Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1972 | |
Pope Joan (1972 film)Buy Pope Joan (1972 film) now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it. | |
Wikipedia article'Pope Joan' is a 1972 British historical drama film based on the story of Pope Joan. Even though modern consensus generally considers Pope Joan to be legendary, in the film her existence is treated as fact. It was directed by Michael Anderson and has a cast which includes Liv Ullmann (in the lead role), Olivia de Havilland, Lesley-Anne Down, Franco Nero and Maximilian Schell. The soundtrack was composed by Maurice Jarre with additional choral music provided by The Sistine Chapel Choir, directed by Domenico Bartolucci. The film was released on DVD in 2003 on Region 1 format disc. It was also re-titled in some areas as 'The Devil's Imposter', with much material cut. The version of the film released in 1972 differed significantly from the version that had originally been filmed. Anderson's original was made with flashbacks and flash-forward sequences about a modern-day Evangelical preacher who believes her life parallels that of Pope Joan. In this version psychiatrists try to send her back through her past lives to establish if she is the reincarnation of Pope Joan. However, the distributor decided to have all of the contemporary sequences removed and released the film as a straightforward historical drama. In 2009, the film was re-edited and the previously unreleased footage was re-inserted. It was re-released under the title 'She Who Would Be Pope'. BackgroundRoger Greenspun summed up in 'The New York Times': In some medieval histories of the Roman Catholic Church there was a gap between the pontificates of Leo IV (847 855) and his successor, Benedict III. Possibly to explain this gap, a legend grew up concerning a woman, Joan, born near Mainz, educated in Athens, who went to Rome disguised as a monk and so impressed Leo with her wit and learning that, thinking her a man, he appointed her his secretary and made her a cardinal. Upon his death, she was elected pope. But her pontificate was brief for when the people discovered that she was a woman, they barbarously murdered her outside the Lateran Palace. Cast* Liv Ullmann as Pope Joan * Olivia de Havilland as Mother Superior * Lesley-Anne Down as Cecilia * Trevor Howard as Pope Leo IV * Jeremy Kemp as Joan's Father * Patrick Magee as Elder Monk * Franco Nero as Louis * Maximilian Schell as Brother Adrian * Martin Benson as Lothair * Terrence Hardiman as Cardinal Anastasius * Andr Morell as Emperor Louis the Pious * Derek Farr as Count Brisini * Richard Pearson as Father Timothy * Margareta Pogonat as Village Woman * Richard Bebb as Lord of Manor * John Shrapnel as Father James * Natasha Nicolescu as Joan's Mother * Sharon Winter as Young Joan ReceptionIn 'The New York Times', Roger Greenspun wrote: Joan's vocation may be to serve God, but her temptation is always to satisfy men. The men show up surely enough the artistic Benedictine brother Adrian (Maximilian Schell); the fiery Louis, her favorite (Franco Nero), and great grandson, no less, of Charlemagneand never more regularly than at the convent where Joan passes her adolescent girlhood. It is an outrageous convent, wild despite the efforts of Olivia de Havilland as Mother Superior to keep things ladylike, and its novices might have been penitents from the cast of 'Sex Kittens Go to College'... 'Time Out' magazine called the film a "rough and often painfully clumsy costume epic with the usual love story underneath it all, and chauvinistic presumptions abounding. Against all odds, Ullmann gives a remarkable performance, and it could have been a gem of a subject had it been handled by a woman director." See also*'Pope Joan' (2009 film) *List of historical drama films References | |
Buy Pope Joan (1972 film) now from Amazon <-- Return to movies from 1972 This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1108526763. |