The Cardinal (1963)

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Movie follows the career of Stephen Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) from priest to cardinal. Over the course of a few decades we see him dealing with sex, abortion, segregation, the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis. It also has an all-star cast--Romy Schneider, Carol Lynley, Jill Haworth, John Saxon, Ossie Davis, Dorothy Gish and--best of all--John Huston and Burgess Meredith. It's well-directed by Otto Preminger and looks great...but it's just er good. Two things work against it--at 175 minutes it's far too long and Tryon is absolutely terrible in the title role. I seriously did not know how to take his character at times. Still it's a very good movie and worth a look.

This film seems to convincingly portray the inner workings of the Church in its central story of the rise of a newly ordained priest to the rank of cardinal. It has some excellent dialogue among the leaders of the Church that could strike some as stiff but actually reveals a deft combination of mutual respect under which lies Machiavelian diplomacy. The Vatican scenes are exquisitely detailed, with a keen eye to Church politics and ambition disguised behind very well delivered dialogues of diplomacy. The film is a historical dramatization that begins in Rome with Tom Tryon's ordainment as a priest just as World War 1 is about to begin and comes to an end as Tryon, now a bishop, is in immediate post-Anschluss Austria as the Nazis lead violent anti-Catholic riots. His part is very well played throughout, capturing the trials he faces with his family life in Boston as well as his strong convictions to uphold the teachings of the Church, especially when they conflict with political realities. This is a dense film.

***SPOILERS*** Otto Perminger's three hour extravaganza on the inner workings of the Catholic Church is a bit heavy handed but still worth watching in his star Tom Tryon, as Father Stephen Fermoyle, unique performance in it.Father Stephen's faith is badly shaken when his sister Mona, Carol Lynley, who's both pregnant out of wedlock and on the brink of death. With only the abortion of her unborn child being able to save her life Stephen chooses the life of the child Rigena who's also played, when she's grown up, by Carol Lynley over that of his sister Mona leaving her to die in childbirth on the hospital operating table. Stephen going by his Catholic ethics has the child saved at the lost of Mona's life and that hunts him for the reminder of the film.Temporally giving up the priesthood, but not the vows he took , and becoming a teacher in Vienna Stephen meets and falls in love with one of his students Annemarie, Romy Schneide. It's when Annemarie finds out that Stephen is a Catholic Priest she drops his like a hot potato knowing that the church takes precedence over her. It's some time later when Stephen again meets Annamerie she's happily married to banker Kurt Von Hartman, Peter Weck. It's then, March 1938, that the Nazis march into Austria and Kurt, being part-Jewish, jumps to his death, out of his and Annemarie's six floor apartment window, to avoid being arrested and put into a Nazi concentration camp by the dreaded Gestapo.Annemarie herself is arrested by the Gestapo in her being accused of trying to escape from Nazi controlled Austria which Stephen, if she only asked for his help, could have saved her from. During that same period, the late 1930's, Stephen risks his life by traveling to rural Georgia to help fellow-and black- priest Father Gillis, Ossie Davis who's church was burned down by a bunch of local Klansman.Being kidnapped and brutally horsewhipped by the hooded Klansman Father Stephen's courage to stand up to them encouraged the local black parishioners to come forward and testify against the head of the Klan in the area that put him behind bars. This, according to the movie, was the first time in the south that a white man was convicted on only the strength of a black man, or black mens, testimony!Back at the Vatican Father Stephen's boundless courage and convictions for his fellow man has him rise to the point where he's appointed as a Cardinal to the Catholic Church. The movie ends with Father, now Carndial, Stephen telling his audience at the Vatican to follow God's rules and resist the dangers that are now surfacing all over the world in the coming, this is in the early summer of 1939, conflict with Fascism. A warning that was sadly ignored, by the world powers at the times, and that resulted in the biggest and most destructive conflict, WWII, in human history.P.S Actor Tom Tryon who-as Father Stephen Fermoyle- was told by his superior in the film Cardnal Glennow, John Huston, that he needed to be thought a lesson in humility. Tyron was given that hard lesson by the director of the movie "The Cardinal" Otto Preminger himself. Being constantly yelled and screamed at by the ill tempered and demanding Preminger Tryon needed all the humility he could muster up to be able to finish, and not walk off, the movie set! This in itself showed what an excellent and, in taking all that guff from Preminger, disciplined actor the late Tom Tryon really was!

The stiffness in the telling marks the destiny of this confused tale. At times is quite simply, unendurable. The wooden rigidity of Tom Tryon makes things even harder to take. Unconvincing should be the polite way of putting it. Preminger shows an eye for the travelogue part but a total diffidence in the subject at hand. No feel for it at all. Solemnity shouldn't be the way but it is and a rather phony solemnity at that. At times, they all behave like creatures from another planet and nothing they say or do sounds or looks credible. The over long saga is told in little disjointed episodes, the only thing that remains constant is the inexpressive brow of Mr Tryon. Most of Otto Preminger's opus looks terribly dated now. "The Cardinal" is, perhaps, the most dated. Carol Linley goes from saintly sister to exotic dancer in one single throw and Romy Schnaider has a brief and calculated moment. If I had to save something it would be the scene in which John Huston goes to visit his dying friend Burgess Meredith. But those kind of moments are rare. For some reason that I haven't been able to figure out there is a long musical number by Robert Morse, but as absurd as it was, it came as a welcome change from the agonizing pace the film suffers through its interminable length.