Based on Rolf Hochhuth’s controversial 1964 play Der Stellvertreter ("The Deputy"), Costa-Gavras’s equally controversial adaptation produced booing, hissing, applause, and bitter anger during the press conference following its premiere at last year’s Berlin Film Festival. Hochhuth’s very long drama, which indicts Pope Pius XII for his failure to come to the aid of Europe’s Jews during World War II, tries to cover too much material; Costa-Gavras’s film suffers from the same weakness. Hochhuth’s Pius is more interested in using Hitler to stop Stalin than he is in saving Jews; what’s odd is that though Hochhuth has endorsed the film, it’s not clear what Costa-Gavras’s Pius (Marcel Iures) could have accomplished. (Were he to say, "Killing Jews is unacceptable," Hitler seems set to reply, "We esteem the pope, but his Holiness has been misinformed as to what is happening to Jews in Germany.") Costa-Gavras also suggests that had Hochhuth’s conscience-stricken SS officer, Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur), chosen not to follow orders, he would have been shot.

Mathieu Kassowitz seems impossibly callow as the Jesuit Riccardo, who attempts to convey Gerstein’s information to the pope — perhaps because this is a character Hochhuth made up. As for Pius, history will record that millions of Jews died while he was pope, with little record of what he did to stop the slaughter. The problem, as with so many of the current "reality" films, from Bloody Sunday to The Pianist, is that the castigated are not allowed to speak for themselves. This is nonetheless an important film, and its failure to find an American market says volumes. (132 minutes)