IDSG Bonus 41 The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968)
Daniel and I continue our new theme (movies about Popes) with an unexpected consideration of 1968's MGM release The Shoes of the Fisherman, a now largely forgotten and self-consciously prestigious Cold War / Papacy drama. Anthony Quinn plays a saintly Russian dissident who stumbles bass-ackwards onto the Papal throne and has to try to cooperate with the premier of the USSR (Laurence Olivier) and the new Chinese dictator (Bert Kwouk) to avert a very vague threat of a nuclear war... in one of the most eccentric depictions of both the Vatican and geopolitics we've ever seen. A very mixed 'odd duck' of a film (a curate's egg, even) but a fun discussion.
Comments (1)
Love it. . .I was brought up Catholic, so I'm a sucker for this stuff too. And although I was not brought up on Doctor Who, Oskar Werner, Leo McKern, and any of the first four or five Doctors locked in a room and in debate sounds like the greatest Who episode that never was. FYI: The Young Pope was an Italian co-production with HBO, and offers an extremely Italian, avant-garde, low-key surrealist point of view of the church, and of the papacy. (Of course it's also a showcase for some Anglo-American actors like Jude Law and Diane Keaton.). I liked it, but it's the very definition of: A LOT.