Posted on 01/07/2018 3:15:48 PM PST by GoldenState_Rose
The first Golden Globes were held in 1943, and the award for Best Film went to the film "The Song of Bernadette" starring Jennifer Jones, who also won the award for Best Actress for her role as Saint Bernadette.
The movie is based on the novel, which according to Ignatius Press, "tells the true story surrounding the miraculous visions of St. Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes, France in 1858. Werfel, a highly respected anti-Nazi writer from Vienna, became a Jewish refugee who barely escaped death in 1940, and wrote this moving story to fulfill a promise he made to God. While hiding in the little village of Lourdes, Werfel felt the Nazi noose tightening, and realizing that he and his wife might well be caught and executed, he made a promise to God to write about the song of Bernadette that he had been inspired by during his clandestine stay in Lourdes. Though Werfel was Jewish, he was so deeply impressed by both Bernadette and the happenings at Lourdes, that his writing has a profound sense of Catholic understanding."
On re-reading The Song, what struck me most about Werfels craft was how deeply this Jewish writer, who had long been interested in Catholicism but who had never converted, had entered into Catholicisms sacramental imagination. For all its unsparing depiction of the poverty of the French Pyrenees, the pettiness of local officialdom, the skepticism and institutional-mindedness of local churchmen, The Song of Bernadette is shot through with a sense of the extraordinary that lies on the far side of the ordinary, revealing itself through the simplest things. - George Weigel, from the Foreword
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036377/
It's interesting to go through the archive lists of former award show nominees and winners and look back on the numerous performances from worthwhile films which celebrated faith, great classics of literature, heroism, and other lost values and ideas.
The history of Hollywood is young and it has much potential still. May it be renewed, revived, and restored!
Too bad the otherwise married Jennifer Jones was having an affair with her otherwise married producer David Selznick while making their holy film. The casting couch was alive and well even back then.
Great Film!
Got it. Point well taken.
Yes, great movies. My confirmation name is Bernadette.
so is mine.
(P.S. The gams aren't too bad either!)
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