The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima - 1952

Tomorrow, Friday, October 13^th, marks the 100^th anniversary of the “Miracle of the Sun,” the final apparition in Fátima, Portugal, of the Virgin Mary after several successive months of appearing to three children.  We turn our attention today to The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952), which dramatizes these events.

The story is inherently dramatic, involving the supernatural, as well as historical fact, but the obvious third leg of the stool—our human capacity for faith and what we choose to do about it—is not as strong an element in this movie as it might be.  Much of the unquestioning faith of the children, and the doubtful faith of their elders, seem conveyed as a lesson learned by rote.

One is tempted to regard this movie as an attempt by Warner Bros. to cash in on the tremendous critical and financial success of The Song of Bernadette (1943), made nine years earlier at 20^th Century-Fox, and which garnered several Academy Awards.  That movie addressed the visions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, France, in 1858 to Bernadette Soubrious. We discussed that movie here in this previous post.  Here, from that post:

The Song of Bernadette (1943) pits man against miracle in a many-layered universe. The first layer of this complicated universe is the historical 19th century event on which the story is based.  Then, there is the book by Franz Werfel and the World War II climate under which that book was written and published.  Finally, there is Hollywood, that tries diplomatically to be both pious and frank, spiritual and temporal, to present a money-making story, and yet present it under the auspices of a religious experience…

Man is by nature a creature which believes. We have religions and sometimes complicated protocols of faith. We have superstitions, and we have good luck and bad luck, and we have worries and fears and paranoia, and that is all part of what we willingly believe without proof. On the opposite side of man’s nature is an innate skepticism.

Someone who believes in the efficacy of the prayers of his own faith, may disbelieve the efficacy of prayers of another faith.  An atheist may disbelieve the efficacy of any prayer at all, and yet wholeheartedly believe in luck, or horoscopes, or that a co-worker who gives him a dirty look is out to get him.  It may be the co-worker is just in a bad mood, but that does not shake the belief of the paranoid.  A lot of logical, sensible people knock on wood.  Even people who believe in nothing believe in something, even if it is only the superiority of their own opinions.

So, we believe, regularly, commonly, without proof.  It may be part of our DNA.  But at the same time we are skeptical over someone else’s experiences.  The Song of Bernadette shows these disparate sides of human nature and the clinging onto of human dignity more than it puts forward of one belief over another, or promotes miracles.

That The Song of Bernadette dramatizes the struggle of faith as something normal and yet at the same time, monumental, is one of its most intriguing elements.  There are many other factors which, added together, simply make Bernadette a much better movie, including a strong cast of familiar character actors, and a strong script.

The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima relies on a cast largely unknown to us, though there are numerous uncredited extras that may make you play the old game “spot the villager”: Mae Clark, Jack Kruschen, J. Carroll Nash, and Anne Whitfield (our Susan Waverly from White Christmas).  Jay Novello has a role as the father of two of the children, but the only featured adult role in this film belongs to Gilbert Roland, a favorite of mine whom we saw here in The French Line (1954) and We Were Strangers (1949).  Mr. Roland’s role is a fictional character, a lovable rogue who does not believe, but who attempts to protect the kids when townspeople and officials go after them from spreading tales about being visited by the Virgin Mary.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the film is that it centers on the three kids.  Susan Whitney is Lucia, the eldest of the three who is the leader, and her cousins, Jacinta and Francisco, who are brother and sister, played by Sherry Jackson and Sammy Ogg.  All three child actors went on to do television in the 1950s, but Susan Whitney had the briefest career.  Sherry Jackson had an uncredited role as an extra in The Great Caruso (1951), which we discussed here.

 Unfortunately, there is no depth to the children’s roles as written or as played, so they come across as something of cardboard cutouts.  It might have been better if this had intentionally been made as a children’s film, giving them a stronger screen presence and focusing on their world rather than the angry grownups, who disbelieve them, try to silence them, imprison them, and ultimately relent in a burst of dancing sunlight.

Conversely, it might have also been a better film had it addressed that wider world in which these awesome, and harrowing, adventures take place.  That is the chief difference that would have stood apart from The Song of Bernadette, which had its roots in a novel about an event from the middle of the nineteenth century.  The Fátima apparitions occurred in one of the most tumultuous years of the twentieth century, and set the foreboding prologue for what was to come in decades hence.  It is the modern aspects of the story of Fátima that makes it so compelling, even eerie, and would have made a stronger film.

The historical setting begins before the 1917 start of the film story and extends beyond its epilogue of the modern basilica in 1951 at the site of the former apparitions.  In October 1910 Portugal endured a violent political revolution, one consequence of which was the closing of many churches and imprisonment of many clergy.  The three children of the story are poor, living a secluded rural life as shepherds, pastorinhos, and are unaware of most of the politics of their own country, let alone the enormous events taking place in the rest of Europe.  We are in the thick of World War I, begun with an assassin’s bullet and toppling the governments of several nations, leaving millions of dead strewn across muddy battlefields, and millions of refugees starving.

