By John Ruch
Photo: A detail of a still from La Strada.
Pope Francis’s striking interview with a Catholic magazine last month has sparked excited discussion for his tolerant tone about gay people and women who have chosen abortions. But in a little-noticed section about the arts, the pope puts the changes underway at the Vatican in an even more dramatic nutshell: He says his favorite movie is La Strada—a film that originally was blasted as immoral by the Catholic Church’s massive censorship machine.
Francis certainly has good taste. La Strada (The Road), the 1954 masterpiece by Italian director Frederico Fellini, is on any critic’s short list of world-cinema classics. It tells a fable-like tale of a mildly mentally disabled woman sold into the service of a brutish circus strongman who travels the ragged roads of post-World War II Italy.
Francis doesn’t just like La Strada. He enthusiastically brought up the topic himself, and said the movie reminds him of the saint whose name he has borrowed as pope.
“We should also talk about the cinema,” Francis told the interviewer from America magazine. “La Strada, by Fellini, is the film that perhaps I loved the most. I identify with this movie, in which there is an implicit reference to St. Francis.”
The National Legion of Decency, a Catholic-run censorship organization praised by a previous pope for its “holy crusade” against evil films, had a different opinion. Upon the film’s release, the Legion branded it “morally objectionable in part,” meaning that Catholics should avoid seeing it.
As Gregory Black chronicled in his book “The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, 1940-1975,” the Legion of Decency was not merely a cranky protest group. It wielded massive behind-the-scenes censorship powers, spurred entire states to ban movies, and could financially kill a picture by keeping away the country’s then-enormous Catholic population.
As happens to every new medium, the movies were pounced upon instantly by religious prudes of all flavors as a supposed spectacular new menace to society. But the Catholic Church long played the leading role in Hollywood censorship. A Catholic priest, Rev. Daniel Lord—like Francis, a Jesuit—wrote the Production Code, the infamous Hollywood studio self-censorship device that dumbed down movies from the 1930s to the 1960s. Among those who helped draft it was Rev. Wilfrid Parsons, the editor of America—the same magazine that published the Pope Francis interview.
The Production Code office worked hand-in-hand with the Legion of Decency to preview and censor films. And the Legion worked with the direct blessing of Pope Pius XI, who praised movie censorship in his 1936 encyclical Vigilanti Cura.
Before fading from power in the 1960s, the Legion racked up an embarrassing history of condemning films now considered classics. Those include Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City, another movie Pope Francis cited as a favorite.
But Catholic censors especially hated Fellini. The Legion gave another of his masterpieces, 8½ (1963), its strongest rating: “condemned,” which basically meant it should be thrown on a bonfire. The Vatican’s own newspaper blasted his La Dolce Vita (1960) as “obscene.” In 1950, the Legion and the Church waged global war against Rossellini’s short film The Miracle, co-written by and starring Fellini. The battle culminated in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the First Amendment protected the film from being banned for “sacrilege.” Despite the condemnation, Pope Francis strongly suggested in the interview that he saw The Miracle as a boy—he said he believes he watched “all of the Italian movies” of its co-star, Anna Magnani.
Even its day, the Legion was criticized by some Catholic intellectuals. A dramatic turnaround came in 1995, when the Vatican issued a list of “important” movies to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the cinema. To much surprise, the list included La Strada, 8½ and a couple more formerly “immoral” movies. That was a shocker, coming under the archconservative Pope John Paul II, no less. But the list, presented with the sort of caution typically reserved for handing someone a loaded gun, was still a far cry from the eye-popping open enthusiasm and affection Pope Francis is showing for Fellini.
Looking back at La Strada, it seems a particularly absurd choice for Catholic outrage. Fundamentally about the quest for meaning in life, it frequently presents Catholic institutions in a favorable light—including a convent where a nun praises travel as freeing us from the “risk of forgetting” our attachment to the spiritual rather than worldly goods. Like the pope says, there are shades of St. Francis, who gave up a life of wealth to wander the roads among the people.
Granted, there’s a murder and a prostitute—though fewer of both than in the Bible. Maybe the upset came from the bummer of an ending, which owes more to pagan tragedy than Christian triumphalism. The strongman, powerfully portrayed by Anthony Quinn, collapses howling on a beach in despair at his losses. His sole circus trick was breaking an iron chain, but he has failed to break other chains—confusion, fear, pain—that bind him and ultimately drag him down. The viewer is left to come up with their own answer about life’s meaning.
So it’s interesting to note that, in the interview, Pope Francis warns about the Church ending up like that: bound by doctrine rather than moved by mercy, obsessed with defending dogma rather than seeking answers; the attitudes that underpin censorship.
“If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing,” the pope said.
It’s a very artistic statement from a very artistically literate pope. Elsewhere, he likens the Church to art, describing both as progressive efforts to perfect our grasp on truth. His love of a once-banned Fellini movie is something more than irony. It’s someone with an artist’s eye seeing what years of rigid dogmatists missed.
Rome is home to one of the world’s great religions and one of the world’s great film traditions. After 60 years, it’s something to see one finally embrace the other.
