Wednesdays in April at 8pm | 25 Movies
When motion pictures were first projected to a paying audience in 1895, it radically changed how the medium operated. Before then, watching a motion picture required putting a penny in a slot, cranking a handle and viewing a film strip that ran on a loop inside a Kinetoscope machine. Projecting a film allowed it to be seen by many people at the same time, creating a shared emotional experience much like a play or a church service. The earliest filmmakers looked to historical and religious subjects for inspiration, like “The Passion Play,” the theatrical retelling of the story of Christ and his crucifixion that has been performed by the residents of Oberammergau, Bavaria, Germany, since the 1600s.
These early Passion Play films were so popular with audiences that by 1897, nearly every film company from Thomas Edison to the Lumière brothers had a version in circulation. Religious leaders quickly understood the potential for motion pictures to be more than entertainment; they could be used to spread religious doctrine to a wider audience. With new, more portable projectors becoming readily available, religious films were shown at state fairs, revivalist tent meetings, lecture halls and even churches. A belief in a higher power could now be expressed on screen. Every Wednesday in April, TCM will look at a selection of films showcasing acts of faith in various forms and sects.
In 1902, the French film studio Pathé Frères assigned director Ferdinand Zecca to make a series of short films chronicling aspects of the life of Christ. Unfortunately, the passage of time and lack of record-keeping makes the precise details murky, but what is known is that between 1902 and 1905, Zecca produced several vignettes that were released separately before being edited together to create a film running roughly 40 minutes, now known as The Life and Passion of Christ (1907).
Twenty years later, another film would emerge from France, featuring an acting tour de force so powerful that noted author and film critic Pauline Kael called it “the finest performance ever recorded on film.” The actress was Renée Falconetti (also known as Maria Falconetti), and the movie was Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). Films about Saint Joan of Arc had been produced by filmmakers from Georges Méliès to Cecil B. DeMille, but Dreyer’s film was – and is – unlike any other. Using the barest of sets and shooting mainly in close-ups, Dreyer stayed away from the typical depiction of Joan as a warrior on the battlefield, preferring to focus on the persecuted 19-year-old who was tried and executed for heresy for believing that God had chosen her to lead France to victory over England. After almost 100 years, The Passion of Joan of Arc can still shock and impress an audience. “Empire” magazine named it “One of the most inspired and inspiring films ever made,” and even the papal paper “L’Osservatore Romano” called The Passion of Joan of Arc one of the ten best religious films of all time.
Italian director Roberto Rossellini’s The Flowers of St. Francis (1950) was birthed from his personal search for what he called “the most accomplished form of the Christian ideal.” Instead of a traditional biopic, Rossellini’s film is a loosely connected series of events in Catholic friar St. Francis’ religious life at the monastery at Nocere Inferiore, with a heavy dose of humor that the historical Francis is said to have possessed. As Rossellini wrote, “[M]y film wants to focus on the merrier aspect of the Franciscan experience, on the playfulness, the ‘perfect delight,’ the freedom that the spirit finds in poverty, and in an absolute detachment from material things.”
Playing religious figures often attracted Academy Award wins and nominations, and certainly boosted the careers of many Hollywood actors, like Jennifer Jones in 20th Century-Fox’s The Song of Bernadette (1943). Based on the 1941 novel by Franz Werfel and directed by Henry King, the film chronicles the visitations and prophesies reportedly given to teenaged Bernadette (Jones) and two of her friends by the Virgin Mary in the French city of Lourdes. The role made Jones a star and earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress. Spencer Tracy won a Best Actor Academy Award for Boys Town (1938), based loosely on the story of Father Edward Flanagan, famous for founding a home for abandoned boys of all races and backgrounds. Boys Town was one of the most successful films of the year, based in part on Tracy’s performance, but also on the rising star power of Mickey Rooney. Tracy later presented his Oscar to Flanagan, and that statuette and memorabilia from the film, (which was shot in part at the actual Boys Town near Omaha, Nebraska) remain at the Boys Town Hall of History to this day.
