"(This) Henry IV keeps to the spirit of the Pirandello tragicomedy about a man who, (since) a fall from a horse twenty years earlier, has imagined himself to be the 11th-century Holy Roman emperor. He has removed himself to an ancient castle where he lives in lonely, mock-imperial splendor, surrounded by servants dressed in period, occasionally receiving callers who, to be admitted, must assume the dress and identities of personalities who figured in Henry's life.... (A) group of the madman's former friends, accompanied by a busybody alienist, arrive at the castle with a scheme to shock the fellow back into sanity. Is he really mad? What, in fact, is sanity? Is one mad for choosing to feign madness?.... Pirandello, though he didn't exactly ask (these questions) first, asked them best. This Henry IV has been given a lovely production by Mr. Bellocchio...(and) is acted with élan by Marcello Mastroianni as the mad Henry (and) Claudia Cardinale as the woman he once loved."