Loretta Young, Celeste Holm
Written by Oscar Millard / Sally Benson
Directed by Henry Koster
“We’ve narrowed our needs down to just two things.”
“Good.”
“Land and money.”
The two nuns have made a bargain with God: if He will spare their children’s hospital in France (targeted by Allied bombers), the nuns will travel to the U.S. after the war and build another children’s hospital there. What they receive is a costly mercy: German troops are using the hospital as an observation post; sparing it means the lives of a number of American soldiers.
But the nuns are as good as their word, and now – with everything needed to build their hospital except the above-mentioned “land and money” – they’ve shown up, on foot, at a converted stable outside Bethlehem, Connecticut. This, they feel sure, is the place to which God has led them.
Their arrival, their intentions, and their (mostly) guileless efforts to accomplish their goal with nothing but faith astound the gangster who owns their chosen property … dumbfound the songwriter whose rural serenity is at stake … and confound the bishop to whom they report. The latter finds their penniless idealism as reckless as their driving.
Yet, “something tells me,” he warns a colleague, “that an irresistible force has been let loose in New England.”
The nuns’ odd mix of certitude, canniness, and creativity charm many – but not all – of those they’re forced to deal with, and their two-steps-forward, one-step-back progress raises some thoughtful questions. Where does faith leave off and stubbornness begin? When does charity become presumptuous? And how much does what God wants to do in my life hinge on what He’s doing in the lives of others?
The movie’s gentle Christmas message is deepened by two moments. One, in which the gangster (played movingly by Thomas Gomez) reveals that his reasons for helping the sisters are every bit as genuine as their reasons for asking him. And then, one nun’s stunned realization that her moment’s failure has cost both sisters their dream.
Which raises a final, lingering question: can a believer’s failure give greater witness than success?
Comments