Smoke and Mirrors: Papal Power on Screen

Ritual has often met raw political calculation in the cloistered opulence of the Vatican. The death of a pope is not merely an occasion of mourning but an invitation to intrigue. On May 7, 135 cardinals will withdraw into the sacred theatricality of the Sistine Chapel, sealed from the world, to cast ballots toward divining the next spiritual sovereign of the Roman Catholic Church. The smoke that rises - first black, then, eventually, white - has long captivated the global imagination. Popular fiction and cinema, never one to resist a spectacle steeped in secrecy, has offered its own interpretations of this ancient rite of succession.

Two films in particular, both based on bestselling novels – The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) and Conclave (2024) – nicely bookend a half-century of cinematic fascination with papal politics. Each film is informed by the anxieties their respective eras have brought to the Church and its watchers.

In ‘The Shoes of the Fisherman,’ based on the 1963 bestseller by Australian author Morris West, the election of a pope plays out against the Cold War backdrop of nuclear brinkmanship and ideological exhaustion. The redoubtable Anthony Quinn plays Kiril Lakota, a Russian bishop unexpectedly elevated to the papacy as the world teeters on the edge of annihilation. It is a film of operatic ambition and sweeping set design, featuring a gallery of heavyweight actors - Laurence Olivier, Oskar Werner, David Janssen, John Gielgud among others.

The film, released just a few years after the real-life Second Vatican Council and on the cusp of détente, presented a fantasy of a Church transcending East-West hostilities through moral clarity and humility. Quinn’s Lakota is a kind of papal Christ figure as he emerges from a Siberian gulag, and sheds the trappings of papal power to stave off World War III. If the premise now seems both quaint and impossibly naïve, the film’s sincerity still resonates. Its vision of faith as a global political force is a powerful one.

By contrast, ‘Conclave,’ Edward Berger’s stylish 2024 adaptation of Robert Harris’s 2016 thriller, moves in darker, more Machiavellian corridors, holding a veritable mirror to the upcoming conclave following Pope Francis’ death. Where ‘Fisherman’ aimed for prophetic grandeur, ‘Conclave’ offers the suspense of ecclesiastical noir. Here, the Vatican is less holy sanctuary than fortress of secrets wherein alliances form and dissolve beneath Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.

The protagonist, Cardinal Lomeli, played with grave intensity by Ralph Fiennes, is a man of conscience who uncovers a truth so explosive it could upend not just the election but the moral credibility of the Church itself. The plot, which in the novel hinges on a revolutionary revelation about one of the papal candidates, is delicately preserved in the film. But the tension lies not in the twist, but in the realization that even the divine must contend with damage control.

Harris, a former political journalist, understands institutions not as engines of idealism, but as machines of survival as he has brilliantly demonstrated in his previous novels – the alternate history ‘Fatherland,’ ‘Enigma,’ ‘An Officer and a Spy’ and especially the wonderful Cicero trilogy. Berger’s film amplifies that atmosphere, blending the sinister rhythms of ‘House of Cards’ with the solemn hush of a requiem.

For all their tonal divergence, what ‘Conclave’ and ‘The Shoes of the Fisherman’ share is a reverence for the ritual of papal succession as a cinematic engine. Few narrative settings are as naturally suspenseful: a locked room, absolute secrecy, global consequence. Yet both stories also remind us that the papacy, despite its divine trappings, is still a human office filled by frail men navigating power, politics and their own consciences.

There is something poignant about how both films, separated by nearly six decades, circle back to the same question: can any single man bear the spiritual and political burden of leading over a billion souls? ‘Fisherman’ answers with radical idealism; ‘Conclave’ with agonized realism. And yet, both find solace in the possibility that faith, if not always pure, may still offer redemption.

With the real-life conclave now imminent, it is striking how these films illuminate not just the Vatican but the anxieties of the wider world. In 1968, it was nuclear war and global hunger. In 2024, it is transparency, legitimacy and the trauma of clerical abuse. The papacy may be timeless, but the crises it faces are anything but.