There must be a factory somewhere producing films that attack the Catholic Church exclusively. The amount of them seems relentless at times. Shiny modern liberal Ireland seems so lacking in confidence that it has to keep hammering home the message. The latest iteration was Pray for Our Sinners (RTÉ One, Wednesday) an authored documentary by…
The influence of the Church in films of the thirties and forties was evident in ones featuring priests working against juvenile delinquency, like Spencer Tracy in Boystown in 1938. Pat O’Brien did likewise as Fr Jerry Connolly in Angels with Dirty Faces, also in 1938. The film was a huge success, exploring the issue of…
The Church’s ‘war’ on Hollywood, which I’ve been writing about in recent weeks, was ratcheted up in the 1930s by Cardinal George Mundelein. One of America’s most influential figures, he urged his congregation to shun films of questionable ethics. As a result, over eight million Catholics took a pledge against watching ‘impurity’ on screen. That…
I recently wrote about the film industry’s problems with the Catholic Church in the early years of the last century. Falling audiences were an associated problem. The Depression almost killed off the industry. After it ended, a bacchanalian atmosphere reigned, leading to material unsuitable for family audiences appearing in a profusion of the works being…
Being July, the silly season, there are many blockbusters as well as sequels and remakes on our screens now. With the children being off school there’s much fare to suit them too, animated features like Smurfs, The Bad Guys 2 and The Girl Who Leapt Through Fire. Scarlet Johansson is the draw for Jurassic World:…
Nationwide (RTÉ One, Saturday) featured a special programme on St Oliver Plunkett to mark the 400th anniversary of his birth. Presented by Colm Flynn, it was a concise but comprehensive overview of his life and death. We heard from Fr Mark Mohan, Parish Priest of Oldcastle Co. Meath, home of the Plunkett family – a…
Last week I wrote about Will Hays, Fr Daniel Lord and the formation of the Production Code Administration (PCA). This prohibited the release of films deemed anathema to a Catholic ethos in early Hollywood. I mentioned the Roscoe Arbuckle scandal. Some years before, there was the drug death of Wallace Reid and the murder of…
Last week I wrote about Cecil B. De Mille vis-a-vis Catholic ideology in his films. One of the scenes in his 1932 feature The Sign of the Cross contained an erotic dance. Catholic audiences were outraged, so much so that Presbyterian deacon Will H. Hays, who’d been employed by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors…
A director shouts “Action!” In front of him stands his wife. How is she going to respond? Will she say, “Yes, sir, no sir, three bags full, sir” or will she be difficult? Will she freeze? Some people perform better at their chosen avocations when their loved ones are watching them. Others ‘corpse.’ There are…
People of a certain age will remember Radharc, the documentary series funded in 1962 by the then Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. This month there are free shows at the Irish Film Institute at lunchtime on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays of two of its seminal films, both a half hour long. You can also…
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone