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Saints Into Cinema: Half a Century of Religion on Film
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11715 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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4 / 1987 |
2,683 Words |
| Author
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Tom O''Brien
Tom O'Brien, who has taught Shakespeare, is a writer living in
Washington, D.C.
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Last year the Cannes Film Festival was a quiet affair. The bombing of Libya cast a pall, keeping away many American movie stars and production executives (such as Sylvester Stallone) who not unreasonably were apprehensive about terrorist reprisals. Without big box-office names and hordes of tourists, paparazzi and journalists were at some loss to find glamorous shots or piquant details to liven up their stories.
Perhaps coincidentally, awards at the Cannes 1986 Festival were dominated by sober, respectful religious films. The Mission, about Jesuits in eighteenth-century South America, won the grand prize, or Palme D'Or. The Sacrifice, Andrei Tarkovsky's meditation on man's need for hope, won a "special jury prize," with a similar award going to the strangest of the three films, Therese, a study of St. Therese of Lisieux, or "Saint Teresa of the Little Flower."
Fewer Saint Films
If Cannes seems a strange place to honor the life of a saint, 1986 might also seen a strange year. Neither European nor American directors have handled such biographies recently, although in the past, saints' lives have proved a rich source of material for film, including Oscar winners such as A Man for All Seasons and The Song of Bernadette, or Carl Dreyer's revered silent classic, The Passion of Joan of Arc.
Today's directors are not simply less interested in religion, but are less interested in the history in which saints' lives are rooted. Indeed, the last time "saint" was used in an American film title was the ironic Saint Jack, Peter Bogdanovich's breezy 1979
... (1995 of 16420 Characters)
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