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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Complete surprise,
This review is from: Fugitive [VHS] (VHS Tape)
I happened to catch this movie on TNT one afternoon, and had tuned in expecting the Harrison Ford/Tommy Lee Jones late 1990s version. What was shown, however, was, in the words of several famous philosophers ;-), "something completely different." I was touched by this movie very deeply. For anyone knowledgeable about the Catholic Church, labelling Fonda a "revolutionary" priest in this movie doesn't quite get at the heart of the matter. Mexico, early in the 20th century, was deeply anti-clerical and literally hunted down and persecuted Christians, and especially Catholics. Their nation had been plagued by foreign intervention and somehow the church got caught up in it. I'm not exactly sure why things got to the point where the church--and individual priests--were labelled so negatively, but there were real-life priest-martyrs whose stories are even more compelling than the screen version, one of whom was Fr. Miguel Pro, caught and executed around 1929. I've read the account of his life and work--and he sounded nothing like a "revolutionary," unless one defines this as someone bucking the government's "secularism." I've seen a photo of him just before he was shot by a firing squad, and the account of his life is even more harrowing than that of the movie priest. Still, for a movie like this to have been made 50 years ago illustrates how radically our own society has changed. Sure, the church is flawed...but the degree to which Hollywood has shifted its emphasis in the last half-century is very troubling to me. I can't imagine a movie like this being filmed now. I'm really glad I came across this flick, because it was inspiring...and Fonda did a fine job of portraying the humanity of priests, and also the grace by which they often live their lives through trying periods in history.
In another movie that came out in the 1940s, "Song of Bernadette," there's a line in that movie that seems true when one watches "The Fugitive:" "For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible." To me, this movie was akin to finding a diamond in the rough. What a fine, inspiring movie this was.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best of Cinema and Literature,
By "jrbednorz" (Riverside, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Fugitive [VHS] (VHS Tape)
"The Fugitive" is probably one of those classics of American film-making that has been forgotten by contemporary film devotees. Perhaps its history has been repeated with "The Quiet American" (2002), which has generated lackluster enthusiasm from an audience still recoiling from the shock of 9/11.I first saw the film, featuring Henry Fonda, when I was about 8 years old in 1955. It was airing on afternoon television, and even then, the film quality had degraded, with grainy splotches and that crackling hiss so characteristic of old celluloid. But given my sensibilities and the pre-pubescent level of my emotional growth, I profoundly remember that the film's ending caused me to cry. Thirty years later, I happened to purchase Graham Greene's book ("The Power and the Glory") at a local bookstore. I remember that it was a brisk, windy, cold mid-Atlantic day, and that I wanted to curl up with a book on a Sunday afternoon. The book is about 150 pages, but Greene's superb skills as a storyteller propels the reader through to the finish, and having started the book at about 1 PM, I discovered myself finishing it before sundown. Again, the book -- as basis for the movie -- caused me to shed a tear. This is something I do not often do -- under any number of more dire human circumstances. Sometime later, I was thinking about the book, and noted to myself how strange it was that there was something similar between Greene's book, John Ford's movie, and another book and movie that had a similar cathartic effect -- Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim", which had featured Peter O'Toole in its cinematic incarnation. I turned to my encyclopedia to find out more about Graham Greene. It seems that he had studied Conrad intensively, and that Conrad had been his favorite author. I cannot imagine a better casting for the movie's "whiskey priest" than Henry Fonda, who will always be remembered for his role in "Grapes of Wrath". These things -- the movies and the books -- are among those rare pleasures we find in human life that we always want to share with others.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Very pretty but confusing,
By
This review is from: Fugitive [VHS] (VHS Tape)
As noted by other reviewers, this 1947 Henry Fonda film is about a priest in an anonymous Latin American country "100 miles either north or south of the equator," who is trying to avoid detection by Socialist/Communist authorities who have outlawed religion. They have apparently also outlawed every alcoholic beverage other than beer, making even a surreptitious communion difficult.
This is a starkly symbolic story that makes the priest into a Christ figure, and it is lovely to watch. Director John Ford teamed with famed Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa for this American/Mexican production, and the results are visually stunning. And Ward Bond, as a fleeing bank robber, manages perhaps the most believable death scene ever performed in this era of film. The narrative, however, is harder to swallow. The dialogue is minimal, probably at least partly because it was intended for an international audience. It's hard to believe that the priest is always instantly recognized by the people on the streets but never by the authorities until the end of the film, even when they have him in custody more than once and have a photograph of him. And the film's final scene, following the climax, did nothing but confuse me. Ultimately I had to search the internet just to find explanations of what the film was all about! Of course, that could be partly because it's so slow that I fell asleep at one point. (Why did filmmakers used to think that films about faith had to move at the regal pace of a papal processional?) Despite its obvious flaws, it is an uplifting story and is worth seeing once, at least. Clearly this is one that will appeal greatly to those who especially appreciate the visual artistry that is lovingly and painstakingly presented here; those who look for a cohesive story may be disappointed as I was.
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