Papal Bull

POPE JOAN

Directed by MICHAEL ANDERSON

Screenplay by JOHN BRILEY

In its unstinting quest for novelty, Hollywood has really come up with something new this time: a Pope who gives birth.

It must be added that this Pope is really a nun called Joan. The time is the Middle Ages. The Saxons, as is their wont, have been sacking the countryside, raping and pillaging and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Under such circumstances, it is hardly safe for a young nun to travel openly. When Joan (Liv Ullmann) must flee her nunnery, loyal Father Adrian (Maximilian Schell) chops her long honey-colored hair into a kind of modified Sassoon, outfits her in a monk's habit and runs with her from the marauding hordes.

There is indeed a legend that a woman disguised as a man sat on the throne of St. Peter some time in the 9th century. Surely, however, the legend could not have been as turgid or as invincibly dull as the film that has been fashioned from it. The film makers, making a wild scramble for contemporary relevance, have chosen to frame the story with a singularly absurd yarn about a schizoid evangelist (also portrayed by Miss Ullmann) who believes she is Pope Joan. "Classic case of withdrawal," mutters Psychiatrist Keir Dullea, peering at her through huge spectacles.

By means of flashbacks, Pope Joan correlates the legend with the life of the young evangelist: the nunnery is inter cut with a modern orphanage, Joan's monk father with a back-country Bible thumper, and so on. Invention frequently flags, and there are great barren stretches of the movie that contain no contemporary parallels whatever, presumably because the scenario could invent no 20th century equivalents for the Saxons or the intrigues of the papal court under Leo, who is zestfully portrayed by Trevor Howard.

Pope Joan is excellently photo graphed by Billy Williams (Women in Love, Sunday Bloody Sunday) and contains a valiant English-speaking debut by Miss Ullmann, who in the films of Ingmar Bergman has established herself as an actress who must be called great. It is a reputation that may not survive many more movies like this one.

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