Films We Never Got to Review

MINOR REGRETS AT THE END OF A BLOG

When this blog was just beginning, my friend, Tim Stafford, told me he didn't think the blog go last very long. "After all," he asked, "how many movies are there about churches and pastors?"

It's seven years later, and we've looked at a different film every week. There were a few weeks we ran a repeat, but there were quite a few weeks when we discussed more than one movie. That means we’ve looked at more than 350 films, and we still haven’t run out of films to review. I have a list with nearly 300 potential films, and assuming churches keep showing up in new movies -- I think I already have enough to write about for another seven years. But I'm tired and ready to move on to other projects.

You have to pull the plug sometime, but nonetheless, I regret not having a chance to review some great films that had interesting things to say about faith. Some of the films on this list are pretty awful, but still have interesting things to write about. 

Some of the movies on this list are ones I haven't seen, but they might have interesting things to say. 
There are also films that deal with topics that we rarely touched on.

So these are twelve of the films I most regret not getting around to writing about.

12) Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

I've seen this film more than once, and I like it very much. We've looked at musicals (Sound of Music, Cabin in the Sky, Sister Act) but Fiddler would have been the first musical featuring Eastern Orthodox clergy. There haven’t been many films featuring Orthodox clergy -- the only one I can think of is the Mel Brooks comedy, The Twelve Chairs. I could also have written about Andrei Rublev, a painter of icons used for Orthodox worship, or Beyond the Hills about a Romanian Orthodox Covent, but really, I just wish I'd taken the opportunity to drag the priests in Fiddler over the coals for the way they treated Tevye. 

11) The Quick and the Dead (1995) 

I really enjoyed this Sam Rami western, and I would have liked to write about Russell Crowe’s haunted pastor with a history as a desperado. I would have been happy to have an excuse to watch this again. Most of the westerns I’ve written about haven’t been good westerns (we did get to watch the classic High Noon, but most have been along the lines of The Deadly Companions and God’s Gun). It might have also been fun to get to Charleton Heston’s Will Penny in which Donald Pleasence plays a very creepy, evil preacher.

10) The Exorcist 2: The Heretic (1977) 

It really is a shame I couldn't write about this film, since we reviewed the clergy in the original Exorcist. I have read about this film for a long time, starting with Michael Medved’s Golden Turkey Awards (a salute to bad films), but I’ve never seen it. It really is a shame I couldn’t get to Exorcist 2, since we did review the original Exorcist as well as the second sequel. The Heretic stars Richard Burton in a performance legendary for hamminess. Instead, I've settled for the hammy Burton performances in The Sandpiper and The Robe.(FWIW, another bad film I didn’t write about was God’s Not Dead Part IV: We the People. I watched it in the theater, but never got around to writing about it, though we featured the first three God's Not Dead movies.)

9) Lady Godiva of Coventry (1955) - Please don’t assume it is prurient interests that drew me to curiosity about this film (which I’ve never seen). In all the pictures of Maureen O’Hara as the historical streaker, she seems to be surrounded by nuns. All right. I am curious how the filmmakers handled the nudity in studio days with the Hays Code in full effect. (The Song of Bernadette is another faith-centered story from the golden age of Hollywood. It was quite acclaimed. I’ve never seen it, but it looks rather stodgy, and that's kept me from watching it.)

8) The Devils (1971) 

In the blog, we've tried not to shy away from films that are critical of churches and clergy or even the Christian faith. As a result, we’ve looked at films by famous critics of religion like Michael Tolkin and Luis Buñuel. This notorious “historical” work by writer/director Ken Russell (from a story by Aldous Huxley) is one I never got around to watching. It's difficult to find an unedited version of this X-rated film in which Oliver Reed played a priest with unorthodox views on faith and sex whose followers included licentious nuns. But it was not to be.

7) Ganja & Hess (1973) 

Arguably, this blog didn't cover enough vampire blaxsploitation films, and this movie would have helped remedy that oversight. Sadly, this film was also difficult to find in its original form. (Fun fact: Duane Jones's only other starring performance is in Night of the Living Dead.) The Church seems to play an important part in the battle against dark forces, so I do need to get around to watching this sometime even if I don’t have anywhere to write about it.

