Henry IV

In Marco Bellocchio’s adaptation of a Luigi Pirandello play, a twentieth-century nobleman takes a fall during a medieval costume pageant and awakens convinced he is the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV of Germany. Family and friends take the path of least resistance and play along, and years pass before they come up with a scheme to pry him out of his elaborately staged, infuriating dementia. Pirandello brilliantly uses humor to explore the existentialism of madness. Marcello Mastroianni turns Henry IV into a self-reflexive film about the actor’s craft and the crafty actor. The score is by Astor Piazzolla.