“POPE IN PHILADELPHIA THIS WEEKEND… PLAN AHEAD… EXPECT DELAYS,” warn the flashing signs all up and down I-95, 295, and Route 1.
The Ben Franklin Bridge will be shut down until Monday. Access to I-676 will be no more. All Center City exits will be sealed. The Pope Fence is up, mailboxes have been removed, and the car carrier trailers are full of impounded vehicles, bound for who-knows-where. Are we having fun yet?
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we tap into the zeitgeist and celebrate what’s become a Pope cultural phenomenon with music from movies set in the Vatican.
It would appear that Alex North (born just south of Philadelphia, by the way, in Chester, Pa.) was Hollywood’s “go to” composer for Vatican movies, with scores for two major films about the Pope.
In “The Shoes of the Fisherman” (1968), Anthony Quinn plays Kiril Pavlovich Lakota, an archbishop who serves 20 years in a Siberian labor camp. He is released and sent to Rome where is promoted to the cardinalate. When the Pope dies, suddenly, Lakota, a dark horse candidate, is elected as his replacement. The story balances Lokata’s internal struggles and personal torments with mounting global turmoil. North juxtaposes the melancholy lyricism of Russian folksong with the steely grandeur of his music for the Vatican.
“The Agony and the Ecstasy” (1965), about the war of wills between Michelangelo (played by Charlton Heston) and the warrior-pope Julius II (played by Rex Harrison) over the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, suggested a completely different approach. North’s other Vatican score is rich in allusions to authentic music of the era – and of the Church – which is most impressive when we think that the Early Music Movement was, at the time, in its very infancy, and the music of the pre-Baroque would not have been particularly well known.
Otto Preminger’s “The Cardinal” (1963) follows a fictional Boston Irish Catholic priest from his ordination in 1917 to his appointment as cardinal on the eve of World War II. Tom Tryon played the lead. Tryon later became a best-selling author (as THOMAS Tryon), with books like “The Other” and “Harvest Home.” An interesting factoid: The Vatican’s liaison officer for the production was none other than Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI.
The composer was Jerome Moross. The producers of the recording we’ll be sampling incorporate the sound of the actual bell of St. Paul’s Cathedral into the opening of the suite.
Christopher Reeve may have been trying just a bit too hard to shake his “Superman” image when he signed on to “Monsignor” (1982). Reeve stars as a Roman Catholic priest whose ascent through the ranks at the Vatican parallels his underhanded dealings with a mafia don and an affair with a woman in the postulant stage of becoming a nun.
Likewise, composer John Williams received his only nomination from the Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Original Score. Tune in for this rare opportunity to hear music from Williams’ first project after his Academy Award-winning contribution to “E.T.”
I hope you’ll join me for music from movies set in the Vatican this week, on “Picture Perfect,” Friday evening at 6 ET, with a repeat tomorrow morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.
