Film: The Scarlet and the Black

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I just watched The Scarlet & the Black from Netflix & it is quite good. It’s about an Irish monsignor, Hugh O’Flahrety (Gregory Peck) who served in the Holy Office during the Nazi occupation of Rome and set up a network to hide escaped allied POWs, Jews and others in danger from the Gestapo.

Pope Pius XII (Sir John Gielgud) is treated fairly, fully aware of the monsignor’s activities (duh! RAF airmen and Jews are hiding in his cellar) but cautioning him that he can’t protect him outside the Vatican.

Usualy “based on a true story” films have only a nodding acquaintance with reality but according to this site about Msgr. O’Flahrety the movie was quite accurate.

Btw, O’Flahrety’s nemesis, SS Colonel Kappler is played by Christopher Plummer of Sound of Music fame.
 
gmarie21 said:
I also like this film.
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I Googled Colonel Kappler & found that he was portrayed by Richard Burton in another film, Massacre in Rome – also very good, I saw it years ago. Oddly, The Scarlet & the Black makes no mention of the massacre though it happened in the same time frame. Kappler was responsible for the death of 335 Roman hostages in response the killing of 33 German troops by Italian partisans.

Kappler converted to Catholicicsm while in prison and was baptised by O’Flaherty in 1959. In 1977 he escaped from prison in Italy and died in Germany a year later.
 
didymus said:
Btw, O’Flahrety’s nemesis, SS Colonel Kappler is played by Christopher Plummer of Sound of Music fame.
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Yes, very ironic since he is primarily known for his von Trapp character who was thwarting Nazis in The Sound of Music.

Also the RatB’s score is by Ennio Morricone of Good, the Bad, the Ugly fame. You know, *aa ee aa ee aa–wah wah wah 😃 *
 
I saw this movie in my religion class back in high school. I remember it also showed how the church tried to help the Jews by giving them all the necessary gold to pay the Nazis to keep them away. I odn’t know if that is a true thing that really happened or not though.
 
wjp984 said:
I saw this movie in my religion class back in high school. I remember it also showed how the church tried to help the Jews by giving them all the necessary gold to pay the Nazis to keep them away. I odn’t know if that is a true thing that really happened or not though.
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Yes, it really happened. See this article, about three pages down – I can’t copy & paste because it’s .pdf.
 
We just bought the movie this past November. I still haven’t been able to sit down with DH for the whole thing, but I really liked this movie when I saw it the first time. Plus, Gregory Peck is an amazing actor :).
 
I own the movie, and it is definitely a great film and an amazing story! :yup:
 
wjp984 said:
I saw this movie in my religion class back in high school. I remember it also showed how the church tried to help the Jews by giving them all the necessary gold to pay the Nazis to keep them away. I odn’t know if that is a true thing that really happened or not though.
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After the war, the Chief Rabbi of Rome converted to Catholicism because of all the help and kindness given by the Church to the Roman Jews.
 
didymus said:
Pope Pius XII (Sir John Gielgud) is treated fairly, fully aware of the monsignor’s activities (duh! RAF airmen and Jews are hiding in his cellar) but cautioning him that he can’t protect him outside the Vatican.
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I haven’t seen the movie in years, but my memory is that Pius is depicted as being somewhat ambivalent about the Monsignor’s activities in helping the Jews and Allied airmen who were trapped in Rome. In actuality the Pope himself was the driving force behind those efforts, but you wouldn’t know that from the film.

I recently read the book “The Pope’s Jews” by Gordon Thomas, which I highly recommend. It’s a recent book, just came out in 2012 I believe, and it is the fruit of years of original research; as such it has many details that were not available to earlier writers on this subject. It is clear from this book how passionately Pius was concerned about the plight of all the unfortunates during the war, and how much he did to help them.
 
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