6) The Miracle Woman (1931)

This is yet another tough film to track down, with one of my favorite directors (Frank Capra), and starring one of my favorite actresses (Barbara Stanwyck). I'm baffled to realize that we haven’t featured any films by Capra or Stanwyck. Though I haven't seen this film, in it, Barbara becomes disillusioned with the Church and takes up a career as a fraudulent evangelist. Pre-Hays Code films like this one had much more freedom to be critical of the Church. I will manage to write about this one someday, even without this blog as a vehicle.

5) Dogma (1999) 

I have seen this Kevin Smith satire of the Roman Catholic Church and angels and demons that was condemned by the Church even before it was released. While I have grave reservations about the theology in the film, at times it's quite funny and would have been interesting to write about.

4) Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) 

Robert Bresson was one of France’s greatest directors, and I was able to review his classic, Diary of a Country Priest. This film contains just a little about church and clergy. Others of his work, such as Angels of Sin (about a convent that rehabilitates convicts) or The Trial of Joan of Arc. Au Hasard Balthazar is Bresson’s only film (and perhaps the only film of any kind) that features the baptism of a donkey.

3) Les Miserables (1935, 1952, 1998, 2012, or any of the other versions)

There are many adaptations of this Victor Hugo film, but I didn’t get to any of them. This is too bad, because Bishop Myriel, who cares for Jean Valjean, is one of the best portrayals of clergy in literature and cinema.

2) The Name of the Rose (1986) 

I’ve read Umberto Eco’s novel, but I’ve never seen this adaptation of the book, and it’s hard to track down. It’s a retelling of a Sherlock Holmes story using Franciscan monks in a medieval abbey. It stars Sean Connery as a friar, William of Baskerville. It also stars Christian Slater and we at Movie Churches do love Christian Slater films (the good and the awful.)

1) Amazing Grace (2006) 

I saw this film and like it very much. Directed by Michael Apted, it tells the true story of William Wilberforce and his campaign against England's slave trade. Wilberforce's pastor was John Newton, the former slave trader and author of the hymn “Amazing Grace.” He definitely would have received our highest Movie Churches rating of Four Steeples.

If only I could have gotten to these dozen films. And maybe, St. Benny the Dip. And…

Western Month: It's a Duel!

The Deadly Companions (1961) & God’s Gun (1976)
Some say the term “adult Western” originated in 1953 with the release of Paramount Pictures' Shane. The studio was trying to distinguish their film from the more simplistic entries in the genre such as the Roy Rogers and Gene Autry Westerns where the good guys always beat the bad guys in a fair fight and often sang a cheery song as well. This is rather odd; there were certainly “Adult Westerns” before 1953. Films like The Ox-Bow Incident (1942) and Stagecoach (1939) certainly dealt with grown-up issues, and Cimarron won Best Picture in 1931.;

But “Adult” would become even more “Adult” as the years went on -- particularly “Adult Violence” beginning in the 1960s. One of the prime movers in this shift was Sam Peckinpah, who would go on to make The Wild Bunch, one of the most violent Westerns ever made. Another change came in the 1960s with Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns like his trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. (They were called “Spaghetti” Westerns because they were made in Italy.)

Today's two films are connected with those trends. The Deadly Companions was Sam Peckinpah's first feature film after working on TV shows such as The Rifleman and The Westerner. God’s Gun was an Italian production, but it was more. It is the only Italian and Israeli (thanks to producer Menahem Golan) co-production that I know of. 

Of course, the films are featured here because they feature clergy and church prominently.

The Deadly Companions opens with three men, Yellowleg (Brian Keith), Billy (Steve Cochran), and Turk (Chill Willis) going to a small town saloon. (Yes, they are the deadly companions of the title.) The bartender serves them whiskeys but tells them they need to drink quickly. He then pulls curtains down over paintings of naked women in the bar. Billy asks him why he’s doing that and is told, “The parson doesn’t like to see them while he preaches. The bar closes when the preacher comes in.”

Yellowleg comments that it’s not Sunday, but the bartender responds that probably no one around has seen a calendar for the previous two years.

The preacher (Strother Martin) enters followed by a group of congregants, men and women. One woman, Kit Tildon (Maureen O’Hara), and her son, Mead (Billy Vaugh) sit in an unoccupied row of chairs. They draw attention.

One of the other woman loudly whispers to her companion, “Imagine, a woman like that coming in church like she’s respectable.” 

Her friend answers back, “She probably doesn’t even know the boy’s father.” 

“This is probably the closest she’s been to a parson.” 

