| Pope Joan | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Michael Anderson |
| Written by | John Briley |
| Produced by | Kurt Unger Daniel Unger (uncredited) John Briley (associate producer) Leonard C. Lane (executive producer) |
| Starring | Liv Ullmann Olivia de Havilland Franco Nero |
| Cinematography | Billy Williams |
| Edited by | Bill Lenny |
| Music by | Maurice Jarre |
| Distributed by | Columbia-Warner Distributors (UK)Columbia Pictures (US) |
Release date |
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Running time | 132 minutes (original uncut version) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Pope Joan is a 1972 Britishhistorical drama film based on the story ofPope Joan.[1] Even though modern consensus generally considers Pope Joan to be legendary,[2] in the film her existence is treated as fact.
It was directed byMichael Anderson and has a cast which includesLiv Ullmann (in the lead role),Olivia de Havilland,Lesley-Anne Down,Franco Nero andMaximilian Schell. The soundtrack was composed byMaurice Jarre with additional choral music provided byThe Sistine Chapel Choir, directed byDomenico Bartolucci.[3]
The film was released on DVD in 2003 on Region 1 format disc.[4] It was also re-titled in some areas asThe 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 withflashbacks and flash-forward sequences about a modern-dayEvangelical 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 thereincarnation of Pope Joan.[5] 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: the previously unreleased footage set in the 20th century was re-inserted, while some of the footage of Joan as pope was removed. The film was then re-released under the titleShe… Who Would Be Pope.[6]
Roger Greenspun summed up the legend inThe New York Times:
In some medieval histories of the RomanCatholic Church there was a gap between the pontificates ofLeo 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 acardinal. 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 theLateran Palace.Although the legend has been discounted by church historians for centuries, it has been the source of several fictional accounts—none, I suspect, weirder than Michael Anderson'sPope Joan, which opened yesterday.[7]
InThe 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 artisticBenedictine brother Adrian (Maximilian Schell); the fiery Louis, her favorite (Franco Nero), and great grandson, no less, ofCharlemagne—and never more regularly than at the convent where Joan passes her adolescent girlhood. It is an outrageous convent, wild despite the efforts ofOlivia de Havilland as Mother Superior to keep things ladylike, and its novices might have been penitents from the cast ofSex Kittens Go to College...
Like everybody else, I have adored Liv Ullmann inPersona andHour of the Wolf. Not evenPope Joan, which generally manages to make her look likeGeorge Peppard's twin brother, can suppress her grave appeal -- but I think she is being used to provide someIngmar Bergman eroticism to balance the film's intermittent tone of Hollywood piety.[7]
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."[8]