The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)

This film is about a young priest named Father O'Malley who goes to be the resident pastor at Saint Mary's school. The school is in disrepair and will have to be shut down unless a donor provides a new school. A wealthy business man is constructing a building next door, but alas, he wants to buy Saint Mary's to build a parking lot. The sisters are very worried, and the new pastor seems to be in cahoots with this wealthy man. What will happen to Saint Mary's?

I was really disappointed with this film. I was hearing these glowing reviews about a wholesome family film and what a classic this was... I couldn't believe I was watching the same film. This film is slow-paced and dull. It also misrepresents the Catholic faith. There may be some who are hesitant to watch film about nuns of priests, and this is not my argument. There are actually several great films that are about or take place in a religious context, a prime example being The Trouble With Angels. No, this one just missed the mark for me. There's a scene where a boy is getting bullied by one of the other students, and Father O'Malley is just looking on and even comments to Sister Superior that the boy is weak. Sister then trains the boy to box. This is so against the Catholic philosophy in so many ways that I cringed to watch it. A real Catholic priest would not condone fighting or bullying, and does not define manhood by who can hit harder. The Sister Superior actually did have the correct philosophy of peaceful resolution (kind of), but then changes her tune when she hears what the pastor had to say. It tries to hard to win the audience over, and cheapens the message as a result. If you don't want to stick to the belief of a religion... don't base a film in a religious setting featuring religious characters. It's really quite simple. There were several other things that bothered me, but I'll spare you.

The pacing, as I've mentioned, is quite slow. I almost stopped watching the film out of pure boredom and didn't care if the school was torn down or what. Also, as you may well imagine, the school is not shut down because the wealthy business man next door has a miraculous change of heart after some mind games played by our number one pastor and gives them the building for the school. I just don't feel that it was at all a plausible outcome. It's a convenient ending to stop a mediocre film. Not worth the time.