“The nerve to be holding a prayer book.”

The parson doesn’t seem bothered by this gossiping in the church (bar) at all. He’s bothered by something else. “Lord, I see you brought us some new faces, male and female. I’ll be dishing out the Gospels in a minute, but first I’ve got to say something to the fellas with hats on. I’ve never met a man who wouldn’t take his hat off to the Lord. Mister, take it off.” 

Billy and Turk remove their hats, but Yellowleg will not. “You get on with your preaching,” he says as he leaves the church/bar.

We here at Movie Churches are not impressed with a minister who worries more about headgear than gossip and backbiting in his congregation.

The parson asks for a moment of silence, which is followed by a less than melodious rendition of “Rock of Ages.”

The preacher begins his sermon and says, “If anyone reckons they want to go to hell, that person should stand and be counted.” 

Billy takes him at his word and stands. Billy pulls his gun and says, “Any man that doesn’t stand on his feet as well, is going to join me pronto.”

While his gun is drawn, Kit walks up to him and slaps Billy in the face. Billy is impressed and grabs Kit and kisses her, lets her go, and walks out of the bar.

The preacher tells Kit, “Ma’am, I’d like to thank you for your fortitude.” She and her son leave the church/bar into a shootout. And Kit’s son is shot and killed.

Kit wants to bury her son with his father in the town of Siringo. But that’s Apache country, and people urge her not to go there. The mayor offers a free plot in the graveyard, and the parson offers to perform the ceremony. Kit refuses, insisting she will bury her son by his father, even if she has to go alone. (She doesn’t go alone, as the title of the film indicates.)

Spoilers - Eventually Kit does make it to Siringo and finds her husband’s grave by the Mission, and is soon joined by a posse that includes the parson. The parson offers to say “the right words.”

The clergy come off much better in God’s Gun (written and directed by Gianfranco Parolini). Lee Van Cleef stars in a dual role as Father John, a priest, and his twin brother, Lewis, a gunfighter.

As Father John talks with a young man, Johnny (Leif Garrett), Johnny’s mother, Jenny (Sybil Danning), calls him to polish the glassware (in her saloon). The priest tells her, “First we thank the God for the morning, then we clean the church, then he can polish your glasses.”

At the church, Johnny sneaks some communion wine but spits it out. He thinks the priest doesn’t see, but Father John laughs and says, “Sick grapes make sour wine.” Continuing to search for trouble, Johnny finds a gun and a holster in the church altar.

Johnny asks, “You think you could teach me to shoot a gun sometime?”

“I don’t know if I can remember,” Father John says, “I’m holding it for somebody. I don’t think you’ll ever meet him (his brother Lewis). He’s down in Mexico somewhere.”

Johnny returns to his mother’s saloon. The Claytons, bad men led by brother Sam (Jack Palance), come to town and make trouble in Jenny’s saloon. One of the gang, Jess (Robert Lipton), shoots a man playing cards and falsely claims self-defense. The men ride out of town, and the sheriff (Richard Boone) makes no effort to stop them.

Johnny tells Father John what happened, and the priest pursues the gang, to the great displeasure of the sheriff who worries it will bring more trouble to the town.

Father John sneaks up on the gang as they sleep, stealing their guns. He then wakes the men, and apologizes, “Sorry to destroy your slumber, gentleman.” He explains he came to return the murderer to town for trial. “Let’s go, young man, I don’t want to miss my morning mass.” He is able to return the man to town, with the help of mysterious shots fired from the trees (which turn out to have been Johnny),

Jess is put in jail, though the sheriff isn’t happy about it, because the Claytons return to town and Jess out of jail. Men from the gang then go to the church and shoot the priest down as he is welcoming parishioners to mass.

Johnny sees this, steals one of the Claytons' horses, and rides off to Mexico to find Father John’s brother Lewis. Johnny finds him and learns some interesting things about the late priest. Lewis says, “Nobody could beat John to the draw, but one day God put a Bible in his hand in place of a gun.”

Lewis, though, continues to use the gun and goes back with Johnny to exact revenge for his brother’s death.

So how should we rate the clergy in today’s Western double feature? The uncharitable parson of The Deadly Companions rates only Two Steeples, but the brave Father John of God’s Gun rates Four, bringing today’s average to Three Steeples.

