Galileo

A scientist teaching in Padua looks at the sky through a telescope he built himself and writes down what he sees. He says the Earth turns and does not stand at the centre of the universe. The Church finds this unacceptable. Galileo is warned first, then tried, and forced to take back what he said. He spends his remaining years under house arrest. Liliana Cavani's Italian and Bulgarian co-production was in fact made for television. RAI found it too anticlerical and refused to broadcast it; the rights were sold on to another company and the running time was cut. It could not find distribution in cinemas either. The film competed at Venice in 1968. Cyril Cusack plays Galileo. For a film about the conflict between scientific freedom and authority, what happened to it became part of the same subject.