The Power and the Glory

Even at this young age, Patty Duke was an astonishingly talented actress Similarly, Keenan Wynn who has impressed me in many other roles is about the most un-Mexican actor I've ever seen, and he too is miscast here. Another casting choice is unfortunate in hindsight. The comedian James Coco already going plump at this early age appears briefly, unbilled, in a serious role as a Mexican soldier. Unfortunately, when he strolls across the screen sauntering in a most unmilitary gait , modern viewers will recognise Coco from his comic roles, and this harms the dramatic effect of his two brief appearances.

Olivier plays a 'whisky priest' in post-revolution Mexico: In order to confer the Christian sacraments, the priest must have wine Despite Keenan Wynn's miscasting, there is an excellent scene in which Olivier purchases wine from black marketeer Wynn and his crony. To avoid arousing suspicion with his wine purchase, Olivier buys some whisky too. After the deal is done, Wynn and his partner bully Olivier into 'sharing' the wine with them Olivier's reactions are very believable indeed. Although most of the actors here are excellent, the whole affair has a stagebound flavour.

Acting for the camera whether movie or television is a very different craft from stage acting, and most of the performers here seem to be working in stage-play mode. Julie Harris is very appealing here, both physically and emotionally. This is a slow, earnest drama with a great deal of dialogue and very little action, but there are several good performances If you're hostile towards the Catholic Church, be advised that this production depicts the Catholic clergy as the good guys.

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Full Cast and Crew. Graham Greene novel , Dale Wasserman adaptation. Films from the 60's pt 4. The Moon and Sixpence Share this Rating Title: Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. User Polls The name remains the same Nominated for 1 Primetime Emmy. Learn more More Like This. The Power and the Glory The Devil's Disciple Edit Cast Credited cast: Maria Priest's Mistress George C. Death is an everyday affair for them and life is just a duty to be performed from day-to-day without ever knowing its joy and charm. That goes without saying. But we have to go on living.

For peace you needed human company-his alone-ness was like a threat of things to come. Suddenly he remembered - for no apparent reason - a day of rain at the American seminary, the glass windows of the library steamed over with central heating, the tall shelves of sedate books, and a young man - a stranger from Tucson - drawing his initials on the pane with his finger - that was peace. He looked at it from outside: Let me just say it is so very human.

View all 19 comments. Jun 16, Fabian rated it really liked it. You can never go wrong with this guy—most definitely dude's on my Top Ten list of All-Time favorite novelists. You cannot ask for crisper prose: I cannot think of a single writer that is without flaw—the closest to that super-man would be Graham Greene. That being said, this is my least favorite novel of his thus far; and it is interesting to note that this one is widely hailed as his master You can never go wrong with this guy—most definitely dude's on my Top Ten list of All-Time favorite novelists.

That being said, this is my least favorite novel of his thus far; and it is interesting to note that this one is widely hailed as his masterpiece. Here, like in that one, Greene creates his own orb around a very fickle, very risque topic: It is cinematic and simultaneously personal. View all 13 comments. The title is an allusion to the doxology often recited at the end of the Lord's Prayer: Nov 04, Paul rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is the first Greene I have read in years and it is a powerful novel. It is set in Mexico and Greene has spent some time there in research.

The novel is about a priest; a whisky priest in a province of Mexico where the Catholic Church is banned and priests are shot. The unnamed protagonist is a bad priest and a drunkard who has also fathered a child. He is also a coward. The title is taken from the end of The Lord's Prayer and there is religious imagery all over the place. The priest rides a This is the first Greene I have read in years and it is a powerful novel.

The priest rides a donkey to his inevitable capture having been given a chance to escape , the peasant who betrays him is Judas. Most of the other characters can be seen to represent someone in the gospel narratives; Maria, padre Jose, Tench etc. The priest is a very imperfect Christ and the Lieutenant a very implacable reperesentative of authority who is ultimately moved by the priest.

The Lieutenant plays a much larger role than Pilate does in the gospels, but there is a "What is truth" Moment. The book represents Greene's own struggles with faith and the Church. There are also themes relating to abandonment, desolation, hope and the bleakness of everyday life for the poor. Greene's descriptive powers are very powerful and you can feel the stifling heat.