One government in peril is czarist Russia.  The coming communist regime will have consequences for the rest of the world, for the rest of the century.  When the Virgin Mary appears to the three children, she brings messages of future chastisement of the world if people do not repent and pray, including the daily praying of the Rosary, and the coming of a worse war if her warnings are not heeded.  She also tells the children, who are illiterate, they must learn to read and write, so that they may tell others of her messages to them.  The two younger children will die in the impending Spanish Influenza pandemic, which killed possibly as many as 100 million people worldwide.  These are only some of the modern events that serve as backdrop to the Marian apparitions of Fátima that made it a quite different tale to dramatize than the backdrop to the events at Lourdes, and which should have induced Warner Bros. to intentionally make Fatima a movie with a different slant and not lazily follow a template of how simple villagers take to miracles.

Interestingly, the real-life Lucia, who, as the Virgin Mary instructed her, did learn to read and write and carefully documented her experiences, recalled that when they were first told to pray that Russia might be converted, she had never heard of Russia.  The kids thought Russia was probably another little girl who needed prayers.  At the time of these apparitions from May to October 1917, Russia had not yet even become communist.  The request for prayers for Russia’s conversion was a prediction.

So too was the prediction of a second, more brutal war.  Though the Soviet Union eventually collapsed and the Cold War ended without nuclear war, still it does not take too much of a stretch of the imagination to concede the warning about the future spreading of Russia’s “errors” to the world include the current threat to overthrow our own government and democracy at the direction of the soulless Vladimir Putin, with the help of his acolyte Bannon and his puppet, Trump.  The political background of the story about three kids entrusted with heavenly messages, dire warnings, and even well-publicized three “secrets” is enough material to make a movie that is not only entertaining, but even astounding.

The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima remains today as a simple primer to show at Catholic school assemblies, but is little more than that, and I can’t imagine that was what the execs at Warner Bros. really wanted to create.  Perhaps miracles, in any form, are really too uncomfortable for us to tackle.  We want miracles, nice miracles, like winning the lottery, but when faced with miracles that carry so much weight and consequence, perhaps we really just don’t have the “courage of our convictions.”

The Miracle of the Sun was an event well documented by the press, as tens of thousands gathered to the spot where the three kids observed their last encounter together with the Holy Mother.  They had requested from her a sign that the grownups would believe them.  They were getting a little sick of being told to shut up, and put in jail.  The Blessed Mother came through big time.  While the multitudes stood in the rain, the sun came out and wobbled around, zigzagged a bit, changed colors, seemed to pulsate, and then the sun starting growing bigger, as if it was hurtling toward the earth.  The people panic.  This part in the movie where the sun comes at us is pretty scary, even despite the simple technical craft of the day.  You may find yourself running for the exits.

Then the show stops, and all the people, though having been standing in the rain for some hours, are completely dry, and the ground is all dry, and the newspaper men have quite a story to tell in their next edition.

In the movie, the rascal Gilbert Roland becomes a true believer when he sees the Miracle of the Sun, and we see him in the epilogue talking to Lucia, now a nun, many years after the event.  Oddly, the director chose to use the same child actress, Susan Whitney, to play the adult Lucia, but who speaks lip-synching to the voice of an adult actress.  It has a weird effect and seems a very poor compromise at establishing the continuity between the child and the adult visionary.

Lucia lived to be 97 years old, and died in 2005.  This past May 13^th, on the 100^th anniversary of the first apparition of the Virgin Mary at Fátima, Pope Francis canonized the two younger children, Jacinta and Francisco.  World-wide prayer services will commemorate the October 13^th “Miracle of the Sun” and pilgrims to Fátima will likely add a great number to those who regularly flock to that site.  Fátima, unlike the well-intentioned movie, is indeed a modern tale with political and social threads; that is it’s compelling “hook” and is still with us.

Frankenstein (1931)

Universal’s second blockbuster monster hit of 1931 was “Frankenstein” which made a film star out of Boris Karloff in the way “Dracula” did Bela Lugosi. The physical appearance of the monster, the burning windmill, have all become iconic now.

The film is noted in the opening credits to be taken from a novel by Mrs. Percy B. Shelley, as if she were some society dowager writing short stories for “The Saturday Evening Post.” The audience is not informed that this is a classic of English literature, and it is not treated as such, as both the films “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” were based more on the play adaptations than the original novels.

The film opens with a gentleman master of ceremonies introducing the film, and warning us, “I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you. So, if any of you feel you do not care to subject yourselves to such a strain, well, we warned you.”

