Dubbed Genius

Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. He invented prototypes of the submarine, the diving mask and snorkel, the airplane, the parachute, the tank and the hydraulic screw. What he did not invent, as the opening segment of CBS's five-part Life of Leonardo da Vinci amply illustrated this week, was a way of having his own story told well.

In Leonardo's case, of course, the problems are colossal. The artist was a universal genius. He was also literally a secretive bastard, who invented a way of writing (right to left and upside down) to protect his plans and musings from prying eyes. Almost nothing is known about his private life.

In trying to wrestle this enigma onto the TV screen, the CBS series--produced by RAI, the Italian national television company that aired it in Italy last fall --never resolves the hard choice between truth and drama. This week's episode opened with the death of Leonardo in the arms of France's King Francis I, the patron of the artist's declining years. Creaky and inspirational, the scene at least has a style that might grow on a sympathetic viewer. Alas, hardly has Leonardo expired when a young "guide" in a modern business suit comes on camera, pointing out that the scene is pure fiction, lifted from admiring contemporary accounts.

Truthful Bitters. And so it goes, the modern guide periodically strolling cheekily into the 16th century to deliver a dash of truthful bitters, then fading out to make way for another stretch of camp biography. With admirable devotion to accuracy Leonardo's lines are limited to sentiments that actually survive in his notebooks. The result is that French Actor Philippe Leroy, who plays him, has little to do but brood burningly upon the world while lines of primordial exposition clatter about him. (Penny-pinching grandfather: "What's the good of all this schooling? It does not put bread on the table.")

The blame for much of this may be laid to the English dubbing and adaptation, done by Titan Productions in New York. The voices, borrowed straight from a stable of TV commercial actors, leave the viewer in some doubt as to whether he is listening to Pink Pad or Lorenzo the Magnificent.

There is still some hope, though.

Four parts remain, with Italian palazzi to be used as backdrops and famous ladies like Isabella d'Este to be viewed. Painting the Last Supper on the wall of Milano's Refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, experimenting with flight and war machines, feuding with that young punk and fellow genius Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci may yet prove that not even television can keep a good Renaissance man down.

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