La sublime fatica is based on the commission to film the sculptures by Michelangelo in the year of the fourth centenary of his death, for a short film with Charlton Heston that would originally accompany the premiere of El tormento y el éxtasis (The Agony and the Ecstasy). At the last moment, Fox broke the contract, but Emmer turned the commission towards a critical and ironic look at the mass tourism that was starting to invade Italy in the 1960s, highlighted by chirping music and the obsessive gaze of the wide-angle camera, in dialogue with the verses written by the sculptor in the 16^th century.