The Song of Bernadette
1943 // USA // Henry King
Letterboxd (LINK)
Assertively insightful on the meaning of faith, and the paradoxical difference between spirituality and Christian/Catholic doctrine encapsulated by the oppressive, patriarchal institution, THE SONG OF BERNADETTE tells the 19th-century story of a French teenage girl, Bernadette (Jennifer Jones), who one day sees a ‘beautiful lady’ standing near a cave and shimmering in a holy light. The rest of the plot follows a conventional trajectory of a confrontation between belief and skepticism, purity and viciousness. Predictable as it may, the script strikes an eloquent balance between didacticism and characterization. The skeptic jerks are disarmed gradually by the innocuous Bernadette, they maybe stereotypical at the first glance but the remarkable performances from the supporting casts, including Charles Bickford, Gladys Cooper, and Vincent Price, provide palpable depth to the characters.
This film is nearly three hours long and it certainly feels that way, there’s a sense of repetition on the back-and-forth struggle in terms of family and bureaucracy, thus the film stagnates intermittently. The other problem, and I believe it’s a minority of opinion but it ruins half of the film for me, is I find Jennifer Jones‘s performance unforgivably irritating and one-noted, as a result, Bernadette‘s innocent endeavor (other calls her imbecile) is extremely contrived. The film unambiguously shows her vision, the ‘beautiful lady,’ onscreen which, although it doesn’t entirely blemish the theme, could be more inspiring if the audience is left with an opportunity to conjure their own vision in faith. Still, considering the film was released in 1943 in the midst of a diabolical war, it’s understandable that the audience urgently yearned for absolute faith and the film is an apt testament. Bernadette is the alleviation of suffering in that particular time and deserved to be cherished even for that reason alone.
Film’s Trailer
The Films in My Life (OnCriterion) 