This is a thought provoking piece and managed to offend Catholics and atheists in equal measure; quite a neat trick. I've known a few whisky priests in my time and remember one particular church and rectory which was locally christened St Glenfiddich's because of the drinking habits of the incumbent. He didn't seem to do a great deal apart from drink, but when the alcohol finally got him everyone turned out for the funeral and he was rather fondly remembered. The whisky priest here doesn't do a great deal apart from move around and perform any religious duties he was forced to by the locals.

There is something here perhaps about being rather than doing.

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While I don't share Greene's faith it is an interesting and powerful novel with more hidden layers than I first perhaps realised View all 9 comments. Apr 13, Michael rated it it was amazing. Greene had an unerring eye for the sanctity of human weakness and the ominousness of human strength. Oct 12, Jason Koivu rated it liked it Shelves: The Power and the Glory is the sort of title to inspire readers to great deeds, pushing beyond the bounds of normal reading capabilities to turn pages at superhuman speed!

Afterall, the premise is promising A cynical, whiskey priest sneaks about the poor, rural lands of southern Mexico, evading capture for the treasonous action of being a priest. The question is whether he's on the lam to preach the word of god or to save his own neck. I haven't read much Graham Greene The Power and the Glory is the sort of title to inspire readers to great deeds, pushing beyond the bounds of normal reading capabilities to turn pages at superhuman speed! I haven't read much Graham Greene, but what I have read makes me think Greene could turn a phrase and slap a good sentence together right up there with some of the best of them.

The problem seems to be his plots. They don't punch you like you expect. I always seemed to be waiting for something more out of this book and it never came, and this isn't the first time it's happened with a Greene book.

Straight out of college I made a pledge to read through the works of respected authors. I powered through Kafka and then Camus. Both were exciting or at least interesting. In hindsight, I think I read them both at the perfect time in my life. Next up was Greene. He wrote over two dozen novels, and then there were plays, screenplays, children's books, travel journals, short story collections. Out of all that, all I managed to read was The Man Within , his less than spectacular first attempt at a novel.

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It wasn't great, but it was good enough to reignite my interest. Since then I've renewed my pledge, but with lowered expectations. I just don't think I'll be able to bulldoze through his work. If only his work was a bit more exciting. As you read on a growing sense that nothing will be resolved starts to envelope you, and if you're a person that likes resolution, you're up shit's creek paddle-less, my friend. Graham Greene writes thinking man's books and I don't mean books for smart folk necessarily. I mean he intends you to ponder his ideas well after you've put the book down.

The Power and the Glory is just such a book. That's fine, but couldn't he have managed both? Say perhaps, a thinking man's thriller? I'm just asking for a little more spark. It would make me leap to his next book! View all 4 comments. Some priests were given the opportunity to renounce their faith, to marry and to forgo their earlier duties.

During the priest's evasion from the police, Greene introduces his readers to an unsavory assortment of characters who further illustrate the signs of the times; from the over zealous and idealistic Socialist Lieutenant who chases him to the various citizens with diverse reactions to his plight and to their own faith.

Told with warmth, humor and an endearing faith in humanity to do what is right in spite of the difficulties, Greene demonstrates his mastery of the language and his ability to create a work of lasting importance. View all 6 comments. Feb 01, Perry rated it it was amazing Shelves: A Classic Parable set in s Mexico Seems of Paramount Importance Today " A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

Greene was driven to write this sympathetic novel about the persecution of priests in Mexico after visiting the Mexican province of Tabasco in at the height of the Mexican anti-clerical purge of Marxist revolutionaries.

Lecture #1: The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

Upon return A Classic Parable set in s Mexico Seems of Paramount Importance Today " A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him. Upon returning home, Greene called it the "fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth. Greene based the novel on the life of a real-life whiskey priest who "existed for ten years in the forest and swamps, venturing out only at night.

The lieutenant despises the church and is obsessed with capturing the priest to execute him for the greater good of the state. The communists' attempts backfired, turning the priest into a martyr in the eyes of the people. To me, the novel's focus on hope and redemption and the lessons of Greene's realistic parable make it a classic.

