Flannery O’Connor’s mother, Regina, once expressed to her that it would be nice if the Southern Gothic author could write more pleasant stories that people might want to read. I jokingly shared that anecdote with my mother last week when she asked if I couldn’t write something happier than another article on Carrie Prejean Boller.
In honor of my mother’s request, here is a selection of films that would edify viewers as we conclude the season of Lent and enter Holy Week.
The Nun’s Story, I Confess, and The Philadelphia Story are gems from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Well-executed movies, their themes are profoundly shaped by the Christian imagination.
Despite featuring a young Audrey Hepburn in the leading role, The Nun’s Story is often neglected in discussions of Hepburn’s work, but it is among the most faithful portrayals of entry into religious life. Many Hollywood scripts seem to be written by those who haven’t interacted with nuns. They are shown as overly disciplinarian, or silly and giggly, or on occasion, randomly bursting into song. This film depicts nuns as entering into a difficult but beautiful calling. Viewers feel the weight of vows, particularly obedience.
It is based upon the autobiography of Marie-Louise Habets (who really did leave religious life after years as a nun).
Not everyone is called to religious life, but rather we are all called to “pick up the cross” and to die to self. Hepburn portrays the lead role, and we watch her enter the novitiate and then take the vows. The first 40 minutes of the movie watches her move through the process. Repeatedly, we see her struggle with the third vow, obedience. Unlike many modern films, her self-will and lack of obedience aren’t celebrated.
The movie, however, never lets the audience stand in a place of judgement. Silently, it puts the weight of the vow on the viewer and asks them to put themselves in the place of the nun. Often, when we assent to self-denial, what we actually assent to is what we deem to be a reasonable expectation or perhaps what is easy, but God’s requirements don’t always meet those assumptions. The Nun’s Story is a powerful meditation on the call to obedience and the difficulties of self-denial.
I Confess is the most outwardly Catholic of all of Alfred Hitchcock’s films. Starring Montgomery Cliff, it is the story of a priest framed for murder, unable to go to the police because the real killer confessed to the crime in the confessional. Hitchcock does this to show the seriousness with which the church takes the sacrament; her priests would even die rather than break the seal.
It is also a movie that depicts the cost of true repentance and forgiveness. Lent, of course, focuses on these themes as we prepare for Easter Sunday.
The film also offers a beautiful reflection on Christ’s Passion and the call of all Christians to follow Him. This is central to the movie’s most poignant scene. Aware that arrest awaits him at the church, the priest looks in a window of a men’s clothing shop. He could take off his priestly garments, but instead he walks a narrow street alone as a church’s statues impose over him one of the stations of the cross. The story then moves to a courtroom in Ontario, where courtrooms at the time still hung large crucifixes. Finally, unable to convict, they give him over to the crowd outside. All the while, he contends for the soul of the real killer, offering him a final chance to confess.
The third movie is The Philadelphia Story by playwright and devout catholic Phillip Barry. The movie, which is at its heart about the reconciliation of a divorced upper-class couple, is about radical forgiveness and recognizing one’s own faults and failings. It also reminds us that we are called to help others in their sanctification, even when we feel they have greatly failed us.
Tracey Lord (portrayed by Katherine Hepburn) is preparing for remarriage after her divorce from C.K. Dexter Haven (Carey Grant). The characters are all either charmed by Tracey’s aloof seeming perfection or too intimidated to correct her, with two exceptions: her father and her ex-husband. They are the two people whose faults she struggles most to forgive. It is the people we love the most whose failures hurt the worst, but regardless, we are called to forgive and help them.
Dexter is the first to tell her what her overemphasis on strength and disgust for weakness is: idolatry of the self. Tracey trusts in her own perfection. Dexter acknowledges his failings during their marriage, but when she states that his drinking was “unattractive,” he replies, “You took on that problem when you took me, Red. You were no helpmate, there only a scold.”
Dexter famously tells Tracey, “You’ll never be a first-class human being or a first-class woman until you’ve learned to have some regard for human frailty.”
In the end, it is only Dexter, not even Tracey herself, who assumes the best of her when it looks as though she has acted inappropriately the night before her wedding. His offer to remarry her is her ultimate redemption. Her promise at the end, “I promise to be yar,” (a sailing term for the good and true), is met with the reply, “Be whatever you like, you’re my redhead.”
The Passion leads to Easter, which also leads to a redemptive wedding, where the bridegroom tells us, “You are mine.”
I hope these films edify your Lent.
More from IRD:
‘Men Without Chests’ and Scent of a Woman
Wuthering Heights and the Distortions of Lust