woody Woodpecker. The first appearance of Woody Woodpecker was in the cartoon "Knock Knock" which was released 25th of November 1940, two months after Trotski was assassinated.

Quotes:

Leon Trotsky: It's hard living with an old revolutionary. You should have been with us when we stormed the Winter Palace! With Lenin in Moscow in the early days! What happiness to be alive- to be fighting then!

Just an effort

Stalin hated Trotsky for many reasons, one among them is that Lenin in his famous testament strongly criticized Stalin as a tough and badly educated leader while recognized Trotsky as the most intelligent politician among the Bolcheviks. In that way Trostky was a kind of impediment for Stalin to seize the whole power in Soviet Union. The party trusted Stalin and the first thing he did was to start a snare campaign against Trotsky among the high bosses of the party as Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, who finally supported Stalin in this deed. As a result Trostky was declared a traitor and expelled from USSR, living first at the border of USSR, then in Turkey and finally in Mexico. He continued writing and had an increased number of people following him, a fact enough for Stalin to order his assassination. To this end Stalin and his KGB tools used Mexican communists led by the famous muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. They attempted to kill Trostki once unsuccessfully, then decided to change for another way, i.e. to introduce the agent Jacques Mornard, who in fact was not from Belgium as he claimed to be, but Spanish citizen Ramón Mercader del Río, son of mother born in Cuba. Mornard or Mercader finally killed Trostky, but not his ideas. In fact Stalin made a big mistake because trostkism increased and gained a lot of popularity in several countries after the death of Trostky. The present film is just an effort to show something of this fatal happening, but it is not the best in my opinion. There is no introduction to Trostki, how he was expelled from USSR, why this happened, how he arrived in Mexico. Not knowing the history, it will be very difficult to guess that Stalin was behind this assassination. The relationship of Trostki with some communists, as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is neither shown at all. The role of Trostky is played well by Richard Burton although he looked fatter than the real Trostky, but Alain Delon as Mornard or Mercader did not play this role convincingly. Mercader was a Stalinist fanatic, and this characteristic is not seen in the role played by Delon. He looked as schizophrenic rather than a man with political convictions.