Catholic Novels
Film adaptations of Catholic novels. These are novels written from a Catholic perspective, which is not to say that these novels look at all like the pious trash that is so often associated with overtly Christian works. This is also not a definitive list and the films are listed in no particular order. I will be adding more titles as I go along.
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- DirectorRonald NeameStarsMaggie SmithGordon JacksonRobert StephensAn eccentric Scottish schoolteacher's extravagantly romantic ideas about life--and love--overly impress her young pupils and bring her into conflict with her school's conservative headmistress.This is by far Muriel Spark's best-known work. It is witty and charming, which also leads us to forget that it is also a novel about betrayal, redemption, the inability to find redemption, and finding grace and redemption in the wrong places. The novel, even though it reads quite well, handles time in a very daring and experimental manner and the narrative constantly plays with flashbacks and flashforwards. One of the problems with this movie version is that, unlike what happens in the novel, time is reduced to a purely chronological sequence. However, some of these deficiencies in the film (which have to do with the film medium itself) are compensated by Maggie Smith's wonderful portrayal of the character of Jean Brodie.
- DirectorJohn HustonStarsBrad DourifJohn HustonDan ShorFresh out of the army, Hazel Motes attempts to open the first Church Without Christ in the small town of Taulkinham.An interesting adaptation of O'Connor's novel. The novel is both a tragedy and a comedy, and the film captures a sense of that (which also means that it can be difficult to make sense of story). O'Connor was a devout Catholic and saw the world from very much a Catholic perspective, but she lived in Georgia and the people she wrote about were Bible Belt Protestants. Both the novel and the film are interesting because what we see is a Catholic tapestry but where the actors in this tapestry are all Protestant (or semi-Protestant or Protestant-ish). To make sense of O'Connor, we need to see her stories working at two levels. The term "analogical imagination" applies very much to her work.
- DirectorJulian JarroldStarsMatthew GoodePatrick MalahideHayley AtwellA poignant story of forbidden love and the loss of innocence set in England prior to World War II.
- DirectorJohn FordEmilio FernándezStarsHenry FondaDolores Del RíoPedro ArmendárizAnti-Catholic and anti-cleric policies in the Mexican state of Tabasco lead the revolutionary government to persecute the state's last remaining priest.John Ford's version of Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory. While Ford was a brilliant director, the constraints of the period and the fact moralistic Catholic groups had some such an influence in determining how priests should be represented in Hollywood films meant that his portrayal of the "whiskey priest" in the film is not altogether faithful to Greene's original version. There was something very honest about the priest in Greene's novel, and the "power and the glory" in the title paradoxically had to do with the fact that the main character was frail and all too human.
- DirectorRobert BressonStarsClaude LayduNicole LadmiralJean RiveyreA young priest taking over the parish at Ambricourt tries to fulfill his duties even as he fights a mysterious stomach ailment.Perhaps only a director like Bresson could have captured the essence of Georges Bernanos's novel. It is a story about suffering and spiritual disquiet.
- DirectorClaude MillerStarsAudrey TautouGilles LelloucheAnaïs DemoustierAn unhappily married woman struggles to break free from social pressures.François Mauriac was the great French Catholic novelist, although there was something Jansenist (or almost Calvinist) about his vision.
- DirectorMasahiro ShinodaStarsDavid LampsonDon KennyTetsurô TanbaTwo Jesuit priests encounter persecution when they travel to Japan in the 17th century to spread Christianity and to locate their mentor.This is a version by a Japanese director of Shûsaku Endô's famous novel about Jesuit missionaries in Japan. Martin Scorsese seems to be working on another version based on the same novel.
- DirectorMichael PowellEmeric PressburgerStarsDeborah KerrDavid FarrarFlora RobsonA group of nuns struggle to establish a convent in the Himalayas, while isolation, extreme weather, altitude, and culture clashes all conspire to drive the well-intentioned missionaries mad.A film adaptation of Rumer Godden's novel Black Narcissus, originally published in 1939. Godden wasn't yet a Catholic, but the high Anglicanism which permeates the novel is close enough to the Catholicism she later came to embrace.
