MovieChat Forums > The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) Discussion > 'Set in a futuristic view of the late 19...

'Set in a futuristic view of the late 1980s' ....

posted 12 years ago by jaystarstar
6 replies | jump to latest

... according to the iMDB synopsis, yet really there's hardly any indication whatsoever the movie was supposed to be set (roughly) 20 years ahead of its actual release date.

The planes the characters ride on don't look particularly advanced, the TV sets and telephones the characters use don't look futuristic. On the street scenes set in the streets of Rome, everybody is driving mid-1960s cars.

The big video display screen Premier Olivier uses to display the film clips to Bishop Kiril I guess probably was pretty advanced for 1968, but certainly the Premier of the USSR would have been privy to state-of-the-art home theater equipment.

I think the only real indication this all was supposed to be taking place in the future was that Kiril was supposed to have been sent to the Gulag roughly at the time the movie was made (1968) and released "almost twenty years later."

So even though in theory "SOTFM" was supposed to be set in 1986-88 or thereabouts, there really was no indication in the movie itself it didn't take place in 1968.

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4) You ever seen Superman $#$# his pants? Case closed.

[–] kducklin2 12 years ago

Hardly matters, though, does it? It's not science fiction. The only reason the book was set in the 1980s was so that Morris West could set up a socio-political scenario that many 1960s readers would have found hard to swallow in a contemporary setting. Beyond that, the book places no special emphasis on its "futuristic" setting.

"Duck, I says..."

[–] CitizenCairParavel 11 years ago

Pretty prescient if you ask me.

[–] Big G-2 11 years ago

Could have been set in 2013, where Pope Francis (just like Anthony Quinn's pope) is very unconventional (such as leaving the Vatican in street or regular priest clothes to see how he could help those in need) and stirring up some of the more conservative hierarchy of the church (not to mention conservative political commentators like Rush Limbaugh).

[–] [email protected] (2034) a year ago

Also controversial enough that the liberal and radtrads as they say are on the same side misrepresenting him.

[–] liscarkat (18897) 3 years ago

There really wasn't a lot of visual difference between 1968 and 1988, especially in Europe, where tiny cars were already widely in use in the 1960s.

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

i never would have guessed.