(Sidenote - Of interest probably only to me, but I, Dean, was in a film with Lee Van Cleef, a low-budget adaption of Saki's short story, "The Interlopers".  In high school, I was hired to play a small part in this film that may not even exist anymore. Van Cleef worked on the film on a different day. We never met, but it does make me playable in Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.)

Fight Church Month: The Quiet Man

The Quiet Man (1952)
Should a clergyperson be part of the community or aloof from it? Should a priest be a regular guy, going out with the crowd for a beer, or cloistered away? Should he be holy and set apart or should the priest in a small Irish town join a scheme to convince a belligerent brother to allow his sister to marry the new American in town, even if the plan involves deception?

Okay, that last question is a little more specific and probably only applies to the plot of The Quiet Man, but the other questions also apply to the clergymen in the film. (And to all other clergymen. And clergywomen. But there are certainly no clergywomen in this film set in a small, Irish village in the 1920’s.)

The Quiet Man is much beloved (it’s also one of my favorites), featuring Oscar-winning direction by John Ford and Winton Hoch’s cinematography of the very green Irish locations. In 2013, the film was chosen by Congress to be on the National Film Registry. John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara star, one of the great screen couples (comparable to Bogart and Bacall, Hepburn and Tracy, and Astaire and Rogers). Many people -- like my wife, Mindy -- have seen the film’s classic scene of Wayne and O’Hara’s first kiss without seeing the film because of its use in E.T.

The Quiet Man tells the story of an American boxer, Sean Thornton (Wayne), who returns to his ancestral home in Inisfree, Ireland. He falls in love with a local woman, Mary Kate Danaher (O’Hara). Mary Kate’s brother and guardian, Squire “Red” Danaher (Victor McLaglen), opposes the match. The whole town conspires to convince him to approve of the marriage, which is where we come to the clerical moral quandary. And the clergy and their moral quandaries interest us here at Movie Churches.

The town character, Michaleen Flynn (Barry Fitzgerald), convinces everyone in town to deceive Red into thinking that the only chance he has to marry the town’s richest widow, Sarah Tillane (Mildred Natwick), is to marry off his sister as well. When Red approaches the widow at his sister’s wedding, he discovers it was a ruse. He then confronts Father Peter Lonergan (Ward Bond), the town priest in front of the town. “All lied as part of the conspiracy. It’s bad enough for you people, but my own priest!”

Red may be presented as the villain in the film, and he doesn’t treat his sister well, but he has a point here. Shouldn’t a parishioner expect his priest to oppose deception, or at least not participate in it? And that isn’t the priest’s only deception in the film.

Another prominent clergyman in town, is a married Anglican priest named Cyril Playfair (Arthur Shields) whose worship services have only two or three attendees (and that includes his wife, Elizabeth.) His bishop is coming to observe his ministry, and Playfair fears he’ll be removed from his parish. Father Lonergan asks his parishioners to pretend to be Playfair’s, and even covers his own clerical collar to pretend to be an Anglican member of the congregation.

Both of these acts of deception seem to be done by Father Lonergan with the best of motives, and he seems to be following the lead of the town. But he isn’t making a principled stand of integrity. He certainly isn’t living out the words of Jesus, “Let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no.”

When Thornton and Red engage in a rather epic fist fight, one of Lonegan’s young assistants suggests they should step in and stop the fight.

“Oh, we should,” Lonegan agrees, but he does nothing because he knows the whole town has been longing for the battle and is enjoying the spectacle. (Arguably, that’s a better reaction than the example set by the Bishop and Rev. Playfair, who make a bet on the fight.)

There are good things to be said about the clergy in the film. Lonergan has served the town faithfully. He notes that he baptized both Sean and Mary Kate as infants in the same chapel where he married them.

Both Lonergan and Playfair serve as counselors in the film. Mary Kate interrupts Father Lonergan’s fishing to ask for marital advice (though the Father doesn’t actually stop fishing to talk to her). On her request, they speak in Irish Gaelic, presumably because she feels most comfortable in that language. I noticed, though, that he never refers to Scripture or even the teaching of the church -- but neither does Playfair when Sean comes to him for marital advice. (Sean goes to Playfair partly because he’s the only one in the town who knows Sean’s history as a boxer. The Reverend is a fan of sports and games, having been a boxer himself and a devotee of tiddlywinks.)

And though Red Danaher acts in ways that the entire community recognizes as harmful to his sister, the priest never confronts him.

