Le Cardinal

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.

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.

The Cardinal tracks the life of a young priest through an upwardly-mobile career to the point just prior to his being elevated to Cardinal. The historical time frame falls between the beginning of WWI and the beginning of WWII, and this volatile time in our country's history is reflected by the career of Father (later Monsignor, then Bishop) Fermoyle. Fr. Fermoyle encounters many people who touch his life and have an impact on his career which shakes his faith, and even threatens to end it at one point. You don't have to be Catholic to enjoy this film, but it would certainly help!

The location scenes in Rome, Vienna and Boston give this film a feel which helps the viewer really get involved in the plot. The moral values truly reflect the era depicted; I only wish that a return to those values were possible today.

If you like a good, dramatic story that develops characters you really get to know and care about, please see this film!

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.

I have seen his film so many times and with very few exceptions have come to the conclusion that it is one of the most rewarding films I have ever enjoyed. The photography and art direction are beautiful but the music is stunning and available on a recent CD release. I truly feel it has been very much forgotten and am delighted that it is available in letterbox format for all to enjoy.