The Assassination of Trotsky

Unhistorical evocation of Trotsky's last couple of months in exile in Mexico before the Stalinist agents got to him. Burton as Trotsky is set up very deliberately as a dry, pedantic figure, and his ideas accordingly shrink in importance. Delon, too, as the enigmatic assassin, seems like an unfinished character until the brilliantly shot scene where he watches a bullfight. From there Losey's on his own, fascinatedly turning this key historical event into a Secret Ceremony. We're so starved of hard information that one can only wish for more.