Literary Movie Churches Adaptations Volume V: The End of the Affair

The End of the Affair (1955 and 1999)
Literary Month concludes with a religious novel featuring tawdry sex. Well, perhaps tawdry isn't a fair term at all because I’m sure the characters, a married woman and her unmarried love, believe theirs was a singular love, beautiful and not at all wrong. Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, published in 1951, has been adapted twice for the screen, in 1955 and 1999.

Considering when they were made, it’s not surprising there are a number of differences between the films. The first is in black and white, and the second is in color. The first starred an American (Van Johnson) as novelist Maurice Bendrix, and made the character a Yank, while the second starred Ralph Fiennes as a British writer (also named Maurice Bendrix). And the second film has explicit sex scenes while the 1955 film does not. (Both films were made in England, so while the first film didn’t need to follow the American Production code, the British code could be even more strict.)

Of course, these differences don’t matter much to us here at Movie Churches. The differences in how the films handle churches and clergy matter here.

The novel and the film adaptations all share the same basic plot. During World War 2, a novelist in London begins an affair with Sarah, the wife of Henry, a British bureaucrat. (Greene admitted the story was based on an affair of his own.) As Maurice and Sarah meet during an air raid, the apartment building is bombed. Sarah is concerned that Maurice is dead and prays, promising God that if Maurice does live, she will break off the affair. Maurice is uninjured, and Sarah breaks up with him.

Time passes and Maurice doesn’t know why Sarah ended the relationship. He suspects there may be another man, so he goes to Henry (Peter Cushing in 1955, Stephen Rea in 1999) and says he will be hiring a private detective to follow Sarah (Deborah Kerr in 1955, Julianne Moore in 1999). Maurice (pronounced "Morris" in case you wondered) tells Henry he will pretend to be Sarah’s lover to save Henry from the embarrassment of the situation. A detective named Pakis, who brings his young son along on his jobs, follows Sarah. This is where the film plots diverge from one another.

The two Sarahs in the two films follow two very different men.

In the 1955 film, Sarah hears a “preacher” in a park proclaiming a message of atheism. He offers counseling to help people overcome the hindrances of religion. Sarah goes to him, hoping he will free her from her promise to give up Maurice. Pakis reports to Maurice that Sarah is seeing a man. This man, Richard Smythe (Michael Goodliffe), fails to persuade Sarah that God doesn’t exist. In fact, his hate for God is so strong (half his face is covered by a birthmark) that Sarah says he convinced her that God exists. How could he hate someone he didn't believe exists?

Sadly, Sarah coughs in the film. We all know that in old movies, coughs indicate a fatal illness (usually, but not always, consumption). Sarah goes to a priest who refuses to give her any easy answers. Sarah comes to embrace her faith in God. And dies offscreen.

Maurice meets Sarah’s mother, who tells him that Sarah was baptized into the Catholic church when she was two, but her father was Jewish so they couldn’t practice their faith. Maurice comes, reluctantly, to faith in God.

In the 1999 version, Parkis the detective finds Sarah has been seeing a different Richard Smythe (Jason Isaacs). He’s a priest who lives with his sister. Believing he has been having an affair with Sarah, Maurice confronts the priest, “Aren’t you bound by the vows of chastity?”

Maurice is mistaken. Sarah has been receiving spiritual counsel, not physical affection from the priest. She comes to have faith in God. In this version, it is Sarah who tells Maurice that she was baptized in the Catholic Church at the age of two. She also coughs in this film, obviously signaling a fatal illness.

Because of her illness, Sarah is confined to her home with Henry, but Henry, learning of the affair, invites Maurice to live with them and help care for Sarah. Though neither Henry nor Sarah know it, Maurice bars Father Smythe from seeing Sarah. After Sarah dies, Maurice convinces Henry to cremate Sarah rather than have a Catholic funeral.

However, after her death, Maurice learns more about Sarah. The detective’s young son Lance has a deforming birthmark. Lance follows Sarah as his father's assistant but falls asleep. Sarah, finding him asleep, kisses his birthmark, which vanishes within weeks. In this film also, Maurice comes grudgingly to faith in God.

Both films lead one to think that Maurice eventually believes in God, but in the novel, Maurice believes God exists but refuses to have a relationship with Him because Maurice now believes that love is too painful.

In both films, Sarah goes to a church to wrestle with her painful promise. In both films, she receives kind but firm counsel from a priest. So we’re giving the Church, Father Crompton (Stephen Murray) from the 1955 version, and Father Smythe from the 1999 version our highest rating of Four Steeples.

Graham Greene Bonus: This month we've been focusing on film adaptations of novels, but while the focus is on Greene, I'd like to recommend Went the Day Well? based on his short story, "The Lieutenant Died Last." (Both of those titles are bad, but I believe the film title is worse). Made in 1942, it imagines German soldiers emulating Brits and invading a small English village. It is well worth seeking out. Most of the villagers are confined in the local church. The priest takes a stand against the Nazis that would earn him a Four Steeple Movie Churches rating.

