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Created Jan 21, 2014 01:23AM PST • Edited May 03, 2021 05:56PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Tesla stands alone: the most mystical, the most gifted, the most freaky of the great industrial magnates, e.g., Edison, Westinghouse & J.P. Morgan, who also appear in this biopic of the Serbian-American inventor. From Zagreb, it presents as a bizarre movie where people’s mouths don’t match what’s coming out of them.

   Relax, it’s not a psychic plot. It’s just that most of the actors performed in Serbo-Croatian, notwithstanding three American stars in the cast. About that trio of Hollywood heavyweights, let’s start with …

   Orson Welles as J.P. Morgan

   Talk about big time casting! Then there is Dennis Patrick’s strong Thomas Edison, a man who didn’t trust university learning, yet conquered the world. Strother Martin essays George Westinghouse, Edison’s rival.

   Everyone else are Serbs or Croats speaking Serbo-Croatian, whether they’re playing a Slav or an American. English got dubbed in after the fact. Thus they sound like Americans speaking American, except their mouths are enunciating Serbo-Croatian, making the whole thing look weird. Sounds right, looks wrong.

   Still, great things happen at both the personal drama level and the world historic level.

   Tesla meets Edison, setting up the great AC vs. DC battle. No, it’s not a sexual thing. It’s power, literal power. Electricity. Edison invented how to use it, thereby becoming the dominant industrial mogul not only in the United States but in the world. Except he was doing it all Direct, Direct Current that is. Tesla says that’s out of step with nature. Alternating Current – AC – is harmonious with nature. Odd, but Tesla said it.

   AC became the way we power our world, first Edison’s light bulbs, now our phones and accessories.

   Tesla’s odd insight was harmoniously correct. Think radial motion vs. pistons. Smooth, very smooth.

   Nikola was always a sensitive boy, with a beautiful and eccentric mother. Lots of shots of Tesla standing around looking eerie don’t help the movie, even if that’s the way he was. It’s made worse because the actor playing Tesla performed in Serbo-Croation and yet we’re hearing English. It doesn’t quite match up.

   Yes, it’s kind of an odd movie about a famously odd millionaire. Good thing The Secret of Nikola Tesla crackles with more than enough intellectual electricity to make it a more than worthwhile view.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   Petar Bozovic has Nikola Tesla’s whippet thin, remote mien. He could even have been a great actor. Pity he performed in Serbo-Croation, making his depiction of the famously odd Nikola Tesla even more odd.

   Orson Welles was in his dotage when he essayed J.P. Morgan in this 1980 production, lured into it by his longtime girlfriend Oja Kodar. Aside from appeasing his Croation companion, what could have lured the great Welles? How about the paycheck, the opportunity to embody a titanic icon of American finance and perhaps even the theatrical challenge of performing in a bilingual production.

   Oja Kodar plays American society matron Catherine Johnson, Nikola Tesla’s chief cheerleader and wife of a high profile New Yorker. Boris Buzancic plays Robert Johnson, her husband, the hoity-toity editor of big time magazine The Century. Yep, a guy named Boris Buzancic played a guy named Robert Johnson. Here’s a guess: English wasn’t Boris B’s first language.

   Dennis Patrick’s Thomas Alva Edison growls with conviction and crackles with intelligence. Charles Millot is intelligently obsequious as Adams, his assistant. (Millot makes four American actors in the movie.)

   Strother Martin has 171 acting credits to his name on IMDb, a career that spanned from 1950 to 1980. George Westinghouse in The Secret of Nikola Tesla is the final one, the last role for this great actor.

5. Male Stars OK 2.5

6. Female Stars OK 2.5

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The jockeying for position between J.P. Morgan, George Westinghouse, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla is fascinating historical drama, monumentally consequential.

    Superior historical drama set in the late 1800s and early 1900s, with a coda set in the 1940s. Ellis Island comes early.

    Welcome to the United States!

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play Great 4.0

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    The settings are spectacular: millionaires in tuxes, drinking champagne, taking their meals at the Waldorf.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.5

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.3

19. Rudeness Salty 1.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    Some artistic liberties taken, hence the 1.6x CircoReality score. That’s not much and the underlying reality was world historic.

    • Tesla was such a freak – possessing a natural genius for electricity, a photographic memory and incredibly detailed instant insight, a set of intellectual gifts that don’t get handed out very often.
    • J.P. Morgan talks about pictures and words moving thru the air without wires. London Calling…
    • Tesla – blocked by Edison – sought to block Edison. He died diminished.
    • Tesla was amongst the first to predict an energy shortage, yet he was the one who did more than anyone to power the world with an efficient electrical system, without which we’d be offline today.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.6

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0