Lilies of the Field (1963)
Country: US
Technical: bw/1.66:1 94m
Director: Ralph Nelson
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Lilia Skala, Dan Frazer, Ralph Nelson
Synopsis:
A wandering handyman stops at a small holding in New Mexico operated by East German nuns, and the Mother Superior pressures him into staying to rebuild their chapel, believing him sent by God.
Review:
Unusual for a Poitier film in which his race barely figures, and one for which he won an Oscar. It's a simple story of faith in the good Lord, and the pride of seeing that a job is well done (as with the Almighty, an analogy made plainer by a heavy-handed Tower of Babel sequence). As such it really only concerns itself with the standoff between the Mother who cannot bring herself to be gracious, and the gregarious Homer 'Schmidt', who even condescends to teaching the sisters English and negro prayer songs. Poitier is fine, and bears the principal burden of screen time, but the film even then seemed somewhat naïve: he has missed out on education and yet he forms a closed conditional period with better grammar than your average American does now, and Nelson's building contractor swallows his racial prejudice mighty easily.
Country: US
Technical: bw/1.66:1 94m
Director: Ralph Nelson
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Lilia Skala, Dan Frazer, Ralph Nelson
Synopsis:
A wandering handyman stops at a small holding in New Mexico operated by East German nuns, and the Mother Superior pressures him into staying to rebuild their chapel, believing him sent by God.
Review:
Unusual for a Poitier film in which his race barely figures, and one for which he won an Oscar. It's a simple story of faith in the good Lord, and the pride of seeing that a job is well done (as with the Almighty, an analogy made plainer by a heavy-handed Tower of Babel sequence). As such it really only concerns itself with the standoff between the Mother who cannot bring herself to be gracious, and the gregarious Homer 'Schmidt', who even condescends to teaching the sisters English and negro prayer songs. Poitier is fine, and bears the principal burden of screen time, but the film even then seemed somewhat naïve: he has missed out on education and yet he forms a closed conditional period with better grammar than your average American does now, and Nelson's building contractor swallows his racial prejudice mighty easily.
Country: US
Technical: bw/1.66:1 94m
Director: Ralph Nelson
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Lilia Skala, Dan Frazer, Ralph Nelson
Synopsis:
A wandering handyman stops at a small holding in New Mexico operated by East German nuns, and the Mother Superior pressures him into staying to rebuild their chapel, believing him sent by God.
Review:
Unusual for a Poitier film in which his race barely figures, and one for which he won an Oscar. It's a simple story of faith in the good Lord, and the pride of seeing that a job is well done (as with the Almighty, an analogy made plainer by a heavy-handed Tower of Babel sequence). As such it really only concerns itself with the standoff between the Mother who cannot bring herself to be gracious, and the gregarious Homer 'Schmidt', who even condescends to teaching the sisters English and negro prayer songs. Poitier is fine, and bears the principal burden of screen time, but the film even then seemed somewhat naïve: he has missed out on education and yet he forms a closed conditional period with better grammar than your average American does now, and Nelson's building contractor swallows his racial prejudice mighty easily.