Aloysius (Meryl Streep) is convinced that Flynn has come to radicalize her territory with a progressive theology and worse, to prey upon young children-particularly a needy, sexually ambivalent African-American boy. O’Malley has come to the inner city not only to save a school, but also his erstwhile rival, Sister Mary Benedict, (Ingrid Bergman) gently informing her that the good woman has “a touch of tuberculosis.” Sister may be off to Arizona to recover, but no matter: anytime there’s a snag, “just dial ‘O’ for O’Malley.” By contrast, Sr. (Tellingly, the film is set near the end of the Second Vatican Council.) Both priests clash with a powerful nun.īut the difference between the two clerics is striking: O’Malley has been cast as a priest-savior, Flynn as a potential menace to the church and society. Nicholas, urging a new, open-minded inclusiveness. Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) wants to modernize conditions at his parish, St. Mary’s” are like estranged twins, showcasing an evolution of a subgenre. More recently, John Patrick Shanley’s adaptation of his Broadway hit, “Doubt” (2008), marks a fascinating terminus to this long line of “priest films” in Hollywood. Spellacy (Robert De Niro) in the underrated “True Confessions” (1981) winds up in a tiny desert parish dying of cancer, having been overly entangled in church and city politics. Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) is almost lynched by the Ku Klux Klan in “The Cardinal” (1963) Fr. Logan (Montgomery Clift) is suspected of murder in “I Confess” (1953) an amorously conflicted and ambitious Fr.
Barry (Karl Malden) is pelted with garbage during a sermon defending a murdered longshoreman in “On the Waterfront” (1954), we sense a culture already questioning its institutional allegiances. O’Malleys of the studio period functioned as reassuring paternal figures to a troubled nation, then priests on film served practically the opposite purpose in peacetime, disclosing an America on the edge of monumental change, especially about attitudes towards sexuality and the establishment. O’Malley, in particular, struck a deep chord among American viewers during wartime, making both Crosby features number one at the box office for their respective years. O’Malley in “Going My Way,” 1944 and “The Bells of St.
Duffy in “The Fighting 69th,” 1940) and anchors of empathy and social reconstruction (Bing Crosby’s Fr. Flanagan in “Boy’s Town,” 1938), heroic chaplains in the armed forces (Pat O’Brien’s Fr.
In the early days of sound film, the 1934 Production Code secured that all representations of religious figures “not be used in comedy, villains or as unpleasant persons.” Buoyed by New Deal optimism and middle-class sensibilities, the golden age of Hollywood made the Roman collar primarily an instrument of cultural stability, presenting priests as caretakers of wayward kids (Spencer Tracy’s Fr. The future of priests on the silver screen is a good question to ask in this “Year of the Priest.” American film culture has maintained something of an ambivalent relationship with the Catholic priesthood, an institution that it has both revered and reviled.