Directed by John Ford. Henry Fonda, Dolores del Rio, Pedro Armendáriz, J. Carrol Naish. RKO.
Decent Films Ratings
| Overall Recommendability |
?A- |
|---|---|
| Artistic/ Entertainment Value |
? |
| Moral/Spiritual Value (+4/-4) |
? +3 |
| Age Appropriateness |
?Teens & Up |
External Ratings
| MPAA | ?NR | USCCB | ?A-I |
|---|
Content advisory: Some menacing scenes; continual undercurrent of tension.
From a National Catholic Register review
By Steven D. Greydanus
Not to be confused with any version of the story of Dr. Kimble and the one-armed man, this Fugitive is director John Ford’s underrated adaptation of Catholic novelist Graham Greene’s masterpiece The Power and the Glory.
Starring Henry Fonda as a flawed priest in Mexico during the anti-clerical purges of the post-Mexican Revolution era, the film softens and conventionalizes Greene’s difficult parable, but still packs spiritual punch.
No Hollywood film of this era could have depicted a cleric as flawed as the original book’s "whiskey priest," whose sins were at times grave and who doubted that anything he did was pleasing to God. So Greene’s morality-play, in which a man deprived of every earthly consolation from human gratitude to divine approval nevertheless persistently chooses to serve others at great risk, becomes a more traditionally uplifting story about a basically good man serving God despite self-doubt and trying circumstances.
Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa’s striking black-and-white camerawork highlights the Mexican setting, and the dialogue between the unbelieving, moralistic police lieutenant and the flawed priest — a high point in the novel — remains inspiring. Ford felt this was his best film, and it holds up better than some preferred by critics.
Product Note
As far as I can tell, The Fugitive is not available on either DVD or VHS.