Bing Crosby’s career changed direction when he played a priest in Going My Way (1944). Crosby had become a star in romantic musical comedies in the 1930s and early 1940s, especially in the popular series of Road films he made with Bob Hope. But playing against his established type earned Crosby a Best Actor Academy Award, a hit song with “Swinging on a Star,” a greater respect for his acting ability and a sequel the following year, The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945). Audrey Hepburn and Deborah Kerr both benefitted from playing Catholic nuns with inner conflicts. Hepburn earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for A Nun’s Story (1959), portraying a Belgian woman who becomes a nun and serves as a nurse, but later leaves the order during World War II. The British film Black Narcissus (1947), from the team Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, earned Deborah Kerr a New York Film Critics Circle Best Actress award but fell victim to censorship. The Catholic National Legion of Decency, whose power at the time was enough to damage, if not ruin, a film’s chance of being widely distributed, objected to the film’s portrayal of a group of British nuns as frustrated by both unfulfilled sexual desires and the failure of their mission in India. The organization called the film “an affront to religion and religious life,” refusing to approve it for viewing by Catholics until several cuts were made.
While American films were often more conservative than foreign, they could be censored abroad, like the adaptation of Marc Connelly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Green Pastures (1936), a fantasy about a protestant preacher’s attempts to help his congregation better understand the Bible by making it more relatable to them. Starring Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Rex Ingram, Oscar Polk and the Hall Johnson Choir, the film was a rarity in Hollywood – a film with an all-Black cast. In a time in which Black performers were relegated to stereotypical roles if seen at all, The Green Pastures was, according to the American Film Institute, one of the highest-grossing films of the year. While the AFI does not state specific reasons, the film was banned in several countries, including China, Italy, Palestine, Finland and Australia. In Britain, censors cut several lines of dialogue and added a foreword before it could be released.
Christianity has been the predominate subject for religious films in the United States, but there have been a multitude of movies featuring other religions that have found American acclaim, like the Academy Award-nominated Japanese film The Burmese Harp (1956), directed by Kon Ichikawa. Based on a 1946 Japanese children’s book, it is a plea for peace. In it, a group of Japanese soldiers fighting in Burma are informed by the British that the war has ended. One of the soldiers, Mizushima (Shoji Yasui), is tasked by the British to go up a mountain and inform his compatriots that Japan has surrendered and to stop fighting. Instead of surrendering, they beat Mizushima unconscious and are killed in battle. Mizushima is nursed back to health by a Buddhist monk, whose robe he steals to disguise himself so he can safely make his way back to camp. Along the way, he finds the bodies of dead Japanese soldiers, and despite the pleas of his friends, Mizushima vows not to return to Japan until all the soldiers are buried.
Bengali director Tareque Masud brought his life experiences to the big screen when he wrote and directed his debut, The Clay Bird (2002). Set during the civil unrest of the late 1960s, which led to the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, The Clay Bird follows a young boy from a small village whose life is shaken up when he’s sent to an Islamic school by his Muslim father out of fear of the Hindu influences surrounding him. The film received worldwide critical acclaim when released in several countries, including India, Ireland, Spain, Egypt, Canada, the United States and France as part of the Cannes Film Festival. Hinduism is further represented in our showcase with two more films from different countries. French filmmaker Jean Renoir shot The River (1951) in Calcutta, India, where he met then-student filmmaker Satyajit Ray, who would become one of India’s foremost directors and produced and directed The Goddess (1960).
Steven Spielberg helped finance the restoration of Polish director Michal Waszynski’s horror film, The Dybbuk (1937), based on S. Ansky’s 1914 play of the same name, which has become one of the most performed in the Yiddish theater. The Dybbuk is about two lovers, Chanan and Lea (played by real-life husband and wife Leon Liebgold and Lily Liliana, respectively) who were betrothed to each other before their births by their fathers against the warning of a mysterious stranger. When Lea’s father breaks the betrothal, Chanan calls upon Satan to ensure his and Lea’s happiness. In his 1977 “Washington Post” review, critic Kenneth Turan called The Dybbuk “a page torn from a nightmare” and “the dark side of ‘Fiddler on the Roof (1971).’”
Two years after its production, Liebgold and Liliana were traveling with a theater troupe in the United States when Hitler declared war in September 1939. Although they survived the Holocaust and lived for many years in the United States, some of their costars, including Ajzyk Samberg, who played Meszulach the messenger, died in concentration camps, which is the real horror. Other films depicting Judaism in our showcase include the Barbra Streisand-directed Yentl (1983), Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and The Chosen (1981).
