General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Cardinal

The Cardinal is a 1963 American drama film directed and produced by Otto Preminger, adapted by Robert Dozier from Henry Morton Robinson's 1950 best-selling novel of the same name. It follows Stephen Fermoyle, a Boston Irish Catholic priest ordained in 1917, through two decades of personal and institutional crises on his rise to the College of Cardinals.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director / producer	Otto Preminger, for Gamma Productions; released by Columbia Pictures¹^•³
Source	Novel The Cardinal by Henry Morton Robinson (New York, 1950)¹
Runtime / format	175 minutes; Technicolor and Panavision, shot in 35mm and blown up to 70mm for roadshow engagements¹^•⁴
Premiere	World premiere December 11, 1963, at the Saxon in Boston; Boston opening December 12, 1963⁴^•¹
Lead cast	Tom Tryon (Stephen Fermoyle), Romy Schneider (Annemarie), Carol Lynley (Mona), John Huston (Cardinal Glennon), Dorothy Gish (Celia)³
Academy Awards	Six nominations: Director, Supporting Actor (John Huston), Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Film Editing⁵
Music	Jerome Moross²

Spoilers

Plot

The film opens in 1917 as Stephen Fermoyle returns to Boston as a newly ordained priest. His family's open hostility to Mona's plan to marry a Jewish suitor drives her away, and she becomes the partner of a tango dancer. Stephen's arrogance leads Archbishop Glennon to send him to a remote country parish, where the dying Father Halley teaches him his first lesson in humility.⁶

The story then moves through a series of crises. Mona conceives a child out of wedlock, and Stephen faces the decision of whether her life can be saved only by a procedure that would kill the infant. He is tempted away from the priesthood by a woman, Annemarie (Romy Schneider). Later episodes place him against racial bigotry within the Church, in a battle to let a black priest open a church in the South, and in Austria just before World War II, where he tries unsuccessfully to persuade Cardinal Innitzer to oppose the Nazis.³^•²^•⁶ The film concludes with Fermoyle's elevation toward the cardinalate, ending on the eve of a papal election.⁷

Production

Adaptation and opposition. Robinson's 1950 novel was rumored to have been inspired by the career of Francis Joseph Cardinal Spellman, who was vehemently opposed to any film adaptation and had exercised enough pressure to keep Hollywood from adapting the book for years. Preminger first signed Robert Dozier for the screenplay and spent three months working with him; still unsatisfied, he enlisted Gore Vidal and Ring Lardner, Jr. The Screen Writers Guild ruled that the credit had to include both Dozier and Vidal in alphabetical order, at which point Vidal withdrew his name.²

As production neared, Spellman used his influence to scare off clergy approached as technical advisors and to keep the crew from filming in any Boston churches. Preminger turned to Donald Hayne, a former priest who had served as technical advisor on The Ten Commandments (1956), who connected the production with a Connecticut bishop willing to make St. John's Catholic Church in Stamford available. In Europe, Hayne's connections helped win permission for key locations, and the Vatican liaison for the European shoot was Joseph Ratzinger, the young priest who later became Pope Benedict XVI.²

Locations and format. Location scenes were filmed in Boston, Stamford, Connecticut, Rome, Vienna, and Stowe, Vermont, with additional shooting in Lynn, Lowell, and Belmont, Massachusetts, and at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. Much of the European footage was shot in 35mm and blown up to 70mm for the roadshow presentation.¹^•⁸^•² The Cardinal was among five confirmed first-run films released in 1963 with 70mm prints for selected engagements.⁴

Casting. For the leading role Preminger declined an established name and set out to make Tom Tryon a star, an actor best known for playing Texas John Slaughter on Walt Disney's The Wonderful World of Color; Tryon tested better than Robert Redford and Warren Beatty. For Cardinal Glennon, Preminger first tried Orson Welles, who said he did not understand the character, then cast John Huston at his brother Ingo's suggestion. Huston, who had not done significant acting since the 1920s, agreed in return for two paintings by the Irish artist Jack Yeats, and his performance drew good reviews even from critics who panned the picture.²

Preminger's treatment of Tryon was harsh. On the first day of shooting at the Stamford church, after veteran Cecil Kellaway kept blowing his lines, Preminger fired Tryon in front of cast, crew, and his visiting family, then called him back to finish the shot. Huston advised gentler handling; the director's version was to scream "Relax!" behind the actor before a scene. This treatment, continued on In Harm's Way (1965), was one factor in Tryon's later abandonment of acting for writing.²

Reception and awards

Despite Spellman's efforts, the film was warmly received by church authorities: Cardinal Cushing praised it publicly and the Vatican honored Preminger with the Grand Cross of Merit. Secular reviews were mixed. The New York Post called it "pictorially exquisite, intelligently cast, and painstakingly, if not thrillingly directed," while Judith Crist of the New York Herald Tribune dubbed it "a mélange of meandering melodrama, mouthed pieties, and pretentious irrelevance." The film performed well at the box office.²

At the Academy Awards for 1963 the film received six nominations: Best Director (Preminger), Best Supporting Actor (Huston), Color Cinematography (Leon Shamroy), Color Art Direction and Set Decoration (Lyle Wheeler and Gene Callahan), Color Costume Design (Donald Brooks), and Film Editing (Louis R. Loeffler).⁵ It won Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture, Drama, and for Huston as Supporting Actor.²

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a Tomatometer score of 47 percent from 15 critics, with an average of rated reviews of 5.30/10, and a verified-audience Popcornmeter score of 66 percent from more than 500 ratings.³ Later critics have rated the film more favorably on the strength of Preminger's objective camera work, his subtle treatment of the lead character's emerging spirituality, and his handling of controversial issues.²

Themes and style

The film questions church positions on interfaith marriage and the sanctity of life, and at times presents the Church as a hide-bound institution in need of reform; a contemporary review in Christianity Today listed its subjects as integration in the South, mixed religious marriage, and the ethic that allows a mother to die to save an unborn child.²^•⁹ TCM's Frank Miller places the film in Preminger's later independent period, alongside Exodus (1960) and Advise and Consent (1962), marked by name-studded casts, extensive location shooting, and an almost objective use of the camera that leaves viewers to assemble the story themselves.²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1960s › Released 1960 to 1965

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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