- DirectorCarol ReedStarsOrson WellesJoseph CottenAlida ValliPulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime.
- DirectorRobert BressonStarsNadine NortierJean-Claude GuilbertMarie CardinalA young girl living in the French countryside suffers constant indignities at the hand of alcoholism and her fellow man.
- DirectorNeil JordanStarsRalph FiennesJulianne MooreStephen ReaA desperate man tries to find out why his beloved left him years ago.Graham Greene's novel came out in 1951. At the time, some Catholics were quite upset with the novel, but this also shows that Greene was not a propagandist, and that he was quite wiling to explore complicated moral issues. The virtue of this adaption by Neil Jordan is that the director actually understands the context, the dynamics of the context, as well as the tension involved.
- DirectorLiv UllmannStarsElisabeth MathesonBjørn SkagestadSverre Anker OusdalKristin is the daughter of a prominent landowner in medieval Norway. She grows up in total harmony with the ideals of the time: strong family ties, social pride and devout Christianity. She accepts the fact that her father has arranged for her to marry the son of another landowner. Kristin's beauty and purity create violent emotions around her. There are envy and attempted rape, murder and revenge. She seeks refuge from the world in a convent, awaiting the time for her marriage. Here the passion of her life strikes, the knight Erlend Nikulaussonn. He, an accomplished seducer, also falls hopelessly in love. They have to cross not only convent walls to meet, but social boundaries as well. Their love cannot be kept secret, and suddenly the innocent Kristin is the centre of a scandal. Her fiance withdraws from their engagement, her father rages, and Erlend's former mistress tries to poison her. The affair grows into a political issue, and finally some of the country's most dignified leaders persuade Lavrans to give in. The lovers win each other, but it is in front of a charred altar in a burnt down church, and their happiness has a double edge.Sigrid Undset's great trilogy was an attempt to reclaim the forgotten history of Scandinavia's Catholic past. The sweep is epic and the canvas is vast. I don't know to what extent the film captures that.
- DirectorBill AndersonStarsWill AdamsdaleNick BartlettChristopher BenjaminGuy Crouchback, heir to a declining English Roman Catholic family, returns to England from Italy at the start of World War II, and joins the Royal Corps of Halberdiers along with various eccentrics, though his attempts to get back with his wife Virginia, from whom he is separated, fail. After being implicated in a colleague's death, he is sent to train a commando brigade on a Scottish island, and ends up on Crete, taking part in its evacuation, and escaping to Egypt with fellow officers Ludovic and Ivor Claire. He is returned to England courtesy of Mrs. Stitch, to possibly prevent him from naming Claire as a deserter. Guy marries Virginia a second time, by which time she has a child by ex-lover Trimmer. While Guy is in Yugoslavia having a confusing time with the partisans, Virginia is killed, along with Guy's uncle Peregrine, by a doodlebug bomb. Guy returns to England after getting involved in charitable agencies, and eventually remarries.This is an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's war trilogy: Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955) and Unconditional Surrender (1961). As always, in the later work by Waugh there is a blurring of the distinction between what are Catholic and what are aristocratic values.
- DirectorRowan JoffeStarsSam RileyAndrea RiseboroughHelen MirrenCharts the headlong fall of Pinkie, a razor-wielding disadvantaged teenager with a religious death wish.
- DirectorJohn BoultingStarsRichard AttenboroughHermione BaddeleyWilliam HartnellIn Brighton in 1935, small-time gang leader Pinkie Brown murders a journalist and later desperately tries to cover his tracks but runs into trouble with the police, a few witnesses, and a rival gang.The first film adaptation of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock.
- DirectorMaurice PialatStarsGérard DepardieuSandrine BonnaireMaurice PialatA priest stuck in a rural congregation and burdened with his overwrought spirituality, finds purpose in a troubled woman accused of murder.An adaptation of the novel by Georges Bernanos.
- DirectorCarol ReedStarsRalph RichardsonMichèle MorganSonia DresdelA butler working in a foreign embassy in London falls under suspicion when his wife accidentally falls to her death, the only witness being an impressionable young boy.The film is based, not on a novel, but on a short story. The author collaborated with the director in the making of the film.
