ONE FOOT IN HEAVEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 287, 22 December 1944, Page 24

ONE FOOT IN HEAVEN

/ (Warner Bros.)

ROLLING down upon us now from Hollywood is a cycle of religious films. The movie industry has discovered that religion, as a subject for

stories, is at present a vastly more payable proposition than war, and even more profitable than music. Going My Way, in which Bing Crosby appears as a Catholic priest, has been the biggest money-maker in the U.S. during 1944 (and one of the biggest hits in a decade), while The Song of Bernadette, based on the miracles at Lourdes, has been second favourite. A film version of Cronin’s The Keys of the Kingdom is reported to be on the way. However, the push that helped to set this cycle in motion came from a Nonconformist direction about three years ago. That is when One Foot in Heaven was actually produced, although it has only just reached us. Based on Harzell Spence’s biography of his father, William Spence, D.D., this is the story of a Methodist pastor whose career it follows from the day in 1904 when, as a promising young Canadian medical student, he decides to become a parson instead, to the day years later when he plays the carillon in the magnificent church which he has succeeded in getting ‘| built im Denver, Colorado. Since the predominating domestic experience, apart from marriage and fatherhood, of such a man is to move constantly from parish to parish, the film suffers the handicap of being episodic in treatment and slightly disjointed. This is particularly the case for the first halfhour or so, when we are treated to a kaleidoscopic succession of train journeys, church functions, uncomfortable parsonages, and additions to the family. But at the time the character of Dr. Spence, as portrayed by Fredric March, is developing, until by the time both he and the film come to rest for a fairly long stay in Denver, he ne attained life-size stature. By this time also he has learnt many things, chief among them being that he '|has a near-perfect wife (Martha Scott); that though a Methodist minister may call his soul his own, he cannot make any such claim about his home, and that he will, in addition, often be dependent on stray marriage fees for keeping his stomach full; and that the Methodist "discipline," by which a minister regulates his own and his family’s conduct, may need amending when confronted by such a modern phenomenon as the cinema. The episode in which Dr. Spence attends the screening of a William S. Hart silent melodrama for the purpose of exposing the iniquity of the movies, but is instead converted to rapgurous approval of their high moral tone, is such a blatant piece of self-advertis-ing by the cinema that if I could conscientiously condemn it I would. But I cannot. The episode is not only effective and highly amusing; it also provides sensational proof of the progress the movies have made in 30 years. Less effective, because too obviously written in for a topical purpose, is the episode on Armistice Day, 1918.

But the film is at its best in its last quarter when Dr. Spence, determined that Denver shall have a new Methodist church, is embroiled in parish’ politics, and runs foul of vested interests in the choir and congregation. He emerges triumphant, but only after demonstrating that in such circumstances a man of God needs also to be a soldier of the Lord, and requires, in addition to the forbearance and humility of a saint, the wiliness of a professional diplomat. I liked One Foot in Heaven. The picture has its faults, but they are mostly the faults of the subject, not of the acting or direction. Both Fredric March and Martha Scott manage to convey a clear impression of two people who are good without being goody-good. And after so many superficial pictures, it is a pleasant change to find one which ventures a little way beneath the surface, and treats human character as something worth observing for its own sake.