OVP: The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)

Film: The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)
Stars: Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman, Henry Travers, Joan Carroll
Director: Leo McCarey
Oscar History: 8 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Director, Sound*, Actor-Bing Crosby, Actress-Ingrid Bergman, Film Editing, Score, Song-"Aren't You Glad You're You")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We're continuing on our Best Actress races today with The Bells of St. Mary's, one of the rare movies to get major acting nominations (and a Best Picture nomination) as a sequel (I might do an article on this someday, but it's actually hard to define what is and isn't a sequel when it comes to Best Picture nominees...though Bells of St. Mary's qualifies under any metric).  The movie is a followup to Going My Way, which we watched a few months back, and features a third consecutive nomination for one of its stars, Ingrid Bergman.  Bergman was one of the biggest names in Hollywood at the time, and with Casablanca and Gaslight behind her, one of the most bankable.  Bells of St. Mary's might not have been the creative peak of her career, but it was inarguably the financial peak of her career.  The film was the #1 movie of 1945, and adjusted for inflation is still on the Top 100 most successful movies ever.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film largely leaves behind most of the characters we know from Going My Way, save for Father O'Malley (Crosby), who has been assigned to a teaching parish in a dilapidated old school building that is under threat of being condemned.  The church is run by Sister Mary Benedict (Bergman), who desperately wants a businessman, Horace Bogardus (Travers), in the neighboring brand-new building, to donate the space, potentially making it so that the school can stay, but he has his designs on buying the school from the church to put up a parking lot.  While other things happen, specifically with a young woman who struggles in her school and family life (played by Joan Carroll), this is the heart of the story.  In the end, the church does get the building (it's old Hollywood, come on), but Sister Mary Benedict doesn't get to see it as she's transferred to a dry climate to help with her tuberculosis, and she & Father O'Malley become friends rather than friendly adversaries.

The film is very, very sweet & pleasant.  This kind of works in the sense that it's a holiday picture (there's a sequence where the children put together a ragtag Christmas pageant), and no one wants something too complicated during the holidays.  But it also has almost no proper plot because it's so averse to struggle or conflict.  Everyone, even Travers' businessman, is really kind & loving, and there's no sense of struggle in what will happen in the end.  Even Sister Mary Benedict's illness, which couldn't be blamed on anyone, seems certain to be cured in the end, and so there's no resolve.  The movie is thus egregiously boring even if it's difficult to dislike.

The film's seven Oscar nominations are all, therefore, a disappointment.  The editing is lousy as the story oftentimes feels strung together by vignettes rather than any central plot, and the Sound (which won the Oscar!) has nothing remarkable about it other than a few musical numbers from Crosby, including the forgettable "Aren't You Glad You're Here?"  Crosby doesn't complicate his work as Father O'Malley, and neither does Bergman as Sister Mary Benedict.  This feels like less of a sin from Crosby (a limited actor) but Bergman was scoring home runs during the 1940's (she'd be making Notorious, for crying out loud, just months after this film was released), so this feels like a wasted citation for the actress.  Overall, the movie doesn't impress-it's not spiteful or wrong, and it has its heart in the right place, but it's difficult to understand how this became a classic when it's hard to remember previous scenes even while you're watching the film.