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OTTO’S CARDINAL SINS Otto Preminger’s The Cardinal and Fred Zinnemann’s The Nun’s Story are His & Hers companion pieces: Catholicism the central theme and target, with both respectfully handling their criticisms; both episodic, with travelogue-like transitions between periods; both have “guest star” performers who know what to do with Catholic lingo. There are, to be sure, some differences and the most crucial is the central star: Audrey Hepburn has been lovingly nurtured by Zinnemann in the latter, and you can see how it blooms in just about every detail of her performance, whereas Tom Tryon as The Cardinal has been browbeaten by Preminger—he’s humiliated into submission, into what some of the nuns wanted to make of Sister Luke. The director’s tirades against Tryon are not only well-documented, we also see the affects in just about every detail of his performance. Tormenting to watch him in some scenes—particularly the Doubting Thomas moments with John Huston—and come very close to feeling his real agony; his pocky face could be stigmata. Ridged from apprehension, but his sinewy tallness giving the cassocks and waistbands and hats dignity, he’s deserving of sympathy for being at least functional as moral guide to get through the episodic calamities and is surprisingly effective in the cautionary and concluding summation about recurrence of fascism. (Calling Preminger a tyrant didn’t prevent Tryon from working with him again in 1965’s In Harm’s Way; a Yale graduate, he left Hollywood soon after and became a highly successful novelist.) Two east coast critics of influence at the time of the movie’s 1963 release weren’t exactly honest in their humorous floggings. In his essay “The Preminger Problem,” Dwight Macdonald derided it as “a Guntheresque tour Inside Catholicism,” and Stanley Kauffmann, in his essay “The Preminger Paradox,” railed it was “a polychrome heartstring-tugger, nothing else.” The two zingers are thumbnails, yet their pieces seemed perturbed over the blowhard director’s failure in not revealing the dirt on Catholicism and its inner workings. Whether they deigned to read or skimmed or skipped the Henry Morton Robinson novel, they certainly don’t mention it much in their lengthy copy, in fact, the pieces are crowded with opinions of others and the director’s filmography, being oblivious that Preminger is implicit rather than overt in his targets. Robinson didn’t write a covert attack on the Church; between concentrations on theology, he provided coups d’oeil of how the Vatican hierarchy administratively dealt with and in ways morally failed on the issues of racism and fascism during the 1920s and 30s. Maybe not surprising, Macdonald and Kaufmann couldn’t move beyond the widescreen trappings to notice The Cardinal is cunning enough for agnostic audiences to deduce what the director was striving for—a period epic on the wars of inner-Church conflicts caused by expensively robed celibates who, with presumed carnal-free experience in matters of sex, nevertheless dictate proscriptive canon on it, on mixed marriage, on militaristic governing spreading through Europe, and, still controversial, therapeutic abortion. (As in the book, Tryon is allowed to briefly express personal misgivings about his Church’s position of whose life must be saved.) Absolutely not the impression the Vatican wanted, as it helped finance the movie and for which it gave Preminger a medal, yet inevitable for viewers who see the self-exposure in all the ecclesiastical chat and reverence, supplied less by the credited writer Robert Dozier and more by uncredited Gore Vidal and Ring Lardner, Jr., both atheists. Some of us believe The Cardinal will be one day accepted as Preminger’s subversive scold on Catholicism’s infantilism; though the movie sort of sanctifies the prince as a possible future saint, having been remolded as a genteel fantasy of New York’s Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman, who in real life was a supporter of fascists Joseph McCarthy and Spain’s Franco, and went to considerable length to dissuade Hollywood from making the movie, avoiding the patency it was about him. (We’re relieved the two instances toward the end of the novel in which author Robinson speculates his cardinal could be the first American pope never materialized.) Introduced as Cardinal Glennon at the ivories attempting Bach’s “Chromatic Fantasy,” Huston is authoritative and congenial; he has to enforce the obligatory Catholic tests of humility and pride-busting—in self-recognition he says to Tryon, “Ambition is a disease in any man, in a priest it can be fatal; we should begin your treatment at once.” Didn’t stop him from becoming highly indignant when balloting for a new pope went on without him. Love interest for the conflicted Tryon, Romy Schneider emits a Viennese spell of resignation as martyr when unsuccessful in bedding him and marries a man who jumps out of a window to escape the Nazis. Carol Lynley redeems herself after what she pulled in Return to Peyton Place, and at her career best in a confessional. Providing solid support are John Saxon, Burgess Meredith, Jill Hayworth, Raf Vallone, Tullio Carminati. With Dorothy Gish in her last role, Maggie McNamara (looking like Sandy Duncan, several steps down after looking like Jean Simmons in Three Coins in the Fountain), Bill Hayes, Cecil Kellaway, Chill Wills, Patrick O’Neal, Murray Hamilton and, uncredited, David Opatoshu. In lieu of salary, Huston, whose scenes were written by Lardner, received two Jack Yeats paintings. At IMDb, there’s mention of Pope Benedict, as a young man, acting as the Vatican’s liaison during the production; you can’t help thinking about him as the kind of Nazi ass kisser Josef Meinrad’s Cardinal Innitzer plays. Originally given very limited, short-run reserved seat treatment, running at 175 minutes, but the continuous performances/popular prices run a big hit aided by Spellman’s self-serving call for a boycott. YouTube offers a very satisfactory roadshow print. Filmed in Panavision, with 70mm blowup. (Opened 1/03/1964 at the Woods, running 12 weeks.) Oscar nominations for best director, supporting actor (Huston), color cinematography (Leon Shamroy, who won that year for Cleopatra), color art direction, film editing, color costumes (Donald Brooks). ROLL OVER IMAGES / POSTERS (at left)OLL OVER IMAGES
Text COPYRIGHT © 2001 RALPH BENNER (Revised 8/2026) All Rights Reserved.
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