- DirectorMichael Lindsay-HoggStarsGlenda JacksonMelina MercouriGeraldine PageIn a Philadelphia convent, two nuns battle it out to be elected to the position of head abbess, and neither is about to let anything stand in the way of getting what she wants.This is film version of Muriel Spark's The Abbess of Crewe. The novel was ostensibly a send-up of the Watergate scandal, and it is quite funny. Behind the comedy was an altogether more complicated story about the nature of mockery. The problem with the film is that all we seem to see is Henry Kissinger and friends in drag.
- DirectorCharles SturridgeStarsJames WilbyKristin Scott ThomasRichard BealeThe wife's affair and a death in the family hasten the demise of an upper-class English marriage.
- DirectorGiuseppe Patroni GriffiStarsElizabeth TaylorIan BannenGuido MannariA mentally-disturbed spinster experiences a series of bizarre encounters in Rome as she searches for someone she feels she'll know--when she finds him.This is an adaptation of The Driver's Seat, a difficult and disturbing novel by Muriel Spark. The novel explores the question: "Who is ultimately in control? Who is ultimately in the driver's seat?" The film version was made by a distinguished Italian director Giuseppe Patroni Griffi. Critics generally misunderstood the film, just as they probably would have misunderstood the novel (if it can be said that any of them read the novel).
- DirectorVolker SchlöndorffMargarethe von TrottaStarsAngela WinklerMario AdorfDieter LaserA young woman's life is scrutinized by police and tabloid press after she spends the night with a suspected terrorist.Heinrich Böl, the author of the novel, was a Catholic and Socialist. Towards the end of his life, he left the Church. This also shows that a Catholic perspective does not always coincide with membership of the institutional church. For English-speakers, this was probably his best-known novel.
- DirectorTony RichardsonStarsRobert MorseJonathan WintersAnjanette ComerSatire on the funeral business, in which a young British poet goes to work at a Hollywood cemetery.Evelyn Waugh's novel was a satire about death and dying and the whole funeral industry. It was funny and wicked. The problem with the film is that it seems to have lost the novel's satiric edge. There is something realistic about the film. If the story is seen as realistic, then everything that happens seems to be plain weird. I don't think the film is at all funny.
- DirectorGeorge More O'FerrallStarsTrevor HowardElizabeth AllanMaria SchellAn unhappily married British security officer stationed in Sierra Leone during World War II falls in love with a young Austrian woman and starts an affair. He soon starts feeling guilty.A adaption of Graham Greene's novel.
- DirectorJean RenoirStarsPatricia WaltersNora SwinburneEsmond KnightThe growing pains of three young women contrast with the immutability of the holy Bengal River, around which their daily lives unfold.Rumer Godden's semi-autobiographical The River can hardly be classed with her later, more overtly Catholic novels (such as In This House of Brede), but it is a good enough entrée into her narrative world and the sorts of themes she was interested in. The film adaptation was by Jean Renoir.
- StarsJohn CarsonElizabeth ShepherdJanet MawAdaptation of a series of novels by Antonia White about a young girl challenging her authoritarian Catholic environment as she grows up.An adaption of four novels by the British writer Antonia White: Frost in May, The Lost Traveller, The Sugar House & Beyond the Glass. The novels were partly autobiographical, and they function as a type of the portrait of the artist as a young girl.
- DirectorRudolf van den BergStarsThom HoffmanRijk de GooyerViviane de MuynckFrits van Egters' life in the last ten days of the year 1946.An adaptation of De avonden (The evenings), a novel by the Dutch writer Gerard Reve. The novel was originally published in 1947.
- DirectorGeorges FranjuStarsEmmanuelle RivaPhilippe NoiretEdith ScobUnhappy in her marriage to a boring man who doesn't love her, a woman plans to get rid of him by slowly increasing the dosage of his medication.
