The Scarlet and the Black (1983)

 

                    “The Scarlet and the Black” is the true story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty and his cat-and-mouse relationship with Nazi Colonel Herbert Kappler.  It was made-for-TV as a special event on CBS.  It was directed by Jerry London (The Eagle Has Landed, Cross of Iron).  It received an Emmy nomination for Film Editing.  The production filmed on location in Rome.  CBS distributed 500,000 copies of the script to schools for educational enhancement.

                    The movie opens in Rome in 1943.  The German army has recently occupied the city and the head of the SS visits Pope Pius XII (John Gielgud in his third pope role).  He informs the Pope that the Vatican’s neutrality will be respected.  But it will not be allowed to harbor Jews and escaped prisoners of war.  A white line has been painted around Vatican City to emphasize this.  Col. Kappler (Christopher Plummer) is in charge of enforcing that line.  He has a beautiful Aryan family that bely his Nazi fanaticism.  His foe will be a feisty Irish Monsignor O’Flaherty (Gregory Peck) who is already in the POW-sheltering business.  O’Flaherty is cunning and has a way with disguises.  He is a worthy adversary and usually gets the best of Kappler, although the German is successful in deporting Jews and catching some of the POWs.  Despite this, he develops a fixation with ending O’Flaherty’s activities.  He even tries to assassinate the priest.  Although the Pope refuses to give up O’Flaherty, he also will not help or even condone his efforts.  He allows O’Flaherty to follow his conscience, but the movie makes it clear that the Pope wants him to desist.  Pius XII is depicted as choosing the practical over the spiritual.  He doesn’t let his conscience provoke the Nazis into occupying the Vatican.  He wonders how history will judge him.  It’s clear how history will judge Kappler as he commits several acts that make him a war criminal.  He and O’Flaherty are on opposite sides of the moral spectrum. 

                    I saw “The Scarlet and the Black” when it premiered in 1983.  It was a prestige TV movie that lived up to expectations.  Peck and Plummer are excellent and their final confrontation is worth the wait.  Peck, in particular, seemed to be having a lot of fun throughout.  He even gets to beat up a couple of hit men.  (Or his stunt double does.)  He brings charm to the role as his O’Flaherty is a worldly Irishman.  Plummer’s Kappler is more stereotypical.  You’ve seen his suave Nazi in many films.  He has that Nazi hubris.  At one point he points to Rome from the balcony of his lavish apartment and proclaims “Rome is mine”.  The juxtaposition of his family scenes with his shooting a priest, among other vile acts, makes him a fascinating villain.  At least he’s not Himmler, who makes a cameo in a reaming scene. Kappler is not surprisingly motivated by this “speech”.   This makes an interesting contrast to the gentle prodding by the Pope which O’Flaherty chooses to ignore.   The cat-and-mouse theme is well-played.  O’Flaherty’s use of disguises and tricks is reminiscent of the Scarlet Pimpernel.  There is some effective suspense and O’Flaherty’s schemes are not always successful.  The movie has a resistance movie feel to it as members of O’Flaherty’s gang get captured and tortured.  This mixture of subgenres gives the movie a dynamic flow as good and evil battle. 

                    “The Scarlet and the Black” has been largely forgotten since the big splash it made in 1983.  It deserves renewed interest.  The movie is available on Amazon Prime and it is very good entertainment.  It is a history lesson that brings to life two fascinating historical figures and they are played by two of the giants of cinema.  The screenplay takes acceptable liberties with history.  (See below)  In some ways it reminds of “Schindler’s List” with O’Flaherty/Kappler bearing some semblance to Schindler/Goth.  Obviously, “The Scarlet and the Black” reflects it’s made-for-TV, school-friendly approach. There’s nothing graphic. It is more of a resistance film than a Holocaust movie and there is never any doubt that good will prevail.  But in the bleak world of Holocaust and resistance films, it is nice to sometimes see a movie where the hero makes a fool out of the villain and not have to cringe at debasements of humanity in the process. 

GRADE  =  B+

HISTORICAL ACCURACY:  How accurate is it?  There are moments that seem far-fetched.  Did O’Flaherty disguise himself as a Nazi officer to give absolution to a condemned priest?  O’Flaherty was born in Ireland and was ordained a priest in Rome in 1925.  He remained there as part of the Vatican staff.  His efforts to help Italian Jews began in 1942.  He established a network of like-minded Christians to save Jews from being deported.  There were safe houses in Rome and places in the Vatican that were used.  He has been referred to as the Italian Schindler because of his activities in the Holocaust.  In 1943, after Mussolini was overthrown, the new Italian government released all Allied prisoners in the camps.  Not long after, the Germans occupied the country and instituted a policy of recapturing the prisoners.  They also cracked down on Jews since Mussolini had been passive in deportations.  Herbert Kappler, as head of the Nazi police forces in Rome, was in charge of these policies.  He was very efficient and shipped many Jews to camps like Auschwitz.  Kappler was a hard-core Nazi who had joined the SS in 1933.  When he realized that O’Flaherty was using the neutrality of the Vatican to shield prisoners and Jews, he had the white line painted.  Later, it served as a line that O’Flaherty could cross only with risk to his being executed if captured.  The relationship between Kappler and O’Flaherty has been enhanced for your viewing pleasure, but the movie gets the basics of their competition.  O’Flaherty did frustrate Kappler continuously and Kappler did try to assassinate him at least twice.  The Monsignor did use disguises to go into Rome and he did have some close calls.  The movie depicts the one where he was almost caught in a raid, but blackened his face with coal dust and left with a coal truck.  When Rome was liberated in 1944, over 6,000 refugees were now safe.  I found no evidence that he was responsible for the saving of Kappler’s family.  Kappler was put on trial by an Italian military tribunal after the war.  He was sentenced to life imprisonment, mainly for ordering the Ardeatine Massacre in 1944.  His troops executed 335 civilians in reprisal for the deaths of 33 Nazi police by Italian partisans.  His wife divorced him when he was in prison.  His only visitor for the rest of his sentence was O’Flaherty, who came periodically.  Kappler converted to Catholicism. He remarried and in 1976, suffering from terminal cancer, his wife smuggled him out of prison in a suitcase (he weighed only 105 pounds)!  He died in West Germany six months later.

                    As far as the portrayal of Pius XII, the movie was well ahead of its time in questioning his role in the Holocaust.  The movie has him stuck between a rock (O’Flaherty) and a hard place (Kappler) and trying to maintain the neutrality of the Church.  Gielgud was the perfect choice to play a man who was pompous, but conflicted.  At first, he lets O’Flaherty follow his conscience and looks the other way. However, under Nazi threats, he later tells O’Flaherty that his conscience is not practical.  It is implied that the pontiff is upset that this advice does not stop the Monsignor’s activities.  At one point, the Pope questions whether he is wrong for not more forcefully condemning the Nazis for the Final Solution.  The movie was one of the first times cinema answered yes to that.  From today’s perspective, the movie looks prescient, given recent scholarship that has not been kind to Pius.  The relationship between O’Flaherty and his boss is a microcosm of the Vatican’s policy.  Pius is concerned that endorsing O’Flaherty’s good versus evil view would result in the occupation of the Vatican and in the end aid evil.  It was a conundrum which he perhaps handled with too much emphasis on what could happen as opposed to what was happening.  As far as I can tell, the Catholic Church did not object to his portrayal, which is an indication that the Church regrets its handling of the Holocaust.