The Curates Egg

Singing Nuns, Celluloid saints and Saucy Sisters

As I missed June's Messenger I though I'd use this month's article for a bit of catching up. At the end of April I went on a whole weekend devoted to films and faith at St Deiniols Library in North Wales. We watched films, shared our favourite clips, and listened to a number of interesting talks. One of them was on the subject of images of women in religious films – and particularly films featuring nuns. It's amazing how many such films there are and their variety. From 'The Bells of St Mary's' (1945: Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman) to 'The Nun's Story' (1959: Audrey Hepburn) and right up to 'The Magdalene Sisters' (2002: Geraldine McEwen) - with many others in between. The main point the speaker was making was that, whilst films often present clichéd or one dimensional characters, women in particular have suffered from stereotyping over the years – usually being presented as one of the 'four M's': Maiden, Mother, Mistress or Monster. It was a well presented talk and the speaker cleverly used clips from several 'nun films' to prove her case. In addition, over the course of the weekend we did watch two examples all the way through. First the fantastic 'Black Narcissus' (1947), in which Deborah Kerr (pictured right) leads a group of nuns to the Himalayan Mountains to create a school and hospital from an abandoned palace (once used as a harem).  The location is wonderfully exotic; and gradually, for reasons beyond their understanding, each nun begins to question their faith, their vows, and their purpose in life. Despite some stereotyping the story is superbly told – and is lifted into the extraordinary by the amazing cinematography. It is one of the most beautiful colour films ever made and is all the more extraordinary for having been shot almost entirely in a studio (which I did not realise the first time I saw it). The other film we saw was (of course) 'The Sound of Music'; although to make it a bit different we watched the sing-along version and joined in all the songs! 

Arts Week

This year our church Arts Week featured an evening devoted to film when on June 10^th I had the privilege of presenting my own film night. I used a variety of classic clips to illustrate and explain something about films as art, the relationship between films and reality, and 'God in the movies'. I hope those who came found it informative and enjoyable (I certainly enjoyed doing it!)

One of the points I made was that the immense popularity of film is partly because their close representation of reality makes them very easy to comprehend. Usually we instantly recognise what the sounds and images in front of us represent - even if we don't understand the plot! This accessibility is one of films great strengths as an art form, but it also gives rise to the danger that because we can just treat it as entertainment we don't try to engage with it at any deeper level and can miss many of the jewels buried within. It is however quite easy to go quite a bit deeper, and on the night (with the help of Gareth Higgins excellent book " How Movies Helped Save My Soul") I offered five tips for doing so:-

1. Treat the film with respect. Give it your full attention, don't make quick judgements (and please don't talk during it!)

2. Really look at the film. Try to notice not just the main action but the way things are filmed and what's shown on the whole screen

3. Find out some background information about the film – Who made it? Why did they make it?

4. Talk about the film with some like minded friends

5.  Ask yourself what the film was trying to say and, more importantly, what it did say to you (and to do this properly you may need to watch the film more than once).

Now of course I'm not suggesting you do all this every time you watch 'Carry on Camping' – but it's amazing how many films can be appreciated, and enjoyed, that much more by a little effort along these lines - give it a try, and let me know how you get on.

Tim