Well, now, them’s fighting words and of course not only are we going to stay for the feature, we’re going to take it darned seriously.

Colin Clive plays Dr. Frankenstein, a highly strung scientific genius who lives for his work, at the expense of his friends, his fiancée Elizabeth, played by Mae Clark, and his curmudgeonly father. John Boles plays Victor, who in a role similar to David Manners’ role in “Dracula,” has the less glamorous supporting role as the friend and all around good guy.

Our old friend David Frye appears in this film as well, as Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant, Fritz. Fritz is hunchbacked, subservient, and not overly intelligent. Fritz does a lot less scenery chewing than the crazed Renfield of “Dracula,” but Mr. Frye now seems locked into spending his considerable talent on horror films.

The film begins with Frankenstein and Fritz (sounds like a law firm), robbing a grave. Dr. Frankenstein has cobbled together a body from different body parts, and now needs a brain. The hanged man they find will not do because his neck has been broken, (well, yeah) and so Fritz heads off to the lab of Dr. Frankenstein’s mentor, where there are brains conveniently in jars, to get one.

There are two brains, one labeled “normal” and one “abnormal,” which the lecturer tells his students is the brain of a criminal. One wonders if there is a bit of eugenics of that period involved here. In Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel, the creature is not born evil.

Dr. Frankenstein’s secret laboratory is a cavernous stone castle full of beakers and electrical coils. He is a brilliant megalomaniac who wants to create life from scratch. Getting married to Elizabeth and creating life the old fashioned way doesn’t seem to appeal to him. As he prepares to complete his experiment during a terrific thunderstorm, his mentor, his fiancée, and John Boles crash the party. Mr. Clive’s exasperated, “Of all times for anybody to come!” is almost comic. We’ve all felt the same way at one time or another about unexpected guests.

In a few moments, the inert body of the monster will be hoisted to the skylight to absorb the electricity of the storm outside, Mr. Clive gets to shriek his classic words, “It’s alive! It’s alive!” and we get soon get a monster on the loose.

We hear the heavy footsteps of the creature, and are introduced to the monster in an extreme, but brief close-up, on his drooping lids, his morose expression, the bolts in the neck. The really high forehead and the really flat head. His sleeves are too short. He obeys simple commands, and cannot speak. There is less horror than sympathy for this creature, whom even his creator calls “it” and not “he.”

When the monster kills Fritz, the completely unstrung Dr. Frankenstein is led back home by the dependable Mr. Boles, while his mentor, Dr. Waldman, prepares to destroy the monster. No such luck, and monster heads for the foggy hills. Waldman was played by Edward Van Sloan, who we last saw as Professor Van Helsing in “Dracula.” He also plays the MC at the beginning of this film.

We see jubilant preparations being made in town for long-awaited wedding of Dr. Frankenstein and Elizabeth, which his curmudgeonly father, played with comic irascibility by Frederick Kerr, has been whining for all along. Curiously, none of the citizens of this German village speaks with a German accent. They all sound like a mix between London’s East End, and somewhere in Missouri.

A poignant scene between the monster and his new friend, a little girl who wants to play with him and hasn’t the sense to run away from very big strangers with flat heads, turns tragic when he accidentally kills her. Horrified by what has happened, the monster runs away, more agitated than before, and wrecks the boudoir of Elizabeth, dressed in her wedding gown. Soon all the people with torches and clubs are after him. Evidently nobody owns a gun. Dr. Frankenstein changes from his formal wedding attire and puts on a pair of Jodhpurs, so you know he means business.

Eventually there is a showdown between creator and creation on the stony heights of an impressive set, and the monster knocks Dr. Frankenstein silly, dragging him to the windmill, where of course, the villagers set fire to it. This film has a bit more graphic horror than “Dracula” in the sense that we see the monster throw the little girl into the lake, and we see him throw Dr. Frankenstein’s limp body from the windmill, and we see the flames encircle him as he shrieks in terror. It is as if Universal is starting to push the envelope a bit.

The film ends with a recovering Dr. Frankenstein supposedly having learned his lesson, but quite tellingly, matinee idol John Boles does not get the girl in this film, as David Manners was allowed to in “Dracula.” Both these men were stars who were relegated to these minor roles probably to jump-start the hoped-for popularity of these films. Both films were financial successes, leading to new stars being created, to the point where the handsome leading men were no longer needed to attract an audience.

One note on Boris Karloff’s work in this film, though he does little more than pantomime and grunt, what Karloff endured to create this character is remarkable. The makeup, devised by Jack P. Pierce, took 3½ hours to apply. The costume weighed nearly 70 pounds, and each shoe weighed about 21 pounds. No wonder his footsteps always sounded heavy.