This has nothing to do with the hit '67 TV series of the same title. That said, it is another British program in which nobody has a given name and the setting is ambiguous. All we know for sure is that the nation used to be under Nazi rule and is now under communist rule.
A cardinal (Alec Guinness) gets arrested on the dubious charge of treason against the regime, which, of course, will put him on trial only when he's almost certain to confess. He is not subjected to physical torture, whether because his captors want to be more civil than that, couldn't hope to break someone the Nazis couldn't that way, or really don't want to risk martyring him in the public eye. Instead, his interrogator (Jack Hawkins) takes a faux-friendly approach, made all the more possible by their past acquaintance. It takes longer than the superiors like, but the interrogator is determined to find a chink in the emotional armor.
Only seven other actors are credited, and only six more are identified on IMDb. The third most prominent role is that of the jailer (Wilfrid Lawson), who's a bit more into the whole torment thing, but he has his own sort of fondness for the prisoner. There is also a subplot in which a woman (Jeanette Sterke) wants to reunite with her husband outside the country, but a guard at the cardinal's prison (Robert Lewis) keeps wishing she'd run off with him instead. Alas, that story neither goes anywhere nor resolves itself, so I continue to see the film as being about just two men, which is common enough for adaptations of plays. (Playwright Bridget Boland also wrote the screenplay for Anne of the Thousand Days.)
At times, I recalled the somewhat underrated Hitchcock piece I Confess, featuring another wrongly accused clergyman. But where Father Logan seems so pure as to be bland and hard for many viewers to relate to, this cardinal has an unexpected depth of personality. The interrogator peels back layer after layer to discover the darkness within -- and is sincerely disgusted with it. No, it's not a major scandal like pedophilia or cover-ups; the cardinal is just driven by pride rather than love. Guess he skimped on 1 Corinthians 13.
I actually half-liked the interrogator right from the beginning. He may not be a better man than the cardinal, but he feels pretty bad about what he does to a basically innocent man. On some level, he may want to be his prisoner's true friend.
I have to hand it to Peter Grenville, an actor who had never directed before. He employed some choice cinematography, without which things might well have gotten boring to watch. Not every reviewer finds his approach compelling enough, tho, at least if they don't already have strong feelings about the subject matter.
On that note, the strangest thing about TP is the mixed reactions it got back in the day. In different lands, it has been characterized as both anti- and pro-communist, as well as both anti- and pro-Catholic. One of the two RL cardinals who inspired the lead didn't care for his semi-portrayal. Judging from present-day ratings, it's still kinda controversial.
But I for one find it decent. It's hardly unbelievable that a communist government would want a high-ranking church official discredited on principle. Nor do I pretend that an unloving man couldn't fake his way nearly to the top of the hierarchy. If anything, the pic has value in pointing to truths: The world is not neatly divided into heroes and villains, and we are not great judges of our own placement on the sliding scale. Also, the line between pride and humility is finer than we tend to notice.
It's not the most refreshing movie I've seen this month, so I don't recommend it for a more dismal time in your life. Otherwise, check it out.
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