Movie Churches during the Great Depression: O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) and Emperor of the North (1973)

 Sometimes technique very much matters. For instance, today in Movie Churches we have two movies with scenes of baptisms. We never learn the name of pastors or the churches in either film. But one pastor has an effective method of baptizing, while the other gets so much so very wrong.

Now let’s get some technical details out of the way. We are talking about believer’s baptism here. Many churches, particularly mainline denominations, practice infant baptism, like you see in The Godfather, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. These films show the baptisms of people who choose to be baptised.

There are also different ways that churches apply water in baptism. There is “aspersion” which applies to the sprinkling of water on the head (which is suitable for babies, but surely isn’t a real man’s baptism). Closely related is baptism by “affusion”, the pouring of water on the head; which is closely related to “immersion” when water is poured over the head and body. But the kind of baptism practiced in these films is “submersion” where in a person is completely immersed in a body of water (a lake, river, swimming pool or baptismal tank.)

Submersion baptism has the advantage of being cinematic, especially since both films have baptisms in the open air in beautiful places.

In the Ethan and Joel Coen’s comedy,O Brother, Where Art Thou, three escaped convicts stumble upon a church baptism. A large congregation, all dressed in long, white robes, are in line to be baptized in the middle of the lake. (The scene was filmed on location in Alligator Lake near Vicksburg, Mississippi.) The congregation is singing “Let’s Go Down to the River to Pray” even though, as I mentioned, they’re at a lake.

One of the convicts, Delbert, the least bright of the three (not that any of the three is at all bright) cuts to the front of the line and is baptized. The pastor in the film has good baptismal technique. He covers the mouth and nose of the person baptized. He makes sure the person is secure and lowers the person into the water.

Another of the convicts, Pete, is also baptized. But Everett (George Clooney) doesn’t follow along, calling it all part of foolish superstition.

The event changes life for Delbert and Pete, but especially Delbert. Both are excited about the pastor’s assurances that baptism washed away all their sins. Delbert is excited to be cleared of guilt for the robbery of a Piggly Wiggly that sent him to jail, but Everett gives him the sad news that although he might be square with the Lord, he's not right with the state of Mississippi.

But Delbert does change. When the men meet Baby Face Nelson, Delbert knows he can’t join him on his spree of bank robberies even though Delbert thinks it sounds like good fun. (The famous bank robber says, “Jesus saves, but George Nelson withdraws.”)  And when Everett steals a pie from a window sill, Delbert leaves some cash behind to pay for it.

Though we only see the baptizing pastor and his congregation briefly, his ministry has a real impact on the film’s central characters.

The same can’t be said of the baptizing pastor in director Robert Aldrich’s Emperor of the North. In a situation rather similar to the scene in O Brother, Lee Marvin (as a hobo called A#1) joins a baptism in progress to escape the railroad bulls that are pursuing him.

I was not impressed with the technique of this pastor, who's baptizing his congregation in a river in Oregon. There are dozens of congregants, and Marvin also cuts in line to the pastor. But this pastor dunks his people face forward and doesn’t properly cover their mouth and noses, practically drowning people.

No wonder Marvin isn’t transformed and refers to the congregation as “Jesus shouters”. (As he drags another hobo away from the river he makes the baffling statement that he's doing it to "save [him] from the Presbyterians." It seemed more like a Baptist congregation.)

The greatest problem of baptismal planning in the film is in the matter of wardrobe. One of the women in the congregation is only wearing a thin, white robe. The woman is quite, um, well endowed, and after her robe becomes wet… Well, let me just say her presence is the one part of the service A#1 seems to appreciate.

So, based solely on how they conduct their outdoor baptisms, I’m giving the church in O Brother Where Art Thou three steeples and the church in Emperor of the North one steeple. 

Mississippi films on the small and big screens

On the small screen

On our cross country trip this year, we've brought along a black DVD folder. Before we began the trip we made labels with state names and went through our collection of DVDs to fill the slots. For some states, like California, New York, Illinois, etc., there were a multitude of films to choose from. For a few states, we could find nothing (we're looking at you, Delaware).

For a few other states, like Mississippi, we only had one film in our collection that would work. We hadn't watched My Dog Skip for years, when our kids were, you know, kids. A period film, set during World War II in the Mississippi town of Yazoo City, the movie was actually made in Mississippi (though it wasn't actually made during WWII). It starrs Frankie Muniz (of Malcolm in the Middle) as a lonely little boy who grows to manhood with the help of a brave little dog.

There were no churches in the film, not much in the way of spiritual content, but there are certainly admirable people with values of courage, honesty and integrity. So thumbs up for that.

There are a number of films with Mississippi in the title. Mississippi Masala features a very young Denzel Washington as an American who falls in love with an Asian Indian immigrant; it examines the interactions between their respective families. Mississippi Burning is an exciting Gene Hackman study of the Civil Rights Movement which offers the strange historical interpretation that the real heroes of the time were in the FBI.

In our travels through Mississippi, we were able to visit the childhood home of Tennessee Williams in Columbus, MS. Baby Doll, a steamy story based on a short play by Williams and directed by Elia Kazan with Carroll Baker in the title role and This Property is Condemned, one of Robert Redford's first films, were both set and filmed in Mississippi. But two other films based on Williams work, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , featuring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, and Summer and Smoke, featuring Laurence Harvey and Geraldine Page, are set in Mississippi but actually filmed in other places.

We also visited Oxford, the home of bestselling writer John Grisham. Grisham has written about a variety of places in the South, but his first novel, which was made into a film with Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, and Samuel L. Jackson, was set and filmed in Mississippi.

Oxford is also the hometown of another more critically acclaimed writer, William Faulkner. The Reivers, a comedy starring Steve McQueen and based on a novel of Faulkner's, was set and filmed in Mississippi. A wonderful low budget film scripted by Horton Foote and starring Robert Duvall, Tomorrow,  is based on a short story by Faulkner and is set and filmed in Mississippi. The Long Hot Summer with Paul Newman and Orson Welles, based on some of Faulkner's short stories, was set in Mississippi but not filmed there.

And finally, a film set and filmed in Mississippi: the Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou will be featured later this year in Movie Churches during Depression Month. We have to pace ourselves.

On the big screen

Our first day in Mississippi was also the last day of Black History Month. We went to the Cinemark Theater in Pearl, Mississippi, to see Race, a film about the Olympic exploits of Jesse Owens. There is a reference to the church in the film: when Jesse proposes to Minnie, the mother of his young child, they wonder if a Christian clergyman will perform the ceremony. Apparently, one did.

Owens was the star who outshone the Nazis in the 1936 Olympics. At the Cinemark, far less impressive stars were functioning as door handles.