Seen any good movies lately? How about a recommendation or two (or, maybe, three, four...)?
Last night, we watched I Confess (a 1953 film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, and Karl Malden). I've seen most of Hitchcock's films, but that was the first time I'd seen this one. I thought it was really good, mainly because a murder confession puts a priest in jeopardy (in more ways than one)-- Montgomery Clift plays the part perfectly. I bring this particular movie up because after it was over we talked about the clerical vow to never divulge a confessed sin (explanation in next paragraph). This film is a good example of a case of conscience and whether a man of the cloth should a) forgive a murderer or b) break a vow to save others. It's certainly not easy-- the former begs the question of the existence of contrition and true repentance and a desire to amend one's life and the latter the question of whether any possibility of harm to others exists (or might).
C.F.W. Walther (the first president of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod) notes in his book on Pastoral Theology: Someone asked Dr. M. Luther: If a pastor and father confessor had absolved a woman who had killed her child, and it was later revealed and made known by other people, would the preacher also have to testify to the judge if he were asked about it? Then he [Luther] answered: "Absolutely not! For one must distinguish between churchly and worldly government since she has confessed it not to me but to the Lord Christ, and if Christ keeps it secret, I should also keep it secret and say nothing more than: I have heard nothing; if Christ has heard something, let Him tell it" (from Luther's Table Talk, XXII, 879).
We caught another movie earlier this week on TCM, The Night of the Iguana (a 1964 film based on the 1961 play of the same name written by Tennessee Williams and directed by John Huston, with Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr), that provides another look into clergy life. I'm not really a big fan of Richard Burton; however, he does an outstanding job of portraying an Anglican priest who's at the end of his rope (metaphorically, of course, but the film's title comes from a scene in which a poor iguana finds himself literally at the end of his...), having been accused of an impropriety with a young woman in his office at the church-- so he starts a sermon about judging others and goes off on the congregation... He ends up as a tour guide in Mexico for a busload of women from a Baptist college in Texas and is, again, accused of conducting himself in a less than clerical manner with an 18-year old girl in the group. I won't ruin it for you by telling you whether Burton's character is worthy of his collar (the Baptist women heard he had been "defrocked", which the priest refutes repeatedly). Along comes this Puritan-esque character played by Deborah Kerr who kneads a great quote out of the Rev. Larry Shannon as he tells her about the past events that brought him to Mexico:
I collect evidence of man’s inhumanity against God. The pain we cause him. We have poisoned his atmosphere. We have slaughtered his creatures of the wild, polluted his rivers. We have even taken god’s noblest creation, man, and brainwashed him into becoming our product, packed, stalked and
canned.
It really is a good movie, but you have to pay full attention to what's going on! (Pastors, of course, are not exempt from accusations, rumors, and innuendo...)
Okay, two more recommendations from movies I've watched over spring break on TCM, which present a couple of more secular casuistry cases...
The first is another Richard Burton film, My Cousin Rachel, the 1953 screen adaptation of the novel by Daphne du Maurier published in 1951. It's a mystery story that I was sure I knew the ending of, because as I watched, the plot seemed very familiar. Near the end, I remembered why-- my grandmother read a lot of Agatha Christie and Daphne du Maurier mysteries and had this cache of paperbacks in her house. I borrowed and read a few, and I must have read this one (I would have been 12 or 13 at the time). Anyway. It's very Hitchcock-like and Olivia De Havilland was made for the part of Rachel (when you look at her eyes, you can almost hear her hiss...). By the way, a remake of this movie is due out in July of this year.
The other one I watched yesterday afternoon, a film I'd never heard of, The Gazebo, a 1959 black comedy about a married couple who are being blackmailed with Glenn Ford, Debbie Reynolds, Carl Reiner (his first film appearance), John McGiver, and Herman the Pigeon. It's very cleverly stitched together and I wondered through the first three-quarters of it why the husband kept this pigeon around. It's entertaining in a seemingly stupid way, but it'll keep you guessing until the very end. Glenn Ford's performance as a guilt-ridden neurotic TV producer and husband (as well as the couple's cleaning woman who always shouts because her mother is hard of hearing) would be worth the price of admission alone! The scene at the end with Herman just cracked me up...
All four films actually present real-life issues dealing with cases of conscience or questions of right and wrong (and, yes, according to Scripture, whether or not the spectator OR the character so believes).
Lent is the perfect time for movies like these-- it's so hard to be human
С Богом!
P.S. For some reason, words in the Metallica song The Unforgiven provide an antitheti--...hmmm. Never mind.
P.P.S. Clue from today's NY Times crossword: What had a double standard in the Bible? (3 letters)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.