BOOTLEG FILES 917: “Portrait: A Man Whose Name Was John” (1973 television film starring Raymond Burr).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the proverbial cracks.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: It deserves one.
I have a huge regret in writing this particular column – I wish I wrote it years earlier. Indeed, the film “Portrait: A Man Whose Name Was John” was on my to-do list for the longest time, but I only now got around to it. And while I am angry with my self-inflicted delay, I am overjoyed to report this film is one of the finest to be featured in The Bootleg Files series.
And I need to make yet another confession – I am heavily biased in favor of the film’s subject, Angelo Roncalli. If his name isn’t immediately ringing that proverbial bell, you might know him better as Pope John XXIII, who is among my choices of being the greatest people of the 20th century. But “Portrait: A Man Whose Name Was John” is not about the groundbreaking achievements of his papacy, but rather it focuses on what was (at the time, at least) a little-known chapter in the great man’s life.
The film opens during the 1958 meeting of the College of Cardinals to select a new pope. A trio of reporters covering the event are discussing the stalemate in the voting and theorize the cardinals will pick an elderly member of their circle who will serve as an interim pontiff who will most likely do little during his brief reign. One reporter predicts Cardinal Roncalli, the Patriarch of Venice, would be a likely choice and then begins to tell a story from when Roncalli was the papal delegate to Turkey during World War II.
Turkey, of course, is a Muslim majority nation, and at the time its Catholic population was roughly 20,000. Roncalli maintained a cordial relationship with the Turkish government, which was officially neutral during the war – not so much because it was indifferent to the ongoing conflict, but because it lacked the military might to fend off a potential invasion from Nazi-occupied Europe.
During this period, the Turkish government found itself with a dilemma. A boatload of 647 Jewish refugee children was denied access to the British-occupied Holy Land and wound up docked in Istanbul. The Nazi government put pressure on the Turks to return the boat to Europe, where the children would most certainly face deportation to the concentration camps.
Rabbi Isaac Herzog, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine, arrives in Turkey and make a plea to Roncalli (an old friend) to save the children from certain death in Europe. Roncalli arranges for food and supplies to be provided to the boat, and he makes visits to speak with the refugee children, bonding closely with one boy whose sole possession is his late father’s ornate pocket watch. Roncalli also makes appeals to the Turkish government and speaks with the German diplomatic representative as well as the Gestapo agent assigned to Turkey, but he is constantly rebuffed in his efforts to prevent the boat’s return to Europea. When all seems hopelessly lost, an accidental glance at religious statue gives Roncalli an idea to pursue the impossible through the unlikeliest of strategies.
“Portrait: A Man Whose Name Was John” runs a little less than an hour, but in its compact running time it offers one of the most profound and mature considerations of what it means to be a Christian in a world where evil is the dominant force. The film does not have big melodramatic segments, but instead it moves in a calmness that deceptively blankets the horrific life-and-death struggle at the crux of its story. And considering the rampant anti-Semitism occurring today across North America and Europe, this film is timelier than ever.
The emotional power from the film is centered in the somewhat surprising casting of Raymond Burr as Roncalli. For most of his career, Burr was not heavily taxed as an actor – he was embraced as an assuring and reliable presence through “Perry Mason” and “Ironside” and earned camp immortality as the stolid observer of Tokyo’s destruction in the American release of “Godzilla,” but it was easy to forget he was capable of powerful acting, most notably as the homicidal neighbor in “Rear Window.’
In “Portrait: A Man Whose Name Was John,” Burr was completely unrecognizable in a remarkable make-up and costuming job that created a perfect transformation into Roncalli – only his well-known voice gave a clue to the actor’s identity. Burr’s Roncalli is a patient, caring man who never raises his voice but is also not afraid to gently push the limits of the goodwill he enjoys with the Turkish government. By the film’s conclusion, it is impossible not to be awestruck by the solution achieved by Roncalli, a masterwork of planning that is both deceptively simple and deeply complex. Burr infuses the role with such subtle precision that it is easy to forget you are watching a performance.
Supporting Burr in this film is Don Galloway, his “Ironsides” co-star, as an Irish priest who serves as Roncalli’s aide, David Opatashu as Rabbi Herzog and John Colicos as a Turkish government official who is not as dastardly as his appearance might suggest. Buzz Kulik, a director best known for “Brian’s Song” (1971), steered the film in a smooth, unshowy manner.
This production was part of a short-lived anthology series dubbed “Portrait” that provided biopics of historic figures. The first entry in the series was a poorly received 1972 production with Richard Chamberlain and Faye Dunaway as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. “Portrait: A Man Whose Name Was John” was broadcast on ABC on Easter Sunday in 1973 to positive reviews, but over the years the film slipped out of sight – to date, there has not been a commercial home entertainment release.
Mercifully, there is a decent copy of the film on YouTube. By all means, take an hour to enjoy it – this is a forgotten gem that demands rediscovery.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
Listen to Phil Hall’s award-winning podcast “The Online Movie Show with Phil Hall” on SoundCloud and his radio show “Nutmeg Chatter” on WAPJ-FM in Torrington, Connecticut, with a new episode every Sunday. You can also follow his book reviews at The Epoch Times.