Movie Churches Goes Really, REALLY Old School: Quo Vadis

Quo Vadis (1951)

Along with the box office and Academy Awards love when the blockbuster Titanic came out, some complained that the film focussed on the love story of pauper Jack and pampered Rose while 1,500 lives were lost in the background. Perhaps James Cameron had Quo Vadis in mind as he wrote the script. While the 1951 epic is ostensibly about the burning of Rome and the persecution of the early Church, it's really about the love between Marcus Vinicius (Robert Taylor), a Roman military commander, and Lygia (Deborah Kerr), a Christian captive, daughter of a foreign ruler.

For me, Titanic holds up well, even if the romance is a tad sappy. The replication of the ship's disastrous sinking is spectacular. 

Perhaps people back in the early 1950s found Rome's burning in the film breathtaking, but I found the effects to be underwhelming -- unlike the burning of Atlanta sequence in1939’s Gone With the Wind which still has quite an impact. The lions menacing the Christians in the arena is nearly comical because of the distance kept between the participants.

Mervyn LeRoy was a good director with actors, and he made classics such as Little Caesar and Mister Roberts. Though LeRoy gets at least two wonderful performances (from Peter Ustinov as Nero and Leo Genn as the emperor’s chief counselor, Petronius), Cameron is the master of spectacle as Titanic (and even intellectually empty films such as Avatar) makes clear. Sure, some very good matte paintings show gorgeous vistas and amazing crowd scenes in Quo Vadis, but the film's more than a bit of a slog at nearly three hours long.

Fortunately, here at Movie Churches, we're not here to judge films, but rather the clergy and churches in films, and this film features the early Church in Rome along with some rather notable clergy: the Apostles Peter and Paul.

Lygia is the central Christian figure in the film. Though a captured enemy of Rome, the daughter of a barbarian king, she is raised as the foster daughter of Roman General Aulus Plautius (Felix Aylmer). Plautius is an actual historical figure, but there is not strong evidence that he was a Christian as he is in this story (though history indicates his wife may have been).  The family is good friends with that famed traveling philosophy teacher, Paul of Tarsus. At least, that’s how Plautius introduces the Apostle to Marcellus. Plautius is afraid to refer to Paul as a Christian evangelist.

In the film, Paul is visiting the family shortly after a visit to Antioch and Corinth, a free traveler. But since this film is said to take place thirty years after Jesus’ death, approximately 63 AD, my understanding is that the historical Paul would be imprisoned -- but perhaps not. On the other hand, tradition does claim that the Apostle Peter was crucified upside down by the Romans following the city fires as depicted in the film.

Really, if you are going to have clergy in a film, it’s hard to do better than these two apostles, but the characters in the film have significantly different personalities from their presentation in the New Testament. 

We first meet the film's Paul at General Plautius' home. While Marcellus and his friend are visiting him,  Plautius introduces Paul as a “teacher of philosophy” rather than as a disciple of Jesus. Paul goes along with this, saying, “I guess you could call me that.” Later when Paul and Plautius discuss this deception, Paul admits sometimes “strategy is necessary.” He says of Marcellus and his friend, “They are Rome. If we could teach them, we could teach the world.” 

This doesn’t sound much like the Paul who wrote, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”

When Lygia talks about her interest in Marcellus, Paul doesn’t seem at all concerned about a follower of Jesus marrying a worshiper of Rome's power. This Paul doesn’t seem like the man who wrote, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers, for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?” But it ends up being Marcellus who doesn’t want to share his wife with Jesus rather than Christians worried about Lygia sharing her husband with Roman gods.

The most peculiar thing about the film's presentation of Paul is his attitude toward Peter. He's quite the fanboy. Paul excitedly introduces Peter as someone who was in the presence of Jesus. One gets the feeling he never met Peter before, but the Bible represents them as having a long relationship going back to when Paul became a Christian. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul in Galatia describes confronting Peter for compromising the faith. In his writings, Paul repeatedly tells about having seen the resurrected Christ himself, and is firm in his claim to having been called as an apostle. 

But in the film, Peter comes to Rome to serve the Church with Paul. Together, they lead a worship service, and Peter tells the church the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus. This Peter is a much more mellow preacher than the Peter of Acts 2, who blames the crowd for killing Christ. Paul conducts a baptismal service, pouring water from a cup on people’s heads rather than immersing them. At first, I wondered if the filmmakers worried about offending Baptists in the audience, but then I realized Baptists back in the 1950s weren’t going to the movies. 

Or rather, Baptists in the 1950s weren’t admitting they were going to movies.

