Autumnsong: 25 Days of Christmas | The Bells of St Mary's, 1945

The Bells of St Mary's, 1945

Father Chuck O’Malley (Bing Crosby) has just been assigned to the church of St Mary’s, a parish that includes an impoverished school administered by a sisterhood of nuns. The school is in trouble, and in great danger of being condemned and shut down. Part of their land was sold to a rich businessman, mr. Bogardus (Henry Travers), who’s building a modern building in the place where the children’s playground used to be. The money was spent in expensive repairs which were barely adequate to keep the old building functional for a little while, and the children lost much of their play area… There’s a great deal of pressure for the parents to transfer them to other facilities and it falls on O’Malley’s shoulders to recommend whether or not the school should be closed.

Just as soon as he arrives, O’Malley is given reason to anticipate some difficulties in his new position when Mrs Breen, the housekeeper of St Mary’s lets on a little cautionary tale about the way his predecessor was driven mad by the job, taken away in a wheelchair, mumbling incomprehensible words to himself... "You don't know what it's like to be up to your neck in nuns," she warns him.

Father O’Malley has several ideas about the school. But as it turns out, the nuns have pretty strong ideas as well, and they don’t exactly match the father’s thinking. Right at the begining when he visits the school for the first time, clumsily ringing first Bell one hour ahead of schedule, the Father asks to speak to the Sister Superior, and each and every sister sits in front of him before Sister Benedict (Ingrid Bergman) arrives. It’s an incredibly funny scene, the Father trying to make a short speech and the nuns laughing at the cat wearing the father’s hat on the mantelpiece right behind him.

But Father O’Malley is no ordinary priest. He seazes the first oportunity to “get his self confidence back” when Sister Benedict offers him a chance to speak to the children before the day starts, and he uses his speech to declare a holliday and send everyone home, much to the nuns astonishment.

This film is often described as a power struggle between O’Malley and the nuns, particularly the Sister Superior, but that wasn’t quite my take on the movie. There was far too much chemistry between O’Malley and Benedict, not in a romantic way, but it was there nonetheless, and their relationship felt like a partnership to me all along.

That doesn’t mean they had similar opinions by any means. Most of the time they disagreed about the way to handle the children, with the father believing Sister Benedict to be too strict and her thinking he was too soft... Even when the father doesn’t seem to be right, their disagreements seem to bring up the best on each other. He doesn’t seem too mad at the boys for getting into a fight at the yard for instance, and when the Sister acuses him of being too soft on the boy who started the fight he points out that young man should learn to defend themselves because there are a lot of fights outside the walls of the school... He even hints at the possible damage done to a young man to have too strong influence of females only! And although she disagrees – it had been her posture to teach the boys to turn the other cheek in a figth – she thinks about it, and decides she wouldn’t want to be guilty of not raising ‘masculine young man’ which brings her to a sports shop where she acquires a book about boxing, so she can learn and teach her pupil how to fight back. And in addition to fighting she teaches him the proper way to end the whole thing.

Sister Benedict looking after her children

They also disagree on the way to handle Patricia, a young girls that comes to St. mary’s as a boarding student, after a personal request made by her single mother to the priest to help her raise her little girl. Ordinarily Patricia probably wouldn’t have been accepted so easily, but Father O’Malley has a big heart and truly believes that their role as educators is not to send children away...

The story spreads across the period of a school year more or less, with the Christmas celebrations somewhere in the middle (and a cute scene of a theatre presentation by the first graders – including a boy whom I’m pretty sure must have been asthmatic). But the whole movie is and feels like a story about a Christmas wish – to keep the school of St Mary’s standing, a far-fetched wish that the nuns are sure can be taken care off by prayer.

The characters are very tridimensional. This is often thought of as an overly-romantic depiction of the church, but the nuns at St Mary are remarkably similar to several nuns I happened to get to know, which made the story feel very realistic to me.

Also, this film is actually a sequel of another Bing Crosby film I have not seen yet.. Something to tackle after the holidays, no doubt