THE CARDINAL (1963) ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Otto Preminger
Tom Tryon, Romy Schneider, John Huston,
Carol Lynley, John Saxon, Dorothy Gish,
Burgess Meredith, Ossie Davis, Jill Haworth,
Raf Vallone, Chill Wills, Patrick O'Neal,
Murray Hamilton, Arthur Hunnicut, Wolfgang Preiss
An ecclesiastical potboiler about a Catholic priest named Stephen Fermoyle (Tom Tryon), who moves up through the clerical ranks in the years between the two world wars. When Preminger made this, the Second Vatican Council was still going on, but in the first half of the 20th century, Catholicism was still pretty much medieval, and while the rules could seem to be absolute, the moral arithmetic could get kind of murky. Fermoyle, echoing the Church's inflexible stand on abortion, effectively murders his own sister, while some of his priestly colleagues go out of their way to accommodate Hitler's Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. If this came out today, it'd be a miniseries, at least. As a feature-length film (even at close to three hours), it feels episodic and incomplete, with some key characters coming and going and dropping away before you get to know much about them. It's a gold-framed, stained-glass window on the way things used to be, but the script and execution are heavy-handed. Tryon eventually retired from films to pursue a successful career as a novelist.
John Saxon
(1936-2020)
