Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hollywood movies featuring religious elements were hugely popular during the Second World War. Think "The Bells Of St Mary's", "Going My Way" "The Song Of Bernadette" and this, the film adaptation of A.J. Cronin's popular recent novel of the time. Directed by the usually worthy John Stahl, it features an early starring role for Gregory Peck, who was Oscar-nominated for his performance.
The story takes us from Scotland (the land of Cronin's birth) to China although Peck's accent never actually leaves the States, even if everyone else in the Scottish section of the film at least makes an effort to attempt it.
The plot's a little like a church version of "Goodbye Mr Chips" as it takes us along with Peck's character through the various stations of his long life, beginning with him as a boy who witnesses and indeed is helpless to save his adored mother and father from death when they're swept away by a storm as they attempt to ford a fomenting river, after the father has been attacked for being Catholic. We then move forward in the film seeing Peck for the first time as a young man being steered towards the priesthood by his zealous aunt, ostensibly to deliberately prevent him marrying his sweetheart. Sent away on a religious seminary for an extended period and barred by the aunt from returning home, he's therefore absent when his girl apparently falls off the rails, gets pregnant and dies giving birth to a baby girl. Quite what she's done to deserve this fate when if anything she's the one misused by both Peck and his scheming aunt, for me certainly tarnishes the haloes of the so-called religious characters in the film, Peck included.
Anyway after getting a pep-talk from his old bishop friend Edmund Gwenn, Peck at last answers his vocation and heads off to China to start a church missionary settlement amongst the non-believing local community. A series of episodes not dissimilar to the plot of "Anna And The King Of Siam" duly follows culminating in the good father finding himself caught in between the warring factions as civil-war breaks out, before an act of heroism on his part which wouldn't have been out of place in "The Guns Of Navarone" at last convinces everyone that Father Greg is a decent man and worth changing faith for if you're not of the Christian persuasion.
I must admit I found the film rather dull, heavy-going and patronising certainly in its treatment of the local non-believing native population. It seems that Peck has to do something out of the ordinary like cure the local Mandarin's sick child of an infection or carry out a raid on the occupying army to get the full respect of everyone around him and that includes the new senior nun posted out with two colleagues to help Peck out. Add in a sentimental farewell by Peck to his now fully converted Chinese flock at the end and there you have it, another sainted priest guaranteed his place in heaven for good acts done down here below.
I like Peck but here he had yet to develop the combination steely / calm screen persona which marked his later career. He also just looks silly and unconvincing got up as an old man at the end of the film.
Possibly it's just me but I think I'd rather watch "Father Ted" than another sanctimonious, holier-than-thou vintage Hollywood message film like this. Better yet, maybe cart off Messrs Peck, Crosby, Fitzgerald, Tracy, O'Brien and all the rest of the priest pack to Craggy Island and let them all try to outdo each other with their good deeds and saving of sinners. Just leave the film cameras at home though, please.
The story takes us from Scotland (the land of Cronin's birth) to China although Peck's accent never actually leaves the States, even if everyone else in the Scottish section of the film at least makes an effort to attempt it.
The plot's a little like a church version of "Goodbye Mr Chips" as it takes us along with Peck's character through the various stations of his long life, beginning with him as a boy who witnesses and indeed is helpless to save his adored mother and father from death when they're swept away by a storm as they attempt to ford a fomenting river, after the father has been attacked for being Catholic. We then move forward in the film seeing Peck for the first time as a young man being steered towards the priesthood by his zealous aunt, ostensibly to deliberately prevent him marrying his sweetheart. Sent away on a religious seminary for an extended period and barred by the aunt from returning home, he's therefore absent when his girl apparently falls off the rails, gets pregnant and dies giving birth to a baby girl. Quite what she's done to deserve this fate when if anything she's the one misused by both Peck and his scheming aunt, for me certainly tarnishes the haloes of the so-called religious characters in the film, Peck included.
Anyway after getting a pep-talk from his old bishop friend Edmund Gwenn, Peck at last answers his vocation and heads off to China to start a church missionary settlement amongst the non-believing local community. A series of episodes not dissimilar to the plot of "Anna And The King Of Siam" duly follows culminating in the good father finding himself caught in between the warring factions as civil-war breaks out, before an act of heroism on his part which wouldn't have been out of place in "The Guns Of Navarone" at last convinces everyone that Father Greg is a decent man and worth changing faith for if you're not of the Christian persuasion.
I must admit I found the film rather dull, heavy-going and patronising certainly in its treatment of the local non-believing native population. It seems that Peck has to do something out of the ordinary like cure the local Mandarin's sick child of an infection or carry out a raid on the occupying army to get the full respect of everyone around him and that includes the new senior nun posted out with two colleagues to help Peck out. Add in a sentimental farewell by Peck to his now fully converted Chinese flock at the end and there you have it, another sainted priest guaranteed his place in heaven for good acts done down here below.
I like Peck but here he had yet to develop the combination steely / calm screen persona which marked his later career. He also just looks silly and unconvincing got up as an old man at the end of the film.
Possibly it's just me but I think I'd rather watch "Father Ted" than another sanctimonious, holier-than-thou vintage Hollywood message film like this. Better yet, maybe cart off Messrs Peck, Crosby, Fitzgerald, Tracy, O'Brien and all the rest of the priest pack to Craggy Island and let them all try to outdo each other with their good deeds and saving of sinners. Just leave the film cameras at home though, please.