The Fugitive (1947)

Best of Cinema and Literature
"The Fugitive" is probably one of those classics of American film-making that has been forgotten by contemporary film devotees. Perhaps its history has been repeated with "The Quiet American" (2002), which has generated lackluster enthusiasm from an audience still recoiling from the shock of 9/11.

I first saw the film, featuring Henry Fonda, when I was about 8 years old in 1955. It was airing on afternoon television, and even then, the film quality had degraded, with grainy splotches and that crackling hiss so characteristic of old celluloid. But given my sensibilities and the pre-pubescent level of my emotional growth, I profoundly remember that the film's ending caused me to cry.

Thirty years later, I happened to purchase Graham Greene's book ("The Power and the Glory") at a local bookstore. I remember that it was a brisk, windy, cold mid-Atlantic day, and that I wanted to curl up with a book on a Sunday afternoon. The book is about 150 pages, but Greene's superb skills...

Very pretty but confusing
As noted by other reviewers, this 1947 Henry Fonda film is about a priest in an anonymous Latin American country "100 miles either north or south of the equator," who is trying to avoid detection by Socialist/Communist authorities who have outlawed religion. They have apparently also outlawed every alcoholic beverage other than beer, making even a surreptitious communion difficult.

This is a starkly symbolic story that makes the priest into a Christ figure, and it is lovely to watch. Director John Ford teamed with famed Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa for this American/Mexican production, and the results are visually stunning. And Ward Bond, as a fleeing bank robber, manages perhaps the most believable death scene ever performed in this era of film.

The narrative, however, is harder to swallow. The dialogue is minimal, probably at least partly because it was intended for an international audience. It's hard to believe that the priest is always...

A Beautiful Film
Update - 12-23-2012: I am adding this update to my nearly two-year-old review in response to what I've read in other reviews and comments here on Amazon.

First, by listening to the introduction to the movie one should understand that Ford's effort was to place the story on a level other than realism. That explains what some think is poor acting on the part of Henry Fonda and or how Dolores del Rio is presented, and is consistent with the film being situated in a fictional country rather than Greene's Mexico, even if that might also have been an effort not to offend the film team's Mexican hosts.

Second, it doesn't make sense to describe the film as being about the Cristero war or suggest that it doesn't adequately present the Cristero War. Greene's novel is set in the mid-1930s, long after the end of the Cristero War. To the extent that the film is derived from Greene's book, therefore, one should understand the film as set in the mid-1930s, after the...

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