In 1858 Lourdes, a young girl causes an unintentional furor after she claims to have seen a holy vision in an unkempt grotto and travels there every day to pray. Lovely Jennifer Jones is perfect in the lead, bolstering an occasionally wayward narrative which spends far too much time on the town-naysayers and atheist politicos who think young Bernadette should be locked away. Jones, who spent the rest of her career trying to convince people she really wasn't the saint this film painted so vividly in our memories, won a well-deserved Oscar as Best Actress. Supporting performances by Anne Revere, Charles Bickford, and Lee J. Cobb are also fine, though Vincent Price's snippy skeptic doesn't allow him anything fresh to do. *** from ****
Review of The Song of Bernadette