On the other hand, the priest joins the men in the tavern for drinks and seems open to fishing with them. There is something to be said for that kind of sociability. Father Lonergan also provides the film’s narration, but because of their decisions to conform rather than be holy, we’re knocking off a Steeple and giving the clergy of this film a Three Steeple rating.

Literary Movie Churches: How Green was my Valley (1941)

Among cinephiles How Green Was My Valley is known (and often reviled) as the film that beat out Citizen Kane for the Best Picture Oscar. But it was much loved in its time, and this tender story of a mining family in 19th century Wales, based on the 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn, is still loved by many.

Fortunately, it's not my job here avenge Orson Welles’ trophy mantel, but rather to evaluate the churches and clergy in the film.

We can deal with the church fairly quickly. It's awful. Sure, they sing some decent songs, "Guide Me, O, Thou Great Jehovah" and "Let All Things Now Living" (cutting edge music, since the hymn was written in 1892), but in Welsh, so I couldn't follow them. But what makes the church awful is their practice of Deacon's Meeting, where sinners (which the deacons should remember includes us all) such as unwed mothers are publicly rebuked and humiliated. Maureen O'Hara as Angharad (can't believe we missed that name when our daughters were born) rightly points to the example of the woman caught in adultery forgiven by Jesus, but the practice continues, later to be used for unsubstantiated rumors about Angharad herself.

Even the pastor of the church, after years of service, rebukes the congregation for lacking the love of Christ or appreciation of His sacrifice. The reverend's assessment seems pretty accurate.

So let's move on to the clergyman in the film (by credits, he’s the star of the film, though the lead is really child actor Roddy McDowell as Huw). Walter Pidgeon plays the pastor, Mr. Gruffydd (those Welsh sure have mad spelling skilz), an educated man, from the University of Cardiff, who has chosen to serve the people in a mining community in South Wales. He gets credit right off for choosing a simple life, a poor life.

A major thread is the plot is Mr. Gruffydd’s and Angharad's mutual attraction. One assumes, Hollywood being always Hollywood, that eventually they'll get together. But (spoiler) they don't. The Reverend knows he won't be able to provide for a family in his current ministry. Though the specific Scripture isn't mentioned, he follows the example of the Apostle Paul from I Cor. 7:8.

He cares for the afflicted in the community. When young Huw is injured and thought crippled for life, Mr. Gruffydd visits him. He gives Huw the novel Treasure Island, telling Huw that he is jealous of the boy's opportunity to be in bed reading. But he also encourages Huw that the doctor's prognosis of never walking again is not the last word because "nature is God's handmaiden, and He's instructed her before to change course. Mr. Gruffydd later commands Huw to walk. He does; again, a worthy carrying on of apostolic tradition.

Another major focus of the film is political -- a miner's strike. Some in Mr. Gruffydd’s congregation support the strike; some oppose it, so initially he hesitates to get involved in a "family squabble." Clergy hesitancy about getting involved in political debate is usually a good thing in my book. But when he is urged by some to speak his piece on the issue, he is even-handed, acknowledging the justice the union seeks but also calling for peacemaking and responsibility.

I did have problems with his instruction on prayer to young Huw. When Huw begins to walk again, the Reverend tells Huw that he believes God has used the time of trial to build the boy's spirit and now he must be careful to guard his spiritual health along with his physical health. Mr. Gruffydd urges Huw to pray, and Huw asks how to pray. Mr. Gruffydd responds that prayer is simply "good, clear thinking." He doesn't exactly say he's talking about thoughts sent in God's direction, but I'll give the Reverend the benefit of the doubt on that. There's something to what he says, but on the other hand, Paul wrote in Romans 8:26 that "the Spirit helps us in our weakness; we don't know what we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans." That sounds like a very different thing.

And as I mentioned before, the Reverend gives quite the Whitewashed Sepulchers/Matthew 23 type sermon to the Pharisees in his congregation, so bully for him on that.

So to sum up, the church in the film deserves to have the coal dust brushed from the Reverend’s shoes. And Mr. Gruffydd deserves a good flock. He's certainly a better spiritual example than Charles Foster Kane. Two steeples to the church in this film.

Recently we had the opportunity of visiting the hometown of the director of How Green Was My Valley, John Ford. He won the Academy Award for directing that film, which could join his award shelf with three other Oscars for directing. The city built a statue in his honor, along with small monuments to some of his most memorable films.