A Film Canon

 

 

Despite centring on Father Chuck O'Malley's (Bing Crosby) attempt to restore Father Fitzgibbon's (Barry Fitzgerald) New York parish, this sentimental classic artfully excludes religion; or, rather, takes a number of steps to universalise it, opening up the various sources of narrative charisma to a demographic beyond the Irish Catholicism around which they tend to dwell. Most explicitly, O'Malley rarely makes any doctrinal statement, nor gives any concrete indication of why he joined the priesthood - a decision that is consistently remarked upon by past and present friends for its incongruity. At the same time, he equates music with religion in such a way as to construe the various types of performance that occur throughout the film - culminating with his iconic rendition of the title tune - as a secularised liturgy, explaining their consistent proximity to the miraculous, as if the most perfect expression of his faith were a sung sermon. However, the most striking strategy is a reconfiguration of conversion around the distinction between the previous generation of priests - "old fussbudgets" - and those prepared to go out "on the golf- course...in the fresh air"; that is, a conversion away from the very doctrinal pedantry within which conversion usually tends to be couched. From this perspective, it feels as if the film is ultimately offering charismatic patriotism as religion, as evinced in the beatification of the neighbourhood, as well as the  restriction of doctrinal sentiment to those business interests threatening it. That said, sufficient religiosity - if not religion - remains to both ensure that O'Malley only ever has a paternalistic, or vicarious, investment in romance, and induce Crosby to maintain an uncharacteristically restrained, thoughtful performance.