The whiskey priest is a significantly flawed man, a bad alcoholic, who has been scandalized by fathering a child in a night of weakness with a peasant woman. He is acutely aware of his defects and failures as both a man and a priest. Although a man of the cloth with faith in a hereafter, he is terrified of pain and of death, and thus acknowledges his doubt.

His knowledge of self elevates him to the level of heroic in the novel, as he is redeemed by his conviction that he is responsible for his sins and the suffering he has brought on others, especially on his illegitimate daughter. He especially feels a sharp pain when seeing her--she's around because she seems to have lost her innocence way too soon and thus he sees her as having scant hope for pleasure and happiness in the world. His love for her and sense of responsibility for her plight, her ruined purity crush the man: Though dark and tense, this novel is so hopeful in Greene's vision and truth that even a most flawed man can achieve redemption if he can humbly accept his fallibility and responsibility for his sins and the harm he has caused others.

Indeed, such a man can gain back respect and even be admired to the point of being heroic. In today's world where our leaders spew spastic shit daily in characters under a tweety bird, full of noxious narcissism, always passing the buck and refusing to admit even the possibility of their human fallibility or a sense of responsibility when things go wrong, this parable seems a particularly important read for young adults and a must-read reminder to the rest of us of our greater selves.

May 29, Paul Bryant rated it liked it Shelves: Here we have a novel which takes faith at face value which for an atheist reader is a bit of a thwack round the fizzog with a wet towel. This novel is all about the confession and all about the Mass. And a little bit about the baptism too. You could keel over at any minute. And I was completely unaware of that! And this really happened?

Yes, it really did, in Mexico, between and Now why do authors do this — have their protagonist being all nameless? It just makes it a bit portentous. He spends many pages desperately trying to get his hands on a bottle of brandy or two. The whole novel is about him being hunted up mountain and down canyon often on the back of a mule just like Jesus! No village will give him shelter, every man could be his Judas Iscariot. But he himself provides a great explanation. When he realized he was the last priest in his state, he was filled with euphoria.

Now at last there were no fellow priests to sneer at his drunken lacksadaisical ways. He could make his own rules up! He could be exactly the kind of priest he damn well wanted to be and no one to give him a hard time any more! What it meant to me was something quite different This was is a surprisingly savage nasty grim miseryfest, a real feel-bad book for Catholics, atheists and Mexicans alike.

I'm not a Christian. I most probably am an agnostic who's constantly flirting with atheism. What I feel about the Church as a constitution and the practices of the priests and their followers is contempt, to say the least. You read this, now look at my rating. Look at my rating. This is a book that's called The Power And The Glory and it's about a priest trying to stay alive in a country where all priests are executed and faith is prohibited. The reason it appealed to I'm not a Christian.

The reason it appealed to me, apart from the great writing and plot development, is that Greene handles the subject without being in the least dogmatic. The reason I think it's a masterpiece is that Greene, as is exactly the case with his hero, seems to be in a constant conflict with God.

Many questions are raised within the story and it's for the reader to give the answers. Whether your beliefs are similar to mine or completely opposite, don't hesitate to read The Power And The Glory. You will find yourselves immersed in its pages and what you'll find there may surprise you. View all 10 comments. Even as he flees, he half-hopes to be captured and end his miserable life on the run, but he still tries to cling to his duty and faith by holding Mass and hearing confessions when possible.

This is my second Graham Greene book, and like The Heart of the Matter this one has a lot to do with Catholic ideas of what damns and redeems someone. I liked it, but as a non-Catholic, I hate seeing characters tied in knots because of dogma. I tend to see their worrying about their eternal damnation for not being able to perform a ritual as kind of silly and pointless. Dec 20, Bob Newman rated it it was amazing. When a man with a gun meets a man with a prayer This is no doubt a powerful novel with the same theme of man's relation to God that suffuses many of Greene's other works.

In a Mexico where state control had broken down, local satraps carried out projects of their own, taking national pol When a man with a gun meets a man with a prayer In a Mexico where state control had broken down, local satraps carried out projects of their own, taking national policy to extremes. So, in Tabasco, a warlord decreed that all priests must be expelled, forced to marry, or killed; all churches would be closed or destroyed.

