Catholic Movies, Part 1: "Silence" and "The Scarlet and the Black"

New Books in Performing Arts

Jonathan Fessenden and I talk about two movies, Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2016) and Jerry London’s The Scarlet and the Black (1983) and what they say about how to confront evil in terrible times—seventeenth-century Tokugawa Japan in one film, and 1943 Nazi-occupied Rome in the other—how to face our shortcomings and lean on God even when He is hard to find. We also talk about Jonathan’s article about continuous prayer and his life and journey.

Jonathan Fessenden is a Catholic writer, composer, and teacher of theology. He has written about movies and worked in the industry as a composer, and continues to write music for film.

Note: In this episode we refer to my earlier conversation with Makoto Fujimura about his work on the film Silence and other topics: Almost Good Catholics, Episode 14.

• Jonathan Fessenden, Missio Dei, “Pray without Ceasing” (October 6, 2022)
• Pope Francis’s recent homily on continuous prayer (September 28, 2022)
• All of Jonathan Fessenden’s articles on Missio Dei are here.
• Jonathan Fessenden’s album, Upon the Water, is here.
• Silence (2016), official trailer
• The Scarlet and the Black (1983), trailer
• Inside the Vatican, “Deep Dive: The Secret Archives of Pope Pius XII” (article and podcast)

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