Focus: A Film Review (1950-1951)

36 Vocation in the Films By H. A. C. CONNELL To one who lias specialised in the subject of religion in the films, vocation seems to be a notable topic in the cinema of 1949. I missed Margaret Lockwood as a novice in Madness of the Heart, but I gather that I did not miss much. But there is this to be thankful for that after consultation with the Catholic Film Institute, some lines misconceiving vocation were slightly altered. The agreeable Come to the Stable was not calculated to throw much light on the religious life beyond giving the correct impression that it is one of sanctified ordinariness. And taste in music seems to have become more liturgical in cinema convents. But the chief grace of vocation again appears to be the gift of extracting large sums of money for humanitarian purposes from those well endowed with it, of whatever creed, class or degree of disreputability. This film trod, a trifle more securely, the well worn paths of Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary’s. Winter Meeting broke fresh ground. An ordinary love interest was suddenly complicated by the man announcing that he had always wanted to be a priest. “A priest!” gasps Bette Davis and the music swells up into a melodramatic climax. But once that concession to conventional values, regrettable but momentary, has been made, the matter is handled extraordinarily well. The girl, daughter of a Unitarian minister, makes no suggestion of the popular idea of “wastage” in a dedicated celibate life. In fact it is she who, after considerable and sensible discussion, tells the manthat if he evades his vocation for the sake of marrying her, his character will “rot by degrees”. As she was the principal sufferer and he was rather inconsiderate and boorish I thought this distinctly handsome of her. It might be urged that the level is not very deep. But that is correct realistically. Complete comprehension of the nature of the priesthood is not to be expected in a non-Catholic girl. It is also correct artistically, filmically or whatever is the correct adverb. An ordinary film is not the place for the exposition of the profounder elements of theology. But I consider that the introduction into a popular film with a well known star of this conflict between a pre-existing vocation and a supervening human love, solved in favour of the priesthood, marks an advance in the presentation of religion in the films and that its broad educational and propaganda value far outweighs any minor blemishes. To forestall criticism I must explain that I am well aware that the term vocation cannot be properly applied to the Protestant ministry. I know the difference between a priest and a parson. But there are sufficient resemblances to induce me to refer, in a sort of appendix, to Marry Me. We are accustomed to clergymen in the films either as animated local colour, comic relief or convenient objects for the expression of an outlook opposed to organised religion. Martin (I can’t remember his surname) in Marry Me is one of the principal characters. And he is neither fool nor knave, neither mountebank, “hearty”, killjoy nor hypocrite. I feel that considerable care must have been taken with this sympathetic portrayal of the contemporary clergyman who, as in real life, wears sometimes a Roman collar and sometimes a tie. The girl whom he eventually marries is somewhat flabbergasted when the removal of a scarf first reveals his occupation. “We’re no worse than other people,” he says. There was surely meant to be irony in the remark. But the audience (I wTas present at an ordinary showing) gave never a laugh. Indeed I pictured many of them going home with a quite new idea for serious