Have you ever thought James Bond would be better if he were a celibate priest? Then today is your lucky day. Actually, your lucky day came in 1983—but if you haven’t yet seen The Scarlet and the Black, it’s better late than never. The film follows the mission of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, who’s living in Vatican City during the Nazi occupation of Rome. With an Irish wit, elaborate disguises, and a network of connections, he dodges the Germans to hide more than 4,000 Allied soldiers and Jews throughout the city. The best part about this leading man? He was real, and so were his successes.
O’Flaherty (Gregory Peck) is a Church diplomat and active socialite with a problem of conscience on his hands. Thousands of escaped Allied soldiers are fleeing to Rome, hoping to be sheltered by Vatican City, which has remained a neutral oasis in the war. If O’Flaherty is caught aiding the Allies, that neutrality will be called into question—with potentially disastrous effects for the Church’s safety.
At the same time, the Monsignor can’t ignore the many people in need. Even the Nazis know this to be his responsibility. Colonel Kepplar (Christopher Plummer), attempting to understand him, asks, “They say that you can’t pass a beggar or a lame dog, but that you see yourself with some obligation to look after anyone in trouble. It’s a part of your faith. Is that right?”
He responds, of course, that it is. At the same time, the movie addresses O’Flaherty’s struggles to rise to his call. In the Confessional, he tells a brother priest, “So many are depending on me. Or is that the sin of pride? What should I do?” Just a scene earlier, even Pope Pius XII had been shocked to learn how many people O’Flaherty was hiding. He, too, was struck by the enormity of the problem, and breathed the same words—“So many.”
This portrayal of O’Flaherty and the Pope rings true: faithful men who were stunned by the weight of others’ suffering, and by their own responsibilities. The strength of the film, however, is its ability to portray both interior conflict and heroic virtue; the two are by no means mutually exclusive. Just like anyone else, the Monsignor is sometimes terrified and sometimes cool-headed. What surprises us about him is that, no matter how he feels, he acts.
But the clerics are not the only ones wrestling with issues of duty and conscience. There’s also the surprisingly complex Colonel Kepplar; his character takes The Scarlet and the Black a leap above many historical movies, who prefer their Nazis one-dimensional. Kepplar is an officer with a long rap sheet of crimes against innocent people—in the film, he oversees the raids on Rome’s ghettos. As he continually goes head-to-head with O’Flaherty, however, his interior struggles begin to emerge. In one tense scene, his young son sneaks up on him and puts a toy gun to his head, intending only to play with his usually gentle father. Kepplar reacts by violently grabbing him and yelling rebukes, horrifying his family.
Kepplar invokes a sense of duty to justify his actions, just as O’Flaherty and the Pope do throughout the film. In a Colosseum showdown with the Monsignor (arguably the best scene in the movie) he says, “You crawl to your Pope and obey his orders, just as I obey mine.” O’Flaherty, incensed, replies, “You compare obedience with Hitler with the faith a priest owes his Church? You think that’s the same?” He is too angry to argue further. The Monsignor, like most of us, is not a perfect apologist; in the face of incredible evil and misunderstanding, he is at a loss for words. But as I said before, he is rarely at a loss for actions, where we see charity at its grittiest.
In short, the film is a case study in difficult decisions. The power of its narrative lies in the constant awareness that O’Flaherty was as real as the dust on your shoes. And if you don’t think you’re ready for a “downer” war movie, there’s no need to be worried—the Monsignor has enough wit to keep you smiling between the tough moments. The film has cool-headed, spy-movie stealth (without the philandering) and that distinctive Vatican intrigue (without the conspiracy theories). Additionally, at least for now, it’s free on Amazon Prime.
You might enjoy The Scarlet and the Black all the more these days, when most of us are cooped up. O’Flaherty himself was constantly aware of his restricted movement—a white line drawn around the Vatican perimeter was a striking visual reminder of his apparent limitations. A viewer today might take heart in seeing how much good the Monsignor did while living under threat of danger; it took a lot of creativity and more than one interesting disguise, but he was determined to reach those in need. As he announced when learning of a friend’s imprisonment, “I’m going to hear his Confession and give him Absolution. Nothing on God’s earth will stop me.”
And while I don’t encourage you to break quarantine rules, I’m certain that for the creative Catholic, there are always more than enough opportunities for charity. In fact, that sort of creativity— as O’Flaherty learns—is not just a nice idea, but a central duty.
The Scarlet and the Black can be streamed with Amazon Prime
- Whatever You May Do - May 7, 2020
- Stashed Classics: The Scarlet and the Black - May 7, 2020
- Pilgrim’s Progress: Virtual Mass - April 1, 2020