THE BELLS OF ST MARY'S
US, 1946, 126 minutes, Black and white.
Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman, Henry Travers, William Gargan, Ruth Donelly, Una O’ Connor.
Directed by Leo Mc Carey.
The Bells of St Mary’s was immensely popular in its time. It was the sequel to the equally popular Going My Way which won many Oscars in 1944 including best picture, best director, best story, best actor and best supporting actor for Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald.
The film was directed by Leo Mc Carey with a script by veteran Dudley Nichols. Mc Carey had been prolific during the 1920s, making seventy-five feature films. However, he slowed down after that, making such classics in the 30s as Duck Soup with the Marx Brothers and The Awful Truth and Love Affair. (He remade Love Affair in 1957 as An Affair to Remember.) He made only a few films after The Bells of St Mary’s: Good Sam with Gary Cooper, My Son John which was a very anti-communist film of the early 1950s as well as the first film with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Rally Round the Flag, Boys. His last film was Satan Never Sleeps with William Holden and Clifton Webb as two priest missionaries in China.
The film, as Going My Way, has echoes of a Catholic church that has long since passed. One focused on the inner city parish. The other focused on an inner city parochial school. Ingrid Bergman, getting her opportunity to play a nun (although three years later she was to be Joan of Arc), is very good as the superior of the school who believes in rules and discipline. She clashes, amicably, with the rather more easygoing parish priest played by Bing Crosby. Henry Travers appears as a genial businessman who comes to the rescue of the school by donating a building for the school’s use.
The film is interesting to compare with later presentations of priests and nuns, especially after the 1960s with the updating of the Second Vatican Council as well as the changing styles and behaviour as regards religion and church.
There was a television version made in 1959 with Claudette Colbert and Robert Preston in the central roles.
1. How enjoyable a human comedy, religious film?
2. The 1940s and styles of film-making, black and white photography, the stars? The forties attitudes towards religion? In what did it consist? The linking of comedy and sentiment to religion? The mystique of priests and nuns? Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman playing such roles?
3. How close were the events and characters in this film to real life?
4. The picture of the Catholic Church, in America, in the forties, parish work, education, priests and nuns, their attitude towards religion, towards God, miracles?
5. What portrait of the nuns was given, of the community itself, of its work? Sister Benedict and her personality, her role as Superior? Her dream about the school, co-operation? Her attitude towards culture and fighting? The boxing sequence? her consistent pressure on the owner, his illness? her changing of her attitudes and telling the truth about himself to the priest? The vision of the new school? Her Minnesota background? The importance of the concert etc.?
6. Bing Crosby as a priest? His personal style, the character of the priest, cheerfulness, relating with the children? The comedy in the fighting sequences? the essay? The spiritual direction, especially by his singing? His clashing, with Sister Benedict, his attitude towards the owner of the building? The concert? The point about not telling or telling? Was his character and behaviour too facile?
7. The importance of the owner, the rich American, being pressurized, bowing to pressure? The miraculous overtones?
8.. How much of a fantasy was this film? The relationship between prayers, God's answering, superstition, coincidence?
9. The portrayal of the children, the appeal of the children, especially in the details of the concert?
10. The significance of Patsy and her family?
11. These films are described as heart-warming. Are they? The values that this film portrayed and stood for?
