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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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4 / 1987 |
2,683 Words |
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Tom O'Brien
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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 study of a Singapore pimp.
The success of Therese thus, temporarily at least, marks the renewal of a venerable film tradition. Therese also illustrates how that tradition has evolved. In film no two saints' lives are alike in the treatment of sanctity or are as varied as the perspectives, time, and place of their directors and writers. Looking back from Therese one thing is clear: There are no cinema "saints for all seasons."
Therese's individuality involved a subtle mixture of sanctity and eros. The film was directed by Alain Cavalier, and reveals his passionately religious yet skeptical sensibility. Cavalier, who has a Catholic background, has directed nine films. In his latest project he greatly benefited from the assistance of the Abbess at Lisieux, where Therese spent her last years as a Carmelite nun.
Cavalier nonetheless assumed an independent attitude toward his subject. Therese is shown as a radiant, good-natured, good-humored young woman, forgiving the faults of others, and utterly devoted to Christ. She is never referred to as a saint, however, and is never shown having visions. She is depicted as thoroughly down-to-earth, and she even becomes the object of homosexual love from some of her fellow runs, although never acquiescing.
In Cavalier's view, Therese's sanctity does not consist in escaping from the world and conversing with angels: It consists of living among complicated human beings who are often not what they seem or who desire love without comprehending why. His Therese, therefore, is not a saint because she was superhumanly pure, but because her form of love purified
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