For some reason, Peter is much older than Paul in the film. And Paul seems much more stereotypically Jewish than Peter. But both are portrayed as good men who love their Lord Jesus and desire to serve His Church.

And the Church comes off rather well in the film, too. They preach peace and tolerance in opposition to the tyranny of the emperor Nero. They are willing to be burned, thrown to the lions, or crucified rather than deny their Lord Jesus. So while I found the film to be rather a snooze, the church in the film certainly earns the highest Movie Churches rating of Four Steeples.

Christmas Cameos Continue: Black Narcissus

Black Narcissus (1947)

First things first: Black Narcissus is one of the most beautiful films ever made. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the team of directors, made this and a number of other films noted for vibrant colors, striking imagery, and creative framing. This film won Oscars for cinematography and art direction. Though filmed in a studio, the matte paintings of the Himilayas used in the film are magnificent.

But since the beauty of a film is not our concern here at Movie Churches, we think the important thing is that Black Narcissus is about nuns. Anglican missionaries from the Convent of the Order of Sisters of Mary in Calcutta go to the mountains to establish a school, hospital, and church in a palace formerly used by a local ruler to house his harem. The nuns were invited by General Toda Rai (Esmond Knight), partially for the education of his son (Sabu) who will eventually take his place as leader.

Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) is appointed Sister Superior to direct four other nuns: Sister Phillipa (Flora Robson) the gardener, Sister Briony (Judith Furse) to run the infirmary, the popular Sister Honey (Jenny Laird) to teach, and the unwell Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) to teach as well. If I were just writing about the nuns' interaction with each other, there would be plenty of material. There would also be plenty to say about the nuns' interaction with the locals. 

The General’s agent, Mr. Dean (David Farrar), tells Sister Clodagh that the people living in the area are like children. Sister Clodagh readily agrees, “They’re like unreasonable children.” 

If I wanted to write about the ugly way the nuns infantilize the natives and the racism that leads to it, there might be fertile ground. But it’s December and I really need to write about Christmas. Thankfully, for my purposes, a crucial scene in the middle of the film takes place on Christmas Eve.

The sisters are celebrating with a worship service. After we hear them singing "The First Noel," they sing "Lullay My Liking" -- a rather strange carol based on a Middle English lyric. In the song, Mary is singing to her infant, “Lullay my liking, my dear Son, my Sweeting; Lullay my dear Heart, mine own dear Darling, I saw a fair maiden sitten and sing; She lulled a little child, A sweete Lording, Lullay my liking.” The song reminds Sister Clodagh of her days as a young woman in Britain, and the spoiled affair with a young man that led her to become a nun.

Then Mr. Dean and the young general stop by to pay their respects.

The young General says to Sister Clodagh, “Sister, may I congratulate you on the birth of Christ?”

“Thank you, General.”

“I am very interested in Jesus Christ,” the General says, but he sees that he somehow offended the nun, “Did I say something wrong?”

Sister Superior tells him, “No, but we usually don’t speak of Him so casually.”

It’s Mr. Dean, the General’s agent, who responds to the nun's absurd statement appropriately, “But you should! You should speak of Him casually, and He should be as much a part of your life as daily bread.” 

Unfortunately, Mr. Dean has obviously been drinking more than a little.

Sister Superior scolds him, “How dare you come here like this tonight? You’re unforgivable! You’re objectionable when sober, and abominable when drunk. If you have a spark of decency, you won’t come here to us again.”

I know, I know. Who has ever heard of anyone drinking during the holidays? The Sister seems to be quite taken aback at the concept.

I am much more appalled by Sister Clodagh's theology and her failure at evangelism. A man -- a leader in the community she and her Sisters have come to serve -- comes to her and expresses an interest to hear more about Jesus. Instead of taking advantage of this opportunity to share the Gospel, theoretically the reason she traveled thousands of miles to be in this place, she scolds the man for his manners.

And Mr. Dean is right. Of course, Jesus should be a daily part of her conversation. But she seems to think the name of Jesus should be reserved for homilies or some such nonsense. Her self righteous attitude about Dean’s drinking is also something that the Man who turned water into wine would not appreciate.

Just from that Christmas Eve Service and the Sister Superior's treatment of a member of the community (and Mr. Dean, the Englishman), it is quite evident that her ministry will fail. If you can’t show love and grace at Christmas, what will you do the rest of the year?

Critics through the years have given Black Narcissus the highest of ratings. But the best rating we can give Sister Clodagh and her Sisters, even with generous Christmas Spirit, is a Movie Church rating of Two (of a possible four) Steeples.

Robert Mitchum Movie Month: Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)

Some of the best cinematic love stories do not end happily. In Casablanca, Rick and Ilsa part for the good of the free world. In Brief Encounter, wedding vows are honored. Romeo and Juliet have bummed movie audiences for decades (and live audiences for centuries) Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), directed by the great John Huston, has a different obstacle to romance: God.

with those suicides. (Sorry for all the spoilers.)

