Does anyone remember the title of the movie in which an outlaw (I think) goes into a Mexican(?) or Texas(?) town and assumes the identity of a replacement priest for that town, in order to hide out.
He was once an altar boy, so it was relatively easy for him to say a convincing Mass, hold believable Confessions, give the Last Rites, etc. And from what I recall, he did all these with the same solemnity and compassion of a most reverential cleric.
And IIRC, when the real priest finally showed up, this cowboy was genuinely contrite,
when the priest asked, “Do you realize what you’ve done?”
In a weird way, I rather think all the Masses, Confessions, etc., that the cowboy performed were every bit as good as if the Pope himself said them.
I think you could be thinking of Guns for San Sebestian (although it had a number of different titles around the world). It starred Antony Quinn as the cowboy on the run and Charles Bronson as the rebel/gang leader/crook who with his gang tormented/tortured Quinn.
According to his autobiography, going into the film Quinn had great hopes for the Itallian-made film, but he lost some of his excitement as the filming went on and problems arose. I am told by friends in Germany that internationally it is considered one of the great westerns ranking up there with the Ox Bow Incident and The Magnificient Seven (personally, I can’t see it).
Thank you so much TV time! I won’t bother you with the details but my visiting relatives will find my Q and your A in their email Inbox when they leave here (any minute) and get home to Wilbraham MA.
I won’t have to brag about this website. It’ll be self evident.
(semi-hijack)
Not what you’re looking for, but if you’re interested in this particular theme, the Chinese story By the Water’s Edge (more famously known, perhaps, as Suikoden) has a couple of characters hide out from the law by passing as clergy. Hilarity then ensues.
I’m also amused that the Google ads are offering lawerly service for those abused by priests…
That sounds more like The Ballad Of Cat Ballou: it’s the modus operandi for rescuing fellow-scoundrels of the outlaw whom Jane Fonda inexplicably falls for. However, he’s disguised as a Revivalist preacher, not a Catholic priest.
Actually, I suppose the 1989 We’re No Angels staring Robert De Niro, Sean Penn and Demi Moore could qualify if it weren’t for the cowboy part (although country-western singer Hoyt Axton was in the film).
De Niro and Penn were escaped convicts who pretend to be priests in Canada to evade the law.
Almost nothing like the Bogart, Ray, Ustinov 1955 We’re No Angels - a delightful film.
Well, James Coburn pretends to be an Irish priest in Mexico in Duck you Sucker also known as A Fistful of Dynamite. It costarred Rod Stieger as a Mexican revolutionary.
As I remember he had a gun in the Bible once and explosives in it another time.
Once again this was an Italian western, directed by Serigo Leone. Really uneven film, however. It had that loud, almost overbearing, music you constantly heard in Serigo Leone films.
No, I wasn’t thinking of Cat Ballou. There was another western and it revolved around a Catholic church in Mexico or one of the bordering states. The ‘preacher’ was a gunslinger, and he had a cutout inside a bible with a gun in it. That’s all I can remember.
The first movie I thought of was Stars in My Crown, “one of the most neglected films in the history of cinema” according to this paper’s Jonathan Rosenbaum. But it doesn’t take place in Mexico.
Also made me think of another great film, Night of the Hunter: “an enduring masterpiece–dark, deep, beautiful, aglow.”