Review of Man of La Mancha

Dale Wasserman adapted his popular musical play for the screen, yet he failed to see this sub-Shakespearean material in cinematic terms; ditto director Arthur Hiller--who isn't very visual either--and their film muddies up that fine line between fantasy and quasi-reality, both undermined by baroque flourishes and sentiment. Peter O'Toole is alternately regal and aloof as the mad poet Miguel de Cervantes, who is arrested by the Inquisition and dumped into a dungeon; he manages to make dreamers and followers out of the prisoners there, staging the life and struggles of Don Quixote while firmly believing in the illusion. Sophia Loren (beautiful and busty in peasant garb) plays a scrub-woman/incarnation of Dulcinea, and James Coco is Cervantes' faithful assistant, Sancho Panza. Both are wonderful, as are some of the minor players, though the movie fails to take off. Hiller, not my ideal pick to stage an operetta, mixes different moods and the songs well enough, but too often he's clumsy and oafish. The cinematography is good, but the editing is a little lax (particularly during a rowdy fight sequence where the focus is never where it should be). Worth-seeing, perhaps, for Loren and Coco's work, although O'Toole's frequent soliloquies (and his reading of "The Impossible Dream") are hit-and-miss. **1/2 from ****