Unrated | 1 h 26 min | Drama | 1951
Ignatius of Loyola was a 16th-century soldier who, before a battle, ruined his leg; surgeries left one leg shorter, enforcing a lifelong limp. During his painful recovery, he waged a spiritual battle with his worldly self.
Douglas Sirk’s film, “The First Legion,” is about priests in a Jesuit seminary whose battle is also spiritual. Sirk uses the symbols of ineffective legs to study two roads, or transitions. One, from faith to doubt. Another, from doubt to faith. His point? No matter how many times we walk the former, and we will, because life can be hard, we must keep walking the latter.
Cinematically, two young men represent these roads.
One man thinks he’s lost his faith. Priest and die-hard musician, Fr. Fulton (Wesley Addy), misses the excitement of the world outside and plots his departure from the seminary.
Another man, akin to an atheist, thinks there’s no faith to be found anywhere. In matters of healing, Dr. Morrell (Lyle Bettger), believes in the power of medicine, or the “power of suggestion,” healing through self-belief, not faith in divine intervention.
Meanwhile, conscientious Fr. Arnoux (Charles Boyer), trying to restore Fulton’s faith, has his own faith tested.
Aging Fr. Sierra (W.B. Warner), bedridden for three years, suddenly walks. To many, it’s a miracle, especially when Morrell admits there’s no clinical explanation. That triggers a procession of pilgrims to the seminary, several claiming to be subsequently cured of sundry ailments.
Privately, Morrell tells Arnoux that it was a hoax, thanks to a “power of suggestion” trick he’d tried during Sierra’s delirium. Only, it seems to have worked. Morrell swears an anguished Arnoux to secrecy. Then it gets complicated for Morrell as his wheelchair-bound sweetheart, Terry (Barbara Rush), gets caught up in the town’s miracle mania.
Faith, a Miracle Itself
For a film so potentially drab (most characters are priests, in priestly robes, no less), Sirk’s camera holds the attention, catching characters as they rush into rooms, stumble into corridors, or hurry down staircases. Subtly, he depicts the opportunism of hawkers plying religious objects outside the seminary, teasing money out of thronging waves of pilgrims.
In one riveting five-minute sequence Arnoux tries to persuade Fulton to stay a Jesuit, while Fulton’s roommate argues intensely on Fulton’s side. It’s just three men in a room, talking. Yet, Sirk’s camera positions and framing convince you that it’s a matter of life and death.
The character of the non-Jesuit Monsignor (William Demarest) serves more as comic relief. Cheekily, he bounces barbs off his obstinate dog to poke good-natured fun at the Jesuits.
Sirk’s film argues that all miracles can be stretched to fit the power of suggestion theory. What matters is who’s suggesting what, to whom. Sometimes, it may be God using the power of suggestion, commanding a confirmed cripple to walk.
Three of Sirk’s young characters represent an untested version of faith. Morrell’s about to have his atheism tested, Terry’s a believer hoping for a miracle to confirm her belief. And Fulton first feels too worldly to stay a priest.
The senior priests represent a more tested version of faith, that’s being tested regardless. Sierra believes he walked only because it was a miracle. Other seminarians follow that belief more like a herd than out of individual conviction.
The Rector sees it as an endorsement of his campaign to canonize the founder of their mission house, the Blessed Joseph Martin. Later, he tells his seminarians, faith itself (or rediscovery of it) is the miracle, not physical transformation, no matter how miraculous or spectacular.
In a rare solemn moment, the monsignor tells a despondent Terry, “Would it be so bad to be deprived of a miracle? ... I suppose it must … if you need one badly enough. But it’s hard for me to understand. I see miracles everywhere …We’re miracles ourselves.”
Many seminarians see flocking pilgrims, and swelling vocations to the novitiate, as signs that Sierra’s physical transformation is a miracle. Fulton sees it as a call to stay a Jesuit. Movingly, Fulton tells Arnoux of his change of heart but can’t find words of thankful prayer. Arnoux softly suggests, “maybe there’s a better way.” Fulton heads to the piano. Alone and with no audience he plays his heart out, in wordless thanks for having rediscovered his calling.
