Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1963

The Contenders:

Federico Fellini: 8 ½
Elia Kazan: America, America
Otto Preminger: The Cardinal
Martin Ritt: Hud
Tony Richardson: Tom Jones (winner)

Higher Calling

Film: The Cardinal
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

I can’t say I was fully down with watching The Cardinal. Religious epics often leave me cold in the first place, and a three-hour long film of what promises to be an apologetic for the Catholic Church appeals to me not at all. But, a film list is a film list, and when this shows up on the top of the queue, it’s time to give it a watch. This is, more or less, that three-hour apologetic that I was dreading, but there are some really great moments here, or at least some interesting ones.

As the film starts, Bishop Stephen Fermoyle (Tom Tryon), a good Irish-Catholic boy from Boston, is being made a cardinal, hence the name of the film. We get a few returns to this moment through the film and we end here, but the bulk of the film is told in flashback as Fermoyle recalls the events that took him from seminary student to parish priest to a high position in Holy Mother Church.