A few priests dared to stay behind in secret, defying the tyrant, ministering to the suffering masses or continuing to bilk themfrom an atheistic point of view The main character here is a priest, driven from pillar to post, hunted like a bandit indeed he is paired with a gringo killer in terms of police priorities , riding a mule through the jungles and swamps, hiding out with reluctant villagers, fearing betrayal at every step, but never giving up.

The Power and the Glory - Wikipedia

He recognizes that he is a sinner alcoholic, father of a child but though he is human, he is yet divine through his soaring spirit, which slowly emerges and arises through his fear. Whether Greene could really get inside a Mexican priest's head is another question. I'll leave it to Mexicans to decide.

A cold-blooded police lieutenant hunts the priest, swearing to kill him. A couple minor English characters appear from time to time: Pain and martyrdom, sacrifice, duty, contradiction and consistencyall these in God's name or in the name of no God, but Fate. The priest escapes to Chiapas, a more moderate state, but returns at the behest of a debased informer, knowing his certain doom full well, accepting his Fate even though dreading it like Christ.

The police lieutenant understands the priest's humanity at the end, but carries out his duty. The power wins out, but the glory lives on. A great book which carries a lot of suspense within its pages. Nov 13, K. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I read this book during my 3-day visit in San Diego and it was an appropriate choice because of the proximity of the place to Mexico and there are more Mexicans in that place than causcasians.

This book is considered by many novelists as Graham Greene's masterpiece and I think they are right. This is a story of a nameless Catholic priest who is pious but at the same time alcoholic and fathered a child. These may not be shocking at the present time but this novel created a scandal in the catholic I read this book during my 3-day visit in San Diego and it was an appropriate choice because of the proximity of the place to Mexico and there are more Mexicans in that place than causcasians.

These may not be shocking at the present time but this novel created a scandal in the catholic world when it was asked by a cardinal of Westminster to be revised including the two other novels of the same author. The setting of the story was in Mexico when the government, in the 30's was trying to eradicate Catholicism in the country.

The Power and the Glory

The main two characters are that priest the last one standing and the lieutenant who was able to arrest and prosecute the priest towards the end of the story. However, prior to the final scene another priest came up that gave the hint that the catholicism was there to survive in Mexico. What I really liked about the story is the presentation of the characters.

The 'human' character of the priest was not hidden for the sake of making him saint-like. Also, the character of the lieutenant was also not all evil. In fact, in most parts of the story he made more sense that the priest except when he was killing people for the priest to surface. This book is both in the and Must Read Books and indeed it is right to be there.

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View all 12 comments. Mar 20, James rated it it was amazing. This is a novel that confronts head-on the biggest of themes: Also encompassed here is the dogmatic approach of both organised religion and the authorities attempting to not just to crush and outlaw, but to obliterate that religion — the pitfalls, limitations, restrictions and constraints of any rigidly authoritarian belief system. Religion as a theme, in many different ways, does seem more than evident in many of his novels.

Certainly religion in this novel is considered in many ways — religion and its suppressors, organised religion juxtaposed with religion on a far more personal basis. It is a novel that is so well written, constructed, plotted and thought out - moving, authentic, intelligent and thought provoking. Jun 20, Jen rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: I like books that have more questions than answers. But the questions have to be good, like this: Did she expect a miracle?

And if she did, why should it not be granted her? The priest found himself watching the child for some movement. When none came, it was as if God had missed an opportunity. Why, after all, should we expect God to punish the innocent with more life? The I like books that have more questions than answers.

The air is hot, and the sound of a fly hovering around your ear is about all you get. There is no water. A scraggly guy shows up and talks to a mediocre dentist. Then the scraggly guy is off, somehow needed at a dying person's side. Somewhere in the jungle lightning cracks.

The world of the book cracks open and the ground rumbles. And suddenly, tiny razor cuts of prose start to sting. You're alive, the book's alive, the scraggly man is alive. The pain is an exquisite reminder of reality and humanity. The scraggly man is Christ in the stranger's garb. Hunted, maligned, but pressing onward, riding a donkey, shunned by his own family and surrendered to forces beyond himself that he only wishes he could fight fairer and without drops of whiskey.

