This was supposed to be actor Tom Tryon's breakout role, but the movie bombed at the time, and while Tryon went on to make a few more films, he ultimately left acting and became quite a successful writer. Based on a bestselling book of the time, the Cardinal is less about the titular character, but rather about the nature of the Catholic Church, particularly as it presented itself to the world in the first half of the twentieth century. This was the high noon of imperial Catholicism, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, outside of which there was no salvation. Once exposed to it, you'll die a Catholic, even if you never step foot inside a church again after you grow up. That's really what the movie is about, and the life of the fictional cardinal of the title -- supposedly based on Cardinal Spellman, late archbishop of New York, whose reputation has not fared well since his death -- is merely the vehicle to display this. Despite the cosmetic changes since Vatican II, and the civil war that's currently going on within the Church, what Otto Preminger presented here is actually a good, if somewhat romanticised, picture of the true nature of Catholicism. If you watch with that in mind, you'll get more out of the movie than if you watch just to see a film. It's long, and maybe seven stars is generous, but it's a movie that perhaps deserved to do better at the box office than it did.
Review of The Cardinal
