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Perhaps its my age,or maybe the current times,but I hadn't seen this film since its release in 1963 that runs 175 minutes,and what a shame that has been.To be a catholic,what does that mean?I've felt there are many roads to Heaven,but the road you take,stay on it or you surly will get lost.Growing up as a catholic I was always angry that some picked and choose what to believe.be one or not,it's not like going to supermarket and buying only what you like. Eventually I too left the church.Will this re watching make me go back,only God knows.Otto Preminger put together a film based on a novel by Henry Morton Robinson thats challenging,hard and sometimes painful to watch,but in the end,its true to what being a catholic is all about in the modern world.you might even say it foresaw "liberation theology"but in a different way. Today we have a Pope who is from Argentina,we had one from Germany and Poland since this film was made.Very interesting indeed.Now to the picture itself. Tom Tryon ,in by far his greatest performance plays Stephen Fermoyle,who at the films end does become a Cardinal.We open with him before the ceremony and his reflecting back over the years as he left his education at the Vatican with his teacher played by Ral Vallone,now we know why HE played a Pope in Godfather 3,and the steps he took as a irish catholic priest from boston to the Vatican and the many conflicting tests to his faith that he conquered while winning some,and losing other battles along the way.First he's knocked down a bit by a Bishop who sees some of himself in the priest and wants the young priest to be saved from ambition and false pride,played by John Houston,so he sends him to a broken down local parish run by a good humble priest,played by Burgess Meredith,where he proves himself to be unselfish.
Then family,sister,played by Carol Lynley, in failed relation with a Jew and then a vaudevillian dancer and final death during child birth.
A midlife crisis of life in in the 1920's where on leave as he he's questioning his calling,he falls in love but not with a woman who loves him,Romy Schneider,but back to his own calling.
Then conscience,civil race strife in Georgia in the 1930's with Ossie Davis as a young black priest.
Finally,the movie began at the dawn of WW1 and it comes full circle to the clouds of WW11 gathering on the Horizon.
There are many other fine actors as well,Its a sweeping film that doesn't dodge tough questions but rather lets you focus on what YOU think of your own responsibilities in this life as seen thru the eyes of a man of the cloth who questions and seeks as we do.Trailer URL follows the picture
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