Photo: A detail of a still from La Strada.
Pope Francis’s striking interview with a Catholic magazine last month has sparked excited discussion for his tolerant tone about gay people and women who have chosen abortions. But in a little-noticed section about the arts, the pope puts the changes underway at the Vatican in an even more dramatic nutshell: He says his favorite movie is La Strada—a film that originally was blasted as immoral by the Catholic Church’s massive censorship machine.
Francis certainly has good taste. La Strada (The Road), the 1954 masterpiece by Italian director Frederico Fellini, is on any critic’s short list of world-cinema classics. It tells a fable-like tale of a mildly mentally disabled woman sold into the service of a brutish circus strongman who travels the ragged roads of post-World War II Italy.
Francis doesn’t just like La Strada. He enthusiastically brought up the topic himself, and said the movie reminds him of the saint whose name he has borrowed as pope.
“We should also talk about the cinema,” Francis told the interviewer from America magazine. “La Strada, by Fellini, is the film that perhaps I loved the most. I identify with this movie, in which there is an implicit reference to St. Francis.”
The National Legion of Decency, a Catholic-run censorship organization praised by a previous pope for its “holy crusade” against evil films, had a different opinion. Upon the film’s release, the Legion branded it “morally objectionable in part,” meaning that Catholics should avoid seeing it.
As Gregory Black chronicled in his book “The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, 1940-1975,” the Legion of Decency was not merely a cranky protest group. It wielded massive behind-the-scenes censorship powers, spurred entire states to ban movies, and could financially kill a picture by keeping away the country’s then-enormous Catholic population.
As happens to every new medium, the movies were pounced upon instantly by religious prudes of all flavors as a supposed spectacular new menace to society. But the Catholic Church long played the leading role in Hollywood censorship. A Catholic priest, Rev. Daniel Lord—like Francis, a Jesuit—wrote the Production Code, the infamous Hollywood studio self-censorship device that dumbed down movies from the 1930s to the 1960s. Among those who helped draft it was Rev. Wilfrid Parsons, the editor of America—the same magazine that published the Pope Francis interview.
The Production Code office worked hand-in-hand with the Legion of Decency to preview and censor films. And the Legion worked with the direct blessing of Pope Pius XI, who praised movie censorship in his 1936 encyclical Vigilanti Cura.
Before fading from power in the 1960s, the Legion racked up an embarrassing history of condemning films now considered classics. Those include Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City, another movie Pope Francis cited as a favorite.
But Catholic censors especially hated Fellini. The Legion gave another of his masterpieces, 8½ (1963), its strongest rating: “condemned,” which basically meant it should be thrown on a bonfire. The Vatican’s own newspaper blasted his La Dolce Vita (1960) as “obscene.” In 1950, the Legion and the Church waged global war against Rossellini’s short film The Miracle, co-written by and starring Fellini. The battle culminated in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the First Amendment protected the film from being banned for “sacrilege.” Despite the condemnation, Pope Francis strongly suggested in the interview that he saw The Miracle as a boy—he said he believes he watched “all of the Italian movies” of its co-star, Anna Magnani.
Even its day, the Legion was criticized by some Catholic intellectuals. A dramatic turnaround came in 1995, when the Vatican issued a list of “important” movies to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the cinema. To much surprise, the list included La Strada, 8½ and a couple more formerly “immoral” movies. That was a shocker, coming under the archconservative Pope John Paul II, no less. But the list, presented with the sort of caution typically reserved for handing someone a loaded gun, was still a far cry from the eye-popping open enthusiasm and affection Pope Francis is showing for Fellini.
Looking back at La Strada, it seems a particularly absurd choice for Catholic outrage. Fundamentally about the quest for meaning in life, it frequently presents Catholic institutions in a favorable light—including a convent where a nun praises travel as freeing us from the “risk of forgetting” our attachment to the spiritual rather than worldly goods. Like the pope says, there are shades of St. Francis, who gave up a life of wealth to wander the roads among the people.
Granted, there’s a murder and a prostitute—though fewer of both than in the Bible. Maybe the upset came from the bummer of an ending, which owes more to pagan tragedy than Christian triumphalism. The strongman, powerfully portrayed by Anthony Quinn, collapses howling on a beach in despair at his losses. His sole circus trick was breaking an iron chain, but he has failed to break other chains—confusion, fear, pain—that bind him and ultimately drag him down. The viewer is left to come up with their own answer about life’s meaning.
So it’s interesting to note that, in the interview, Pope Francis warns about the Church ending up like that: bound by doctrine rather than moved by mercy, obsessed with defending dogma rather than seeking answers; the attitudes that underpin censorship.
“If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing,” the pope said.
It’s a very artistic statement from a very artistically literate pope. Elsewhere, he likens the Church to art, describing both as progressive efforts to perfect our grasp on truth. His love of a once-banned Fellini movie is something more than irony. It’s someone with an artist’s eye seeing what years of rigid dogmatists missed.
Rome is home to one of the world’s great religions and one of the world’s great film traditions. After 60 years, it’s something to see one finally embrace the other.