The Cardinal

Tom Tryon is one of the better but less appreciated actors of the '50s and '60s when mature top stars were the likes of Rock Hudson. Tryon, however, is not only an excellent actor but a good writer as well with a number of books to his name just like Sterling Hayden, another almost forgotten actor of the period.

This movie should be required viewing in Moral Theology as it provides guidance on how a serious practicing Catholic should act when faced with moral dilemmas. With the current moral divide on the question of abortion, I am reminded of that crucial scene in the movie when the character portrayed by Tryon had to decide on what medical procedure to choose in the case of an emergency arising out of a childbirth gone awry. He was the nearest of kin of the woman involved and the doctors advised him that there was a choice as to whether to abort the baby (by crushing its head with forceps) or let the childbirth proceed in which case the mother's life would be compromised. In such cases, Catholic morality requires that the best effort should be made to save both infant and mother but in no case may an intervention be made to kill either one of them.

TOM TRYON has the central role in Otto Preminger's majestic looking film version of THE CARDINAL, but he's one of those handsome actors with an impassive face whose emotions never come to the surface. Instead, we get a hint of what he might be thinking without any real clue. And since the film is all about the moral and personal issues facing him as he enters the College of Cardinals, an actor with more emotional capabilities would have been more impressive.

The other flaw is the three hour length for a film in which the story is simply not that compelling. Furthermore, director Preminger has chosen to direct whole scenes at medium length lensing (no close-ups inserted) which gives a flat affect to the dynamics involved.

Aside from these weaknesses, the film has a lot about it to commend. All the interiors of church activities are impressively staged and photographed in beautiful WideScreen photography. The performances around Tryon range from good to excellent, including John Huston, Carol Lynley, Bill Hayes, John Saxon and Burgess Meredith. Huston is particularly commanding as the brusque Cardinal Glennon, who confronts Tryon with: "You're not afraid of me, are you?" when the young man speaks his mind.

All of the technical aspects of the film are professional, giving the story more credibility than it deserves from a rather lumbering script. The icing on the cake is the rich musical score by Jerome Moross.

Holds the interest despite the length as it deals with a young man confronting bigotry, Naziism, and his own personal beliefs as he ascends the ladder of success in the Catholic Church.

This one holds up extremely well. It's a real shame it seems to have fallen into public domaine, judging the poor quality tapes around. Some are at SLP and look terrible! In addition, Premminger used the wide screen Panavision lensing to greatly enhance the look, and much of this is lost in watching it pan&scan. There was a Laser Disc release on this one, which included the oveture, intermission, and E'trac music before part two. I originally saw this at the (now gone) Woods Theatre in downtown Chicago first run in 70mm. But I believe they ran it without an intermission. A number of 16mm IB Technicolor prints exist on THE CARDINAL, both in the Scope and masked (letterbox) format to preserve the full picture image. It's a matter of who HAS a print! The only theatrical trailer released was a GREAT 10 minute featurette in IB Technicolor & Scope with many behind the scenes shots of camera set-ups shootingin various locations. And there are several deleted from the final release scenes as well. Romy Schneider is one of my all time favorite actresses. She looks so BEAUTIFUL in this movie! One can only hope and pray that this one day winds up on DVD!! OR... how about someone coming up with the money to restore it for theatres?? I'll do the restoration if you come up with the money.

