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Pretty Good

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

a remarkable artistic meeting. and picture of a dark page. a war. and a form of victories out of definition. an old delicate subject, not nice for Vatican. and an impressive performance. that is all. at first sigh. but it is not a history lesson, it is not really a show. it is only a memento. and occasion to view two extraordinary actors in skin of special characters. nothing else. but the precise art of Gregory Peck and Christopher Plummer, the presence of John Gielgut are remarkable. the tension, the story, the music are parts of delicate and touching circle of sand and blood. it is not a case but an universal story. because many fathers Hugo are present in different periods, in many places. for me, it remains a precious memory. about resistance against evil. about force of values.

Gregory Peck as Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty and Christopher Plummer as Colonial Kappler, head of the gestapo, play a magnificent cat and mouse game, walking the thin tightrope of Vatican neutrality during the 1943 Nazi occupation of Rome. Peck and Plummer are excellent. The film gets better the longer you watch, which brings me to my major criticism of "The Scarlet and the Black". The film is about 30 minutes too long, noticeably dragging due to redundant scenes of hide and seek. Ennio Morricone's score is another issue, as it is far from memorable. The movie is entertaining and informative, but flawed by it's excessive length of 2.5 plus hours. - MERK

The note says Kappler was visited in prison only by Msgr. O'Flaherty. Not so. After the wife who was shown in the movie divorced him, he married his nurse. She then carried him out of the prison in a suitcase and took him to Germany, which refused extradition. The movie also omits Kappler's major crime (not the execution of the priest): the massacre of 305 people at the Ardeatine caves. This was the worst war crime committed in Italy. Finally, the movie failed to name the top SS general, Karl Wolff, because he was still alive. My U.S. Army division, the 88th Infantry, stopped Wolff from handing out medals in Bolzano to his men AFTER the Krauts had lost the war.

Remember Henry II's oblique wish about his former friend Thomas Becket which got carried out? Christopher Plummer tried more explicit methods to get rid of his meddlesome priest all without success.Although Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, an Irish national attached to the Vatican staff, was providing aid to refugees of all kinds from the Nazis before, this film covers a period between September of 1943 and June 5, 1944 when Mark Clark and the Fifth American Army liberated Rome. Gregory Peck plays the resourceful monsignor who's got a whole bag of tricks from the land of leprechauns to outwit the Nazis. He develops quite a network of people who house escaped prisoners. When Italy threw out Mussolini and switched sides in World War II, a whole lot of Allied prisoners were freed and roaming the countryside. You might remember the novel and film Von Ryan's Express which detailed that phenomenon. The word got out if you could make your way to the Vatican, Monsignor O'Flaherty could help.What I like about The Scarlet and the Black is the fact that Peck's chief antagonist Christopher Plummer is shown as a three dimensional character. We see him as the ruthless Nazi who dogs Peck and his operation every step of the way. We also see him as father and husband who's enjoying Christmas in Rome with his family and also acting like any other tourist taking the family to see the sights of the Eternal City. Peck and Plummer are a pair of well matched antagonists. Presiding over it all is John Gielgud as Pius XII. The criticisms I have of Pius occur before he reached the Papacy in 1939. At the point in time that The Scarlet and Black is taking place, there was very little he or anyone else as Pope could have done. He feared, probably with good reason, an Avignon captivity situation for the Papacy if he appeared to be overtly pro-Ally. And of course the Soviet Union which was his big fear was an Ally.I would recommend watching this film about a good man who happened to be a priest who stepped up to the plate when no one would and fulfilled a great need. A whole lot of lives were saved because of him.