the rix mix

“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
Matthew 6:27-29

Lilies of the Field (1963) with Sidney Poitier & Lilia Skala. Poitier won an Academy Award for his performance as the free-spirited wanderer, Homer Smith, Skala, playing a strict nun who had escaped from East Germany with four of her sisters-in-habit, was nominated. It's a charming movie, very much of its time.

The story is basic. Homer Smith, traveling from somewhere to someplace, arrives at an impoverished farm in the desert occupied by East German nuns. Homer is looking for a few bucks in exchange for handyman work. After doing some work, he discovers that not only can't the nuns pay him, they can't even feed him a decent meal. The nuns want to build a small chapel but have no money or muscle. It turns out he's a skilled tradesman, knows how to build things. He can design a basic building, lay masonry, construct a roof, even operate heavy construction equipment. We don't find out where he learned all this. In the original novel, he'd been in the Army, & I wish that explanation had been in movie; the Army was the great leveller in American society at the time, but it was a regimented life. He's slowly drawn into the chapel project. The devout local Mexicans want to help build their chapel, but Homer, once he decides to stay around, is determined to build it by himself; then he calculates it would take him a year. So he relents. Homer tests his Bible knowledge against Skala's Mother Maria, gives the nuns English lessons, teaches them to sing a gospel song ("Amen"), becomes frustrated, goes away, returns, completes the task.

Now we tend to see caricatures in older movies. We might view Homer Smith as a "good" negro who will bend to the will of white authority under certain conditions. What he is, is good to himself, a free man. The Mexicans are caricatures, humble, simple, anonymous, except for a cynical but affable cafe proprietor (Stanley Adams, whose Spanish accent never sounds authentic). There's a little bit of racism injected by a local white businessman (played by the director), nothing threatening, & Homer easily gains his respect. An itinerant Irish priest (Dan Frazier. Kojak's boss on the TV show) lives in an Airstream trailer, conducts Mass in a cafe parking lot, may drink too much, & thinks of himself as being in exile. But it's really a good-hearted parable, set in the isolated Arizona desert so the troubled outside world of the early 60's doesn't intrude much. Everyone is alien in that landscape, Homer Smith only the newest arrival. His discovery of the what the nuns went through to reach this forsaken location touches him. No one is perfect, or bad, or without dignity.

I can't fault Sidney Poitier for keeping this character, in the year of Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech, an intelligent, independent, good-natured man with foibles rather than deep flaws. Poitier thought enough into his characters to know there were always alternatives, & he wasn't shy about sharing them with film directors (as he did while filming In the Heat of the Night), Unlike another fine movie of the time, To Kill A Mockingbird, (or many other movies), Lilies of the Field is not about enlightened white men defending or raising up oppressed black men. Homer Smith is no victim, doesn't consider himself one, & resents being "used" by a tough nun to fulfill the work she says God sent him to her to do - in part because he's a Baptist. If he can't always stand up to the head nun, it's not because he's been bent by a culture of servility but because he's a young man still sorting out his future up against a strong older woman who has also known oppression & absolutely certain of what she wants; without a chapel, the nuns cannot fulfil their purpose in coming to America. Homer put himself in the situation, he's always free to opt out of it. He's the only person in the movie with mobility. He's also, like the nuns & Mexicans, a man of faith.

In 1963, a time of great civil rights action & racist violence, this was a liberal, grown up, feel-good movie. The German nuns see Homer's skin color without prejudice. Now it's probably better for younger viewers. But with our newly-elected president, it's possible to think Sidney Poitier was looking ahead. We've also become too cynical to believe people can be essentially good & behave decently toward each other.

For the Christian viewer - the title refers to passage from the "Sermon on the Mount" - there's never any doubt that God brought everyone together for a reason, & it's not to build a chapel but to create a community. However, Homer moves on when the chapel is finished. It isn't his community or future. We don't know where he'll end up, but it will be in a good place. The loner now knows he is a leader. That is not always a happy thing to learn but it is empowering. In the novel, the nuns place an oil painting in the chapel with animage of a saint resembling Homer. That was wisely left out of the film.

Many will also appreciate the depiction of the mysterious role-playing game called "Angels," in which people are moved into challenging, though not necessarily desperate or daunting, situations calling for them to serve as angels. These situations only appear to us as coincidences.

Directed by Ralph Nelson. A critic complained of another Nelson Movie, Soldiers in the Rain, that you always feel something wonderful is about to happen but it never does. True. Yet I've always enjoyed Soldier for its depiction of peacetime Army life just prior to Vietnam, & for the performances of Jackie Gleason, Steve McQueen,& Tuesday Weld. Lilies of the Field brings the same quality to a better story. Nelson was a sincere craftsman rather than great director; he did his best work on TV in the 50's. But it says something that two of his movies had winning Oscar performances, by Poitier, & by Cliff Robertson in Charly. He later made one of Cary Grant's better late career comedies, Father Goose; a bleak, expensive western, Duel at Diablo; & a failed attempt at an antiwar revisionist western, Soldier Blue, about the Sand Creek Massacre & released at the height of the Vietnam War. He had stronger messages in his smaller films, which were, at heart, about peculiar friendships.

Labels: culture, movies, religion

# posted by Bob : 12:52 AM

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