The Miracle Woman (Capra, 1931): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.50pm
This film, also being screened on April 28th and 29th, is part of the Big Screen Classics (A Question of Faith) strand. You can find the details here.
Time Out review:
Fascinating cautionary tale loosely inspired by the Aimee Semple Macpherson affair, with Barbara Stanwyck as a minister's daughter - seeking revenge against the faithful who hounded her father to his death - who teams up with a wily conman (Sam Hardy) to become big business as an evangelist. Stunning camerawork from Joseph Walker makes a joy of the evangelistic razzmatazz (climaxed when Stanwyck does her preaching from a lion's cage), but is equal to the more delicate shading of the comeuppance in which Stanwyck sees the true light after bringing illumination to a blind songwriter. The end sees her a humble soldier in the Salvation Army, but - so beautifully do Stanwyck and David Manners play out the love affair, and so perfectly does Capra direct it (with the tenderness, almost, of Borzage) - that you don't feel at all like laughing. (From the play Bless You, Sister by John Meehan and Robert Riskin.
Tom Milne
Here (and above) is an extract.
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