The Cardinal
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Movie Reviews of The Cardinal
Movie Review: THE CARDINAL
Summary: 4 Stars
The DVD arrived on time and was in good shape...I enjoyed the movie and appreciated the early arrival. thanks jackie de Boisblanc
Movie Review: The Epic That Isn't
Summary: 3 Stars
In employing the central character from Henry Morton Robinson's book as a brush for painting a landscape mural of the 20th century, Otto Preminger attempted too much and consequently accomplished too little.
Preminger's Cardinal-in-the-making is a man who has just too much to do for a character in even such a long movie. [...]
In taking us along on the journey to Cardinal Fermoyle's fate, Preminger seemed compelled to demonstrate to us that the 20th century was awash in conflict between traditional values and a budding sexual revolution, that abortion debate was in our future, that Prohibition came and went, that the Western Hemisphere was earning the right to demand central billing on the world stage, that the Nazis were on the march (and, boy, were they a nasty lot).
In the end, Father/Monseigneur/Cardinal Fermoyle feels more like a tour guide than a man of deep faith who learns first to understand, then humanize, then telegraph that faith to others. One just has that feeling of pushing away from the table after a very big meal but still feeling hungry. We get close, so very close, to the feeling that Fermoyle is a truly remarkable man of faith . . . but the fullness of the sensation remains just out of our grasp.
The fault is primarily Preminger's, but just a wee bit of it might rest with Tom Tryon. While he was generally up to the role, I kept thinking about another tall, dark, handsome actor who perhaps could have pulled a bit more substance from the role: Cary Grant. The scene in which Father Fermoyle holds up his collared garb and decides on the spot to forsake his love of a woman and return to the active priesthood was poorly directed and/or edited. The revelation just sort of swooped in from somehwere off camera and went splat on the screen. By not giving the actor much of a moment with which to work, it called forth more power from an actor than Tryon could produce with his too-inexpressive face. Again, think Grant.
Now -- after all this -- I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Landscape murals are not usually high art, but they can be very colorful and are almost always worth at least one viewing. So it was with this movie. It's a good, old-fashioned story, full of heart and color that simply never should have aspired to be an epic. If we can forgive it for not being one, we might even find it worth watching again.
Movie Review: even christopher reeve was a more convincing priest
Summary: 2 Stars
a huge sprawling overblown epic from director otto preminger that attempts too many story lines over too great a span of time. in the hands of a better director than the heavy-handed preminger, this might have worked better, but i doubt it: the source material probably is just as inflated. characters come in to the story and then disappear; you keep waiting for them to show up again, but they never do. and the lead performance by tom tryon (best remembered as texas john slaughter in a load of disney tv work of the late 50s & early 60s, then subsequently as author of a few good books like "the other") is wooden and unimpressive. i must note two strange cameos: bobby morse, fresh off "how to succeed" on broadway as a vaudevillian of sorts, and silent star great dorothy gish as the title characters mother -- neither is particularly memorable, but the casting of both is! coming as it did just before vatican 2 this could have been a far more fascinating artifact than it actually is.