Based on an early 1950's bestseller, producer/director Otto Preminger's lush religious spectacle pits a Catholic priest from Boston against many of the controversies that dogged the Church during the first half of the 20th century. As the young priest rises in rank to Monsignor, Bishop, and eventually Cardinal, he must tackle abortion, inter-faith marriage, racial discrimination, Nazism, and self-doubts about his own religious calling before the nearly three-hour film reaches the closing credits. Despite its episodic nature, "The Cardinal" is an entertaining film, generally well acted, and filmed by master cinematographer Leon Shamroy against some of the most beautiful landscapes and interiors that Rome and Vienna can offer. The Jerome Moross score enhances the beauty of the visuals and provides an appropriate mood that is haunting and liturgical in tone. While Tom Tryon as the Cardinal, Stephen Fermoyle, does his best, a stronger actor with greater screen presence might have anchored the film and given it greater stability. Tryon at times appears colorless and unconvincing as a man who could rise so quickly and to such heights in the Italian-dominated Church bureaucracy. The film's acting honors instead go expectedly to such veterans as John Huston, Raf Vallone, and Burgess Meredith. Also, the film has dated somewhat as the conflicts depicted between events and Church dogma have been for the most part left in the past, abortion excepted. Perhaps a sequel is in order with Cardinal, or maybe Pope by now, Stephen Fermoyle faced with pedophile priests, gay marriage, and a Church that has lost many of its followers over the decades. But, despite the diminished relevance, "The Cardinal" remains a comforting old fashioned view of the Roman Catholic Church during a period when the mass was said in Latin, the celibacy of a priest was unquestioned, fish was eaten on Fridays, the sacraments were taken seriously, and a poor son of Irish immigrants could rise from Boston curate to Cardinal without showing any more signs of aging than a light dusting of powder on his full head of thick hair.

Otto Preminger's blockbuster film, The Cardinal, is kind of like an ecclesiastical Winds of War with its priest/protagonist seemingly on the scene of a whole lot of history from before World War I until just before the outbreak of World War II. The church of those times is vastly different than the Roman Catholic Church of today.

Tom Tryon plays Stephen Fermoyle whose parents, Cameron Prudhomme and Dorothy Gish as did so many Irish married couples, determined that one of their kids would be a priest. They put aside money for same and the film opens with young Tryon completing his ordination in Rome and coming back to be assigned to the Boston Archdiocese.

Tryon undergoes many crises of faith, both personal and historical. As The Cardinal is history as how the church would write it for itself, a lot of things are passed over and answers we might come up with today would not be what Catholic folks especially would have thought back then.

One thing that did get me, though maybe it was in the novel the film is based on, is the big event for American Catholics in that time period was the 1928 presidential campaign and the nomination of Alfred E. Smith by the Democrats, the first Roman Catholic to be nominated by a major party for president. I could not believe that Preminger made a film about the Catholic church in that period with an American protagonist and didn't mention that at all in the film.

Preminger assembled a truly international cast of players of the second and third tier. Note the absence of any big name box office stars. He also shot the film in various locations around the world, Boston, Rome, Vienna and other places where the odyssey of Tom Tryon takes him.

Fellow director John Huston got an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in his role as Cardinal Glennon of Boston, loosely based on Archbishop of Boston at the time, William O'Connell. Preminger said that Huston was cooperative in every way and Huston said he resisted successfully the impulse to call his own shots on his performance remembering this was not his film.

Carol Lynley playing both Tryon's sister and niece does well in a dual role and Patrick O'Neal and Murray Hamilton play a contrasting duo of Ku Klux Klansmen in Georgia. Romy Schneider is fine as the Austrian woman who loves Tryon and nearly shakes him from his vows of celibacy. Austrian actor Joseph Meinrad is memorable as the only true figure portrayed by name in the film, Cardinal Imnitzer of Vienna who makes a devil's bargain with Hitler and has cause to regret it.

I think viewers will also like a pair of fine Italian players Raf Vallone and Tullio Carminati who play a pair Cardinals, the former the friend and mentor of young Tryon and the latter the Papal Secretary of State based on Cardinal Merry del Val.

My favorite moments in The Cardinal are with Burgess Meredith as the parish priest from a diocese in Northern Maine where Tryon is sent as a curate. He's a simple man of great faith who is dying of multiple sclerosis. He's an old friend of Huston's and their reunion scene on Meredith's death bed is touching and sublime. This may very well have been Meredith's best screen role and he never gets enough credit for it.

Curious also that in this day when there is so much controversy about openly gay actor Chad Allen playing a missionary, it's ironic that closeted gay actor Tom Tryon plays a prince of the church here. Tryon after he left acting and became a successful novelist came relatively out of the closet. Today there would be the same howls of indignation as there were for Chad Allen if The Cardinal were made now.

As this is history as the church would write it itself, The Cardinal misfires in making its main points. But the performances that Otto Preminger gets from his cast are dignified and in some cases very moving. Not a bad film, but definitely falls short of being a great one.