Tu esse Pietro.

Or something. I don't remember the exact Italian quoted by Oskar Werner in his conversation with Anthony Quinn.

In case you all haven't guessed yet and don't have TCM, The Shoes of the Fisherman was on this afternoon. I was flipping back and forth between that and Family Feud. The movie has great production values. It's an MGM film made during that time when MGM still made films that looked truly epic in scope. The only part that really looked fake was the final balcony scene where the balcony was superimposed over the real thing at St. Peter's. Just not quite convincing. But aside from all that, I found the film to be slightly annoying with the annoyance growing as the movie went on.

If you haven't seen it and don't know the resolution of the plot, I won't spoil it, but I will say that it is pretty unbelievable in the first viewing and its hokey-ness only increases in subsequent viewings. Seeing it tonight and knowing it was coming, it just worked against the entire thing. The movie is a positive portrayal (to me) of the Church and I want to like the movie for that reason and because it looks so cool, but the plot just totally turns me off.

The actora were all great. About the only problem I had with the actors was the performance of Oskar Werner as the heterodox priest in his interview with the commission from the Holy Office. His views were actually not that hard to understand and his final answer to their question was actually pretty interesting, but he answered everything in such a convoluted way, he basically gave the commission no choice but to condemn his works. Father Telemond comes off as not very articulate.