The fisherman's shoes

Another movie that I had sitting on my DVR for quite some time is The Shoes of the Fisherman. In order to try to free up some room on my DVR, I recently finally got around to watching it.

Anthony Quinn plays Kiril Lakota, a political prisoner in Siberia who had been the Bishop of Lvov in Ukraine, which from what I understand from a brief look on Wikipedia is part of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church but in communion with Rome. In any case, there are tensions between Communist China and the Soviet Union, so the Premier of the Soviet Union, Kamenev (Laurence Olivier), decides to free Lakota and send him to Rome in order to curry faith with the West. As for the Chinese, their crops are failing and there's the possibility this could lead to war with the Soviet Union over fertile land in southern Siberia.

When Bishop Lakota gets to the Vatican, he's elevated to Cardinal by the elderly pope (Sir John Gielgud), but there's a lot more going on at the Vatican. There's a younger, charismatic priest named Fr. Telemond (Oskar Werner) who has some views about man's relationship to Christ that the Church thinks are somewhat unorthodox. It's a subplot that's not really relevant to the movie other than the fact that it allows Kiril and Fr. Telemond to become friends and show that Kiril is different from the rest of the Vatican hierarchy.

The other big thing that happens is that the current pope finally dies. This means that all of the Cardinals (at least those who haven't reached the age of 80) are brought to Rome not just to attend the funeral, but more importantly for the election of the new Pope. The Cardinals are brought to a special chamber in the Sistine Chapel which is "sealed", and they hold two ballots a day on who should become the next Pope, until somebody gets two-thirds of the votes. If a vote fails to produce a Pope, the ballots are burned with some wet straw (I think nowadays, they also add a chemical to make the color clearer) which produces black smoke; if the ballot is successful, the ballots are burned alone producing white smoke.

In theory, the Cardinals are supposed to put God first, but since they're humans of course there's going to be politicking going on as they may prefer or dislike some particular prelate. Some don't even want the job. In any case, as you can probably guess, the College of Cardinals makes a shocking decision in selecting Cardinal Lakota, who becomes the first non-Italian Pope in over 400 years. (The movie was made 10 years before Cardina Wojtyla was elected and became John Paul II.) The new pope faces problems both within the Vatican and without, the latter being that crisis between the Soviet Union and China that's bubbling up. Pope Kiril decides to try to be mediator.

The plot lines that deal directly with Kiril are the best, as Anthony Quinn is quite good. Unfortunately, the movie is dragged down by two subplots. One, the Fr. Telemond plot, I've already mentioned; the other involves an American journalist, George Faber (David Janssen) who is sent to Rome to cover the conclave. He's got an estranged wife Ruth who is a doctor, but also has a mistress. Pope Kiril meets Dr. Ruth by chance and, one presumes, helps Ruth figure out how to solve her problem. But the rest of that subplot brings the movie to a screeching halt every time it comes up.

In addition to a fine performance from Quinn, there are also good performances from some of the Cardinals who have been in the Vatican too long (Vittorio De Sica and Leo McKern) and have lost touch with the changing outside world as a result. There's also some nice cinematography and use of documentary/newsreel footage. Unfortunately, the subplots make the movie run really long. A two hour movie tightly focused on Kiril and/or probably would have been quite good; The Shoes of the Fisherman, however, sags under its 162-minute running time.