The Shoes Of The Fisherman - 1968 - DVD9 - Letterbox - Anthony Q

REGION 1 DVD (U.S.A./Canada) NTSC



DUAL LAYER DVD9 NRG (USING NERO 7) Full and complete with menus, languages, and special features...and EXACT duplicate of the retail DVD!



If it's worth doing at all, it's worth doing right! When you have the full retail DVD, post the image, so all can enjoy to the fullest!



-------------------------------------------------------------------------Synopsis: (Warning: Spoiler alert!)



Set during the Cold War, The Shoes of the Fisherman opens as protagonist Kiril Pavlovich Lakota, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Lviv, is unexpectedly set free after twenty years in a Siberian labor camp. He is sent to Rome, where the elderly fictional Pope Pius XIII raises him to the cardinalate in the title of St. Athanasius. (The novel has him as a bearded Ukrainian, but the movie has him as Russian.)



When the Pontiff dies, Lakota finds himself elected Pope when the Cardinals cannot decide between the leading candidates. But as Pope Kiril I (using his baptismal name), he is plagued by self-doubt, by his years in prison, and by a Western world he knows little about.



The world is in a state of crisis: a famine in China is exacerbated by U.S. restrictions on Chinese trade and the ongoing Chinese-Soviet feud. Can he find a solution before it is too late?



Morris West's protagonist Lakota is inspired by the life of Ukrainian Catholic Cardinal Josyf Slipyj. Coincidentally, Slipyj was released by Nikita Khrushchev's administration from a Siberian Gulag in 1963, the year of the novel's publication, after political pressure from Pope John XXIII and United States President John F. Kennedy. He arrived in Rome in time to participate in the Second Vatican Council. In another coincidence, John XXIII died on 3 June 1963, the day the novel was published.[1]



A major secondary plot in the novel and the film is the Pope's relationship with a theologian and scientist, Father Telemond (Jean Telemond in the book, David Telemond in the film), who is clearly based on the controversial French Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Pope becomes a close personal friend of Telemond. To his deep regret, in his official capacity, he must allow the Holy Office to censure Telemond for his heterodox views. To the Pope's deep grief, the shock of the censure combined with his chronic medical problems kills Father Telemond.



He realizes, however, that if the troubles in China continue, the cost would be a war that could ultimately rip the world apart. Knowing this he must seek to convince the Western World as well as the Catholic Church to open up its resources to aid. He states in the movie he is willing to do this even if it means bankrupting the Catholic Church itself.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------This was a rather hard to find movie, so I located a DVD and ripped it myself, because I beleive that this is a movie which could not be made today, either in budgetary terms, or in the quality of the lead actors.



Anthony Quinn, Sir Laurence Olivier and those of this calibre deserve to be preserved; and this story deserves to stay in the collective body of work in which a film actually inspires and entertains with a compelling message.



Imagine a world where out political and religeous leadership worked together for the benefit of helping people, to make the world a better place...This is a movie that says it is possible.



Please seed this, and help spread the message that love can overcome the darkness in this world...even if you aren't religeous.



If you have watched this movie, I encourage you to post your opinions on it's message, and feel free to comment on the sound and visual quality.