Religious Films

The cinema's potency is respected by organized religion, but its technique has not been fully exploited to religion's purposes. In recent years films have been made of the career of Pope Pius XI, of the plight of persecuted non-Aryan Christians in Germany, of the history of the Episcopal Church in the U. S. Frenchmen produced good documentary pictures of religious life in Cloistered (TIME, June 1, 1936), and Monastery (TIME, Dec. 20), which rank with Golgotha and The Call (also French) and two commercial jobs-- De Mille's Ten Commandments and The King of Kings--as the most popular for presentation in U. S. churches. A spate of new religious films last week, most of them already shown in Europe, most of them extremely well done, indicated that churchmen were becoming increasingly alert to cinema's possibilities.

Thunder of the Sea. To aid its campaign for funds to build new churches, the United Lutheran Church last October began work on a picture called Thunder of the Sea, from the last line of a famed old U. S. Lutheran hymn, Rise Ye Children of Salvation. Commercial studios asked $10,000 to make the film, but with unpaid actors the Lutherans did it themselves for $5,500. A workmanlike job running 41 minutes, Thunder of the Sea was directed and photographed by John W. Gable and Edward Anhalt, who has done work for the Religious Motion Picture Foundation. It shows scenes of big-city confusion, some shots of Martin Luther (from a Harmon Foundation picture), the famed Now-is-the-time-to-fight sermon of John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg (TIME, Jan. 10), the founding and building of a small contemporary Lutheran church.

Treasures in Stone. Jean Cardinal Verdier, 74, good grey Archbishop of Paris, is a zealous church-builder, last autumn announced plans for a new parish church to be called Notre-Dame du Cinema, in the suburban centre of the French film industry (TIME, Oct. 18). Completed last week was a cinema short which is to help pay for the cinema church, and in which Cardinal Verdier appears as the first Prince of the Church who ever journeyed to a studio, acted deliberately before the cameras. The short, called Treasures in Stone, shows churches which the Cardinal built or remodeled, shows the Cardinal talking with M. Louis Aubert, head of a cinema company which merged with Gaumont-Franco-Film. Said Cardinal Verdier, when the director and cameramen attempted to instruct him during the filming: "Please, gentlemen, I've never been a movie star before, but a Cardinal always knows how to conduct himself."

Triumph. Privately shown in London last week was Triumph, a picture which the British Board of Film Censors declined to approve for public performance. Triumph, which is to be shown in the U. S., exhibits the face and figure of Christ, played--though the whole cast is anonymous so far as the program goes--by a onetime Anglican curate of St. Peter's Church, Great Windmill St., London. Most of Triumph, however, deals not with the life of Christ but with his influence upon such characters as Nicodemus, St. Francis, Joan of Arc, Abraham Lincoln.

"Old Joe's" Films. Richest man in England today, and one of the least publicized because he has never been interviewed and only once photographed, is Joseph ("Old Joe") Rank, 83, milling and shipping tycoon, worth upwards of $100,000,000. A broad-accented Yorkshireman, Miller Rank has always been a stanch Methodist, has always said: "If I take anything to prayer I always succeed." For years, even after he had settled affluently in Surrey, Mr. Rank taught Sunday School at Tooting Bee in London's suburbs, taking his lunch there in a paper bag. To the Wesleyan Church he is estimated to have given $20,000,000 in cash and stock in his manifold enterprises.

Three years ago "Old Joe" Rank (who has steadfastly refused a lordship because "Lord Joe" would sound funny) became interested in cinema as a means of spreading religion. He founded the Religious Films Society, with the Bishop of London as president, and with his pious son J. Arthur Rank as treasurer began pouring money into a series of church-sponsored films. They were not very good. Last year Miller Rank went to the head of Gaumont British Instructional, Ltd., made a deal by which Gaumont British would produce a series of pictures costing from $15,000 to $20,000, while Mr. Rank would get at least 200 British churches to put up half the cost of $100 projectors (made by Gaumont British) if he paid the balance. Gaumont British would rent the pictures out at $1.25 per evening. With 20,000 churches in Great Britain, it envisioned an expanding market. Furthermore, Gaumont British studios were and are idle, pending disposition of a Films Quota Bill in Parliament.

Last week the first batch of Old Joe's pictures went on view in churches and church halls throughout England. Best of the pictures was based upon a story by Tolstoi: Where Love Is, God Is. A modern version of an old parable was The Sower. Early One Morning shows a Christmas scene in Sweden. The Silence presented a somewhat strange argument against a married man running away with another woman. He is shown to have had an easy time in Africa during the War, while his wife lost her arm in a munitions factory. The woman he falls in love with did nothing during the War. An Armistice Day whistle--for silence--reminds them of their unworthiness. They part.

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