After last week’s review of Robert Bresson’s Les Anges du Péché, I briefly toyed with the idea of writing a nun-themed post every week. I’ve since reconsidered, but the truth is that there are quite a few memorable nun movies. Just think- a When Good Directors Go Bad on Neil Jordan’s We’re No Angels, a Movie Moment column on the rose-scourging scene in the Japanese nunsploitation classic School of the Holy Beast, a comparison piece on the wimple-worthiness of Anna Karina and Audrey Hepburn- the list goes on, even before the nuns go on the run. It’s hard to talk about nun movies without The Bells of St. Mary’s quickly coming up, so with the Easter season upon us I decided to revisit Leo McCarey’s 1945 film.

What made The Bells of St. Mary’s a hit?: 1944 saw the release of Going My Way, which introduced audiences to Bing Crosby’s Father O’Malley character. Audiences quickly fell in love with Father O’Malley, a young priest who kindly ministers to the poor with a smile and a song. Crosby- and O’Malley- won over both audiences and Oscar voters, with Going My Way proving to be both the biggest hit of 1944 and the year’s Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Best Actor (Crosby), and Best Supporting Actor (Barry Fitzgerald), among others. Based on this success, it was almost inevitable that a sequel would be a hit.

But what really put The Bells of St. Mary’s over the top was the presence of Ingrid Bergman. Bergman, who was already a popular and Oscar-winning leading lady, was best known at the time as a serious actress, playing dramatic roles in Casablanca, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Gaslight. The Bells of St. Mary’s gave her the opportunity to play a somewhat more lighthearted role, as the devout Sister Benedict. Even audiences who hadn’t seen Going My Way turned out for the unlikely yet intriguing Crosby-and-Bergman matchup, and The Bells of St. Mary’s is widely believed to be the first sequel ever to outgross the original film.

What happened?: The Bells of St. Mary’s had few pretensions other than to make war-weary audiences feel good for a couple of hours. A movie this featherweight was practically fated to see a fade in its popularity, especially compared to the more lavish color musicals and spectacles of the fifties. In addition, both of the film’s stars saw their box-office heat wane. Bergman’s slide came first, following the controversy over her affair with Roberto Rossellini, hardly the best way to endear yourself to Bells’ core audience. Bing held out longer, drawing in crowds well into the fifties, but his appeal to younger audiences was shrinking as they embraced younger performers like Frank Sinatra. By the time rock’n’roll hit the scene, Bing felt like a relic to them.

Does The Bells of St. Mary’s still work?: Not really. Watching the film again, the two words that kept springing to mind were “quaint” and “cornball.” The Bells of St. Mary’s is so committed to making the audience feel good- whether it’s through gentle laughter or easy tears- that the film never has any edge to it. At the beginning of the film, O’Malley is warned about the strong-willed nuns, but aside from a few heated discussions over how the school is run, little becomes of this. Likewise, the episodic nature of the story isn’t a problem, except that all of the subplots are resolved in the easiest and most predictable way possible.

Consider the story of Horace P. Bogardus (Henry Travers), the rich man and city bigwig who is erecting an office building next to St. Mary’s. Bogardus, like so many other rich men in movies, only seems to think about money, while the nuns pray in the hope that he’ll turn over the building to them to use as their new school. So O’Malley does a little scheming, and after Bogardus falls ill, the nuns’ prayers are answered, with Bogardus requiring surprisingly little convincing to make a gift of his not-inexpensive new property. This wouldn’t be so bad except that every subplot in the film is resolved in much the same way.

In addition, the film’s characterizations are almost distractingly thin. O’Malley doesn’t play any notes that he hadn’t already played in Going My Way, and none of the supporting characters show any real depth. Most disappointing is Sister Benedict- the film sets her up as a formidable rival to O’Malley, but none of this pans out. Instead, she becomes practically saintly, as she sticks to her principles, has Job-like patience with her students, and prays for Mr. Bogardus. Even when she does something questionable, such as teaching a picked-on boy how to box, she does so for all of the right reasons. It’s a shame, since as Bergman plays the character it’s easy to imagine how, with only a few script changes, Sister Benedict might have been interesting and multi-dimensional, rather than the sanctimonious cipher we see in The Bells of St. Mary’s.

But then, when you’ve got a valuable property, why rock the boat? Even the film’s most potentially divisive element- its setting in a Roman Catholic Church and school- is portrayed in the most sanitized way imaginable. This is understandable, as in the year before Vatican II and President Kennedy there was some suspicion among non-Catholics about Catholic tradition. However, aside from a few throwaway lines (like the bit about a kid named Luther- “how’d he get in here?”) and the presence of priests and nuns, there’s little actual Catholicism on display here. Heck, many of the ads for the film didn’t even show its stars in their clerical garb, so clearly the religious issue wasn’t a very big one for the film and its studio.

In many ways, The Bells of St. Mary’s is an ideal example of a movie that is a hit in its day but hasn’t stood the test of time. While there’s nothing edgy or controversial that would have incurred the ire of 1945 audiences, it always offers nothing that’s especially interesting to moviewatchers in 2008. But then, how many of today’s hits will we be able to say the same about sixty years from now?