Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty
The Movie.
If you've ever heard of O'Flaherty before, it's probably because of the 1983 TV movie, The Scarlet and the Black, which dramatizes the Monsignor’s rescue efforts during the German occupation of Rome. Gregory Peck stars as Hugh O’Flaherty, Christopher Plummer plays Col. Herbert Kappler, and Sir John Gielgud takes a turn as Pope Pius XII. The film opens with the painting of the white line across the opening of St. Peter’s Square, underscoring the theme of the whole movie: what is the duty of a man of God when surrounded, quite literally, by wrong? The second scene introduces us to O’Flaherty, who is giving the Swiss Guards a boxing lesson – immediately we understand that for this man, there is no line painted between heavenly and earthly matters.
The film stays true to the book in generalities, while changing some details, as movies always will. Mrs. Chevalier becomes Francesca Lombardo, an attractive Maltese widow with two daughters. John May is renamed “Mr. West,” but stilled played as a butler who is one part Jeeves, two parts Artful Dodger. And every villain in the story has been rolled into Col. Kappler, a man more subtly drawn than your typical film Nazi; he orders death and torture every day, yet is devoted to his rather brainless wife Nina and their two spoiled children. The movie plays up some of the legends about O’Flaherty, including the one that said he traveled around Rome in a variety of disguises: a street sweeper, a nun, even (ahem) a Nazi officer. It also makes the enmity between Kappler and O’Flaherty more personal. In one explosive scene, the priest insolently saunters along the very edge of the white line, while Kappler, at a nearby window, watches through the sights of a sniper’s rifle, his finger quivering on the trigger. At the end, the movie takes another departure from strict accuracy, but still remains within the spirit of O’Flaherty’s story.
The film was largely shot on location and the sights of Rome provide a beautiful backdrop for the action. Gregory Peck plays the unconventional priest with Irish charm. And if you only know Christopher Plummer from his role as the anti-Nazi Captain VonTrapp in The Sound of Music, you are in for a surprise. The movie has no rating, but I would give it a PG-13; there are some scenes of violence – Jews are rounded up and pushed into trucks, a man is executed by a firing squad – but nothing too explicit. If you like inspiring entertainment, this is a movie to add to your collection.
The Book.
Before the movie, there was the book. Irish newspaperman J.P Gallagher was largely responsible for bringing the Monsignor’s story to the attention of the world at large. In one feature the reporter dubbed O’Flaherty the “Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican,” after a fictional charachter, The Scarlet Pimpernel (who stared as an adacious rescuer-of-those-in-danger in a popular series of novels by Emma Orczy). The name stuck. In the late Sixties, after O’Flaherty’s death, Gallagher brought out his book about the Monsignor’s life and work. Based on much research and many interviews with people who knew, helped, and were helped by the priest, Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican was the inspiration for the movie and remains the preeminent source on Hugh O’Flaherty’s life.With characteristic Irish storytelling flair, Gallagher makes the book read like a novel – not hard to do given the subject matter. In everything, though, he is careful to separate the many legends from the facts. The book moves chronologically through O’Flaherty’s life, focusing of course on the war years, and is filled with fascinating anecdotes and details; a copy of the Chevalier’s grocery list, for example, showing the pounds of pasta it took to feed the escapers, or the story of the young med student and compatriot of O’Flaherty’s who ended up marrying actress Gina Lollobrigida. Gallagher has the attitudes of his era, a definite pro-British slant, and a regrettable tendency to fictionalize dialogue of the “Wait! We kom!” variety for the German characters, but on the whole the book is well-written, fast-paced and never disappoints. Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican is out-of-print now, and a bit hard to find, but if you’re seriously interested in the Monsignor, it’s worth tracking down.