The Shoes of the Fisherman

Annotation for KRRR! 2013 by Barbora Poláčková

The adaptation of the Australian bestseller was filmed in 1968, and tells the story set twenty years in the future. After twenty years in a Siberian labor camp, Archbishop Kiril Pavlovich Lakota of Lviv is released by the Premier of the Soviet Union, Pyotr Ilyich Kamenev. Immediately after his release, Lakota is summoned to Rome, where the Pope elevates him to the rank of cardinal. However, the Pope soon dies and, to the surprise of the whole world, Kirill is chosen as his successor. The new Pope is put in a difficult situation when, as the first Eastern Bloc Pope, he tries to prevent a conflict between the Soviet Union and China during the ongoing Cold War.

Although the star-studded film was a financial flop at the time, it earned a Golden Globe for its music and two Oscar nominations (production design and music). Its failure in cinemas may have been influenced by the public distancing of the author of the original, who declared that the project did not meet his expectations and withdrew his name from the script. The ambitious film, whose production cost a considerable nine million dollars at the time, was only appreciated ten years later. At that time, the Polish priest Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II) was elected Pope, whose life story surprisingly resembles the fate of the main character of this film. After all, John Paul II's library supposedly had only one novel, and that was In the Shoes of the Fisherman. The main role in the film was played by Anthony Quinn, who was supported by Laurence Olivier in the role of the Soviet leader. The originally intended British director Anthony Asquith (whose films from the silent era are often compared to those of Hitchcock) fell ill just before filming (and died shortly after) and was replaced by Michael Anderson. The film was shot in Italy, and the filmmakers were not allowed to film directly in the Vatican, so a large part of the budget went to a replica of the Sistine Chapel, which was built in California and then transported to Italy by ship. The studio scenes are complemented by authentic footage of St. Peter's Square from 1963, where thousands of people watched the election of a new pope.

The film has not yet been released in the Czech Republic.