During World War II, Marine Corporal Allison (Robert Mitchum) is stranded on a raft in the South Pacific and washes up on the shore of an island populated only by one woman, a nun. The Japanese have evacuated the island, but Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr) stayed behind to care for a dying priest.

By the time Corporal Allison arrives, the priest is buried under a cross on the island. Allison asks, “You’re alone?”

She responds, “God has been with me.” She tells him, “Thank God you were spared, Mr. Allison.”

“Same to you, ma’am,” he responds.

As Allison rests, Sister Angela lights candles in the chapel and says her prayers; when Allison gets up, he puts out the candles, afraid they’ll be seen by the Japanese. The Japanese do eventually come back, causing Angela and Allison to take refuge in a cave on the island.

As they spend time together, Allison begins to fall in love with Sister Angela, but the result isn’t what you might expect. Instead, Allison and Angela respect each other’s allegiances. Allison tells Sister Angela, “I’m a marine all through me. You got your cross, I got my globe and anchor. Me, I got the Corps like you got the church.”

She talks about her training, “You ought to know my D.I. (Drill Instructor), Mother Bridget. We called her the Holy Terror.”

Allison says, “I didn’t know nuns made with the jokes. I didn’t know they was pretty, neither.” He admits he doesn’t pray, but when she asks if he believes in God, he responds, “Anyone with any sense believes in God.”

As they spend more time together, Allison finds himself falling for the sister. He asks, “Supposing a nun should change her mind, could she get out?” She asks if he means desertion from her call.

“They wouldn’t shoot you,” he responds.

But she tells him, “You could lose your immortal soul.” But she admits, “I was to have taken my final vows next month.”

“You could still pull out?” he asks. He begs her not to go through with her final vows. He pleads, “I’ve never loved anything or anyone before. That’s why I’d like to ask you to marry me. I couldn’t keep from saying it, ma’am. So tell me if there’s a chance.”

She breaks the hard news to Allison, “No, I’ve already given my heart to Christ our Lord. Here’s the ring. When I make my final vows, it will be a gold ring.”

But later, when Allison has too much saki while they hide in the cave, he persists, “If you had to be a nun, why couldn’t you be old and ugly? Why did you have to have blue eyes and big, beautiful eyes. We’re like Adam and Eve.”

Sister Angela runs from the cave, into the cold night. She gets sick, and Allison has to care for her. As she recovers, he apologizes for his words and behavior.

With Japanese on the island, Marine Corporal Allison looks for a chance to attack them. He believes God is talking to him, telling him to go after their base.

The nun asks, “Are you sure it’s God speaking, not your natural desire to take part in the fighting?”

He responds, “Pretty sure, ma’am.”

She says, “Then He’ll protect you,” but she still prays, “Dear God, Mr. Allison is not of the church, he’s only a Marine. If his time has come, I ask you to be merciful when he comes into your presence.”

After a battle, the U.S. Navy comes to their rescue. Angela and Allison will go separately to their lives, and he says, “Very pleased to meet you, ma’am. It has been a pleasure.”

She responds, “Mr. Allison, even if we are many miles apart, you will be my dear companion always.” But not lover or husband. They part as friends, nothing more. But it is a lot.

A modern telling of the tale might tempt the filmmaker to show more in the relationship. I’m glad that Huston was satisfied with making Mr. Allison and Sister Angela stay true to their callings. We're giving Sister Angela 4 Steeples.

Robert Mitchum Movie Churches Month

It could be argued that no single actor lowered of image of clergy in the cinema more substantially than Robert Mitchum. During the first decades of cinema in the sound era priests were represented as being kindly and wise, played by the likes of Bing Crosby, Pat O’Brien, and Barry Fitzgerald. These men raised funds for the poor (or at least the building fund), offered sage advice, and made a difference in the lives of troubled youths.

With one performance, as the homicidal preacher Harry Powell, Mitchum changed the perception that a clergyman in a film was someone the audience could trust to do the right thing. He might instead be the person who will do the very worst thing.

You might remember reading a post about that film, Night of the Hunter, during a month of Halloween horror films. Mitchum again played a murderous pastor in Five Card Stud, a Movie Churches post from before there was a Movie Churches blog.

From these two films, one might get the impression that ministry and killing always go hand in hand. Fortunately, this isn’t the case in all of Robert Mitchum’s filmography, so we’ll be looking at clergy and churches in Robert Mitchum films to see if there are more pleasant ecclesiastical outcomes. (Spoiler, Deborah Kerr, as a nun in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, doesn’t go on a deadly killing spree. She’s rather nice, in fact.) Look for a new Mitchum Movie Church every Friday this month.