Obviously, I see this man being shown as a fool for the divine- a holy fool-the biblical kind of foolishness that somehow, like many Old Testament prophets, hits square on the center of truth and blackens the eye with true humility despite, because of, or combined with crazy assed behavior like being covered with matted animal skins, mouths dirty with smeared honey and locust tidbits.

Am I reading too much into Greene? Consider this, the sacrificial servant passage: It was from him they would take their ideas of the faith. But it was from him too they took God - in their mouths. When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake, even if they were corrupted by his example? He was shaken by the enormity of the problem: The sinner and the saint come in unlikely bodies and their spirits cross. And this is reality and it is also the most fantastical fantasy.

Authors who deal with religious themes often include characters that, to use the lyrics of a CAKE song, "shine like justice. He wrestles with the divine, like Jacob with the angel the whole night through and when he awakes he finds that, like Jacob, he is limping. The priest doesn't float a foot off the muddy ground blessedly sermonizing to all he meets full of the awareness of his own power among the people, sanctified with a golden ring over his head.

He walks through the mud, for years hides out among them, plodding along through life shitting and eating and fucking just like everyone else, making mistakes and trying to find meaning in the mess of it all. Greene takes characters, gives them flesh, feeds them on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and then watches them fall like the rest of us mortals. And the way that they fall! There are serial killers who use their last dying gasps of air trying to save someone else, law breakers who remain smug in false piety and feel comfortable enough passing judgement on those who share the same shitbucket, poser priests who have sold their shepherd staffs and flocks for the wolfish clothing of easy survival and governmental compliance, a conflicted lieutenant who would see his own noble theories and principles violently enforced, and a Judas figure who doesn't even have the good sense enough to hang himself from the nearest tree.

And the whiskey priest shares communion with all of them, sharing the bread and the wine in equal amounts. The story distills itself by the end, culminating in a powerful and heady sip of the inevitable. The whiskey priest manages to "work out his own salvation with fear and with trembling" and abide by the Pauline exclamation that the meaning of death is the same as the meaning of life "To live is Christ and to die is gain.

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View all 7 comments. Sep 23, David Schaafsma rated it it was amazing Shelves: The energy and grandeur of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, and an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us-God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, and smashed open graves. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.

It was for this world that Christ had died: The whiskey priest is stripped of every Catholic vestment, his life reduced to bare spiritual essentials. This was also the idea behind the Red Shirt anti-clericalism of Mexico in the thirties, where priests were forced to marry, and the Church and indeed all evidence of religion was eventually banned. Priests who did not renounce their faith were at one rounded up and shot. It is in this context Greene writes of the last priest in the state of Tabasco, who had fathered a child whom he loves, though it is evidence of his sin, his adultery.

And still he performs the Mass, and hears confessions of people as he goes. The priest is based on a legendary priest of that time who only came out at night. There are mystics who are said to have experienced God directly. He was a mystic, too, and what he had experienced was vacancy--a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all. When she reached the tallest cross she unhooked the child and held the face against the wood and afterwards the loins: Faith, one was told, could move mountains, and here was faith--faith in the spittle that healed the blind man and the voice that raised the dead.

The evening star was out: The woman sat down, and taking a lump of sugar from her bundle, began to eat, and the child lay quiet at the foot of the cross. When I first read it I was a Christian, and again when I taught it, and now think of myself as an agnostic, but I was still very moved by this book all the way through. At times things get pretty tense where capture seems inevitable only for him to somehow escape, but I never felt he was in anyway afraid of his outcome and that his life was basically in the hands of God to decide his fate.

Although written as a work of fiction I would not be surprised if some content was based on fact, and the writing is highly believable and impeccable throughout, as my first Graham Greene novel I can fully understand why he was considered one of the greats. Dec 22, Adam rated it it was amazing. Grim and suspenseful, stocked with cinematic imagery in a gothic and decaying Mexico, this book is masterpiece from the first page on.

He is flawed and human but dedicated to and personifies his beliefs despite the suicidal risk he is taking.