Frank Capra reteams with the woman he could have married had they both been single at the time, Barbara Stanwyck, for a romantic drama about a woman who fakes the ability to perform miracles to get rich, except the film does everything it can to never make her a villain, making this a nice little romance that avoids having any real bite at the same time. Capra would say later about his work in general that his generation of filmmakers treated their work like a newspaper man treated his: to be consumed once and then tossed out. I bring it up because it feels like, while I do like the film overall, it was construed in a way to make it an easy bit of consumption without much of a challenge upon its audience. In taking on the subject of hypocrisy in religion, that perhaps left a lot on the table that could have been accomplished.
Florence Fallon's (Stanwyck) father, a preacher in a small church, dies after being fired by his congregation, lights into the people who drove him out and to death, citing chapter and verse about their hypocrisies. She's approached by Bob (Sam Hardy), a conman who latches onto her, giving her a way to get rich and get even with the hypocrites who drove her father to death to become an evangelist on the radio, drawing in the money. One day, her sermon on the radio convinces the despondent wannabe song writer, who also happens to be blind from an incident in the war, John (David Manners), to not leap to his death. He goes to one of her live services with his landlady Mrs. Higgins (Beryl Mercer) where he makes an impression by joining Florence on stage (with a sarcastic intent) alongside some lions. The whole show is a fake, including several versions of cripples who are supposed to come up to the stage, but John being a genuine blind man makes him stand out.
What follows is this gentle little love story between John and Florence as they meet outside the revival, mostly in his apartment, where they get to know each other. He's not only a musician, but he also has a ventriloquist he pulls out from time to time to entertain, and she gets him to write some hymns for her, none of which she can use because they're "too personal", though she loves them anyway.
Where the film really tries to have its cake and eat it too is around Florence. She's a conwoman, knowingly taking part in fake miracles to steal money from well-intentioned rubes, but she's not running the show. That would be Bob. He's the real bad guy, even though she's completely complicit in it all, but she's played well by Stanwyck so we can glide past these uncomfortable truths and just focus on the nice romance between Florence and John. She does have her crisis of confidence in what she's doing, living large off of these donations accepted on false pretenses that she's known about the whole time, but because it's Stanwyck and her relationship with John is so nice and wholesome, it's easy to just kind of forget it while it's happening. That the movie sidesteps it completely is a problem, but not enough to derail things.
The relationship grows, Florence's affection for John burgeons, Bob gets mad because he wants Florence for himself. He uses her position in the criminal organization to try and manipulate her to leave John, which mostly works, except that John won't let her stay.
And this is where things get interesting. It'd be easy to let actual miracles happen in a film called The Miracle Woman, but...they don't. Instead, we get another con job to try and save her from herself. There's a big fire, a more dramatic form of the chaos that Capra had unleashed in films like Rain or Shine and The Strong Man, and a nice denouement that actually does kind of fit with the journey that Florence took. She may not get justice, but she is humbled, and it's good.
I again think back to the Capra quote about the films of this era being like newspapers, used once and tossed aside, and it's nice to see even with that attitude he can produce good little films like The Miracle Woman. It's not going to end up the top tier of his work, but it's the kind of well made, entertaining, and slightly touching work that great filmmakers tended to pad their resumes with (John Ford had a whole bunch of these). It's also nice to see the quality becoming more consistent the deeper into the sound era he went.
Florence Fallon's (Stanwyck) father, a preacher in a small church, dies after being fired by his congregation, lights into the people who drove him out and to death, citing chapter and verse about their hypocrisies. She's approached by Bob (Sam Hardy), a conman who latches onto her, giving her a way to get rich and get even with the hypocrites who drove her father to death to become an evangelist on the radio, drawing in the money. One day, her sermon on the radio convinces the despondent wannabe song writer, who also happens to be blind from an incident in the war, John (David Manners), to not leap to his death. He goes to one of her live services with his landlady Mrs. Higgins (Beryl Mercer) where he makes an impression by joining Florence on stage (with a sarcastic intent) alongside some lions. The whole show is a fake, including several versions of cripples who are supposed to come up to the stage, but John being a genuine blind man makes him stand out.
What follows is this gentle little love story between John and Florence as they meet outside the revival, mostly in his apartment, where they get to know each other. He's not only a musician, but he also has a ventriloquist he pulls out from time to time to entertain, and she gets him to write some hymns for her, none of which she can use because they're "too personal", though she loves them anyway.
Where the film really tries to have its cake and eat it too is around Florence. She's a conwoman, knowingly taking part in fake miracles to steal money from well-intentioned rubes, but she's not running the show. That would be Bob. He's the real bad guy, even though she's completely complicit in it all, but she's played well by Stanwyck so we can glide past these uncomfortable truths and just focus on the nice romance between Florence and John. She does have her crisis of confidence in what she's doing, living large off of these donations accepted on false pretenses that she's known about the whole time, but because it's Stanwyck and her relationship with John is so nice and wholesome, it's easy to just kind of forget it while it's happening. That the movie sidesteps it completely is a problem, but not enough to derail things.
The relationship grows, Florence's affection for John burgeons, Bob gets mad because he wants Florence for himself. He uses her position in the criminal organization to try and manipulate her to leave John, which mostly works, except that John won't let her stay.
And this is where things get interesting. It'd be easy to let actual miracles happen in a film called The Miracle Woman, but...they don't. Instead, we get another con job to try and save her from herself. There's a big fire, a more dramatic form of the chaos that Capra had unleashed in films like Rain or Shine and The Strong Man, and a nice denouement that actually does kind of fit with the journey that Florence took. She may not get justice, but she is humbled, and it's good.
I again think back to the Capra quote about the films of this era being like newspapers, used once and tossed aside, and it's nice to see even with that attitude he can produce good little films like The Miracle Woman. It's not going to end up the top tier of his work, but it's the kind of well made, entertaining, and slightly touching work that great filmmakers tended to pad their resumes with (John Ford had a whole bunch of these). It's also nice to see the quality becoming more consistent the deeper into the sound era he went.