The Agony and the Ecstasy
“From the age of magnificence comes a new magnificence in motion pictures.”
Synopsis
During the Italian Renaissance, Pope Julius II commissions the influential artist Michelangelo to sculpt 40 statues for his tomb. When the pope later changes his mind and requests that Michelangelo instead paint a mural in the Sistine Chapel, the artist doubts his painting abilities and abandons the project. After experiencing divine inspiration, Michelangelo returns to the work, but his artistic vision conflicts with the pope's demanding personality, putting the success of the historic painting at risk.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 18
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Samuel E BeetleyShot by Leon ShamroyScored by Alex NorthDesigned by John Decuir
Box Office
1965 · Box office
📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.4× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$4.0M
Also known as
- Michelangelo - Inferno und Ekstasede
- L'Extase et l'Agoniefr
- Il tormento e l'estasiit
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Cast & Crew
18 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Charlton Heston
as Michelangelo
Rex Harrison
as Pope Julius II
Diane Cilento
as Contessina de'Medici
Harry Andrews
as Bramante
Alberto Lupo
as Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino
Adolfo Celi
as Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici (pope Leo X)
Venantino Venantini
as Paris De Grassis
John Stacy
as Sangallo
Fausto Tozzi
as Foreman
Maxine Audley
as Woman
Directors
1Writers
2Other crew
5Parents Guide
AI Personalities
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