- DirectorJack GoldStarsAnthony HopkinsKristin Scott ThomasDerek JacobiBased on the novel by Graham Greene, this is a story of a French advocate Chavel (Sir Anthony Hopkins), who, while imprisoned by the Germans during the occupation, trades his material possessions to another prisoner in exchange for his life when condemned to the firing squad. At the end of the war, Chavel, posing as one of the other prisoners, returns to his house, which is now occupied by Therese (Dame Kristin Scott Thomas), the sister of the prisoner, to whom he traded his possessions, and who bitterly awaits the return of the man who had indirectly caused the death of her brother. His real identity unknown to Therese, Chavel is invited to stay as a caretaker, and to identify Chavel should he return to the house. The relationship between Chavel and Therese develops until one night, someone calling himself Chavel (Sir Derek Jacobi) turns up at their doorstep.
- DirectorMarc DanielsStarsLaurence OlivierJulie HarrisGeorge C. ScottA cynical Catholic priest is sent to Mexico to preach. It's the 1930s and Mexican government sees the church as competition. They send a secret agent to assassinate the priest.Another version of Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory. There is also the version directed by John Ford.
- DirectorTom WallerStarsBenedict TaylorMichael CashmanOliver StoneRites of passage moral tale based on the award-winning novel by Piers Paul Read, about a Catholic priest who falls from grace and descends into a world of forbidden love and betrayal in 1970's London.An adaptation of a novel by Piers Paul Read.
- DirectorPeter JacksonStarsElijah WoodIan McKellenOrlando BloomA meek Hobbit from the Shire and eight companions set out on a journey to destroy the powerful One Ring and save Middle-earth from the Dark Lord Sauron.The hype around and the popularity of the Lord of the Rings trilogy makes us forget that Tokien was an avowedly Catholic writer, that his work was allegorical, and that he was interested in exploring what were, in fact, theological issues. The nature of the story-telling in the novels derives much from the epics and the romances of Late Antiquity and the Medieval period.
- DirectorPeter JacksonStarsElijah WoodIan McKellenViggo MortensenWhile Frodo and Sam edge closer to Mordor with the help of the shifty Gollum, the divided fellowship makes a stand against Sauron's new ally, Saruman, and his hordes of Isengard.
- DirectorPeter JacksonStarsElijah WoodViggo MortensenIan McKellenGandalf and Aragorn lead the World of Men against Sauron's army to draw his gaze from Frodo and Sam as they approach Mount Doom with the One Ring.
- DirectorPeter JacksonStarsMartin FreemanIan McKellenRichard ArmitageA reluctant Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, sets out to the Lonely Mountain with a spirited group of dwarves to reclaim their mountain home and the gold within it from the dragon Smaug.
- StarsJeremy IronsDiana QuickRoger MilnerThe life, friendships and romances of the protagonist Charles Ryder-including his friendship with the Flytes, a family of wealthy English Catholics who live in a palatial mansion called Brideshead Castle.This was the first adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel.
- DirectorJoseph StrickStarsBosco HoganT.P. McKennaJohn GielgudStephen Dedalus is a young man growing up in Ireland in the early part of the twentieth century. His search for knowledge and understanding, and the decline of his family's circumstances, lead him to revelations on the nature of art and politics. His personal renaissance makes him feel unwelcome in his own country, and forces him to decide whether to leave and accept exile, or to stay and fight.James Joyce's novel is not usually regarded as a Catholic novel. It is an extremely "churchy" book, but the perspective is really a secular one. At the same time, for people like Anthony Burgess, Joyce's novel was a more genuine Catholic novel than the work of Greene or Waugh. Joyce's work has also been influential in the work of novelists like Spark and Lodge and it is difficult to make sense of these later writers without reference to Joyce.
- DirectorAlessandro BlasettiStarsMichèle MorganHenri VidalMichel SimonIn ancient Rome a love story blossoms between Fabiola, daughter of a senator, and Rhual, a Gallic gladiator. After Fabiola's father is killed, the Romans blame the Christians and the persecution begins. Rhual confesses to being a Christian, is accused of the murder and sentenced to fight to the death in the arena.Alessandro Blasetti's adaptation of the novel Fabiola by Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman. I was not sure whether to include this adaptation of Wiseman's novel. It cannot be said that this was a novel in the league of Greene, Bernanos or Mauriac. There was something propagandist about this work.