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June, 1946
FILM AND RADIO GUIDE
11
An essential part of your
MOVIE EQUIPMENT -A
GRISWOLD FILM SPLICER
GRISWOLD Model R-2 tor 35mm. film or Model R-3 tor 16mm.
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woven into the story. The little Irish orphan boy is also a Catholic, and his relatives in Scotland, who adhere austerely to their Protestant faith, resent the boy’s efforts to attend the church of his choice. The boy’s faith, however, is strong, and with the aid of his great-grandfather, a non-churchgoing freethinker devoted to the cause of freedom, the boy continues his religious life in the Catholic church.
The picture has been soundly criticized for its identification of religious persecution with a faith which has more often been the object of such persecution than its cause. Our concern here, however, is the degree and manner in which religion, as exemplified in the Roman Catholic Church, is brought into the film.
In addition to his attending church services regularly, the boy turns, at critical periods of his life, to the church for solace and help. The priest is portrayed in a most favorable and humanly attractive way. He is sympathetic to the boy’s problems. At the same time he is the mystical emissary of God. Yet at a crisis in the boy’s life, the priest stands helplessly and ineffectually by while the boy loses h i s faith. Subsequent scenes do not give us the feeling that the boy has effectively regained that faith, nor do they answer the profound theological questions which the boy asked, during his moment of trial, as to the nature of God and man, and why God allowed the death of his friend.
This is an incidental, peripheral, and thoroughly superficial treatment of religion in a film which is mostly about something else. Religion is by no means necessary to, or an integral part of the story, since one is not convinced that the boy’s
life is influenced, in any profound degree, by his faith. His religion and his church attendance are simply an insurance he takes out against evil, a procedure which is reminiscent, in a mild way, of the superstition of African tribes.
This superficial treatment of an important subject is inexcusable. It matters little whether the relig'o'i po trayed is Catho
lic, Protestant, or Jewish. Religion should be included in a film only when it is the main subject of the film or an integral part of the story. When included, it should be dealt with honestly and profoundly.
Religion in The Green Years seems to have been injected into the film for some other reason than that the story demanded it. This, plus its superficial treat