G | 2 h 17 min | Drama | 1944
Young, handsome Francis Chisholm (Gregory Peck) hopes to marry his childhood sweetheart in his native Scotland. But fate and faith have him pick priesthood. Then the early 20th-century Catholic Church sends him on a mission to the tumultuous province of Pai-tan, China.
He arrives at the mission church ruined by floods. The few faithful who linger turn out to be notorious “rice Christians,” ready to rebuild, but they’re in it more for food than faith. Francis will have none of it. He prefers converts who aren’t also cashing in.
Director John Stahl’s opening shot frames Francis when he’s old, looking diminutive beside a large church building as he returns from a fishing trip, rod in hand. It’s 1938 Scotland; it’s the dusk, not the dawn, of his journey. Stahl seems to say that Francis may be overlooked in the episcopal hierarchy, but spiritually, he looms like a colossus.
Through flashbacks, Stahl looks back at that journey.
Bishop Angus (Vincent Price) asks Monsignor Sleeth (Cedric Hardwicke) for advice: Should Francis continue as priest (as he desires) or retire (as those his age usually do)? Contemplating the aged priest’s future, Sleeth stumbles upon his private journal recalling his life in and through his years in China.
At this point, the film traces Francis’s career, and we learn that at issue isn’t his advancing age or retreating health, but his unconventional tendency to find goodness outside the fold: a gracious mandarin official, his atheist Scottish buddy, American Methodist missionaries (ordinarily his rivals). Sleeth, probing “peculiarities” in Francis’s sermons, recalls one cheeky line of his: “The good Christian is a good man, but I found that the Confucianist usually has a better sense of humor!”
Francis is no pacifist, yet several people play quiet witness to his deeply spiritual choices. Eventually, icy Rev. Mother Maria-Veronica warms to his humility. Chinese Republican troops admire his courage in facing down Chinese imperial soldiers who endanger vulnerable women and children. And his excitable but willing aide, Joseph (Benson Fong), sees how he loves China, sheltering its destitute and poor, even as he resists its ruthless rulers.
One stirring scene has Francis walk toward imperial bombardment, while hundreds walk away. His secret? He knows he isn’t the only one doing the saving. He may have come to “save” the Chinese, but the miracle may be that the Chinese save him, too. His very habit of reaching out in self-forgetfulness saves him from spite and resentment: “This world ... is closer to heaven than we think.”
‘Fishers of Men’
The movie’s title draws on the biblical mandate of priesthood, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” and Stahl makes his point with playful imagery. Like his mentor Rev. Hamish McNabb (Edmund Gwenn), Francis too loves fishing, but both know it’s more than a hobby; it’s also a biblical call to mission: “I will make you fishers of men.”Audiences typically judge a religion by how its chiefs behave (in Catholicism, the pope, cardinals, and bishops), and less by how the common faithful do (priests, nuns, and laity). Stahl inverts that scheme. The essence of a religion is how daily battles of faith, its loss and resurgence, are fought in the trenches. People win or lose faith not through success (when miracles abound) or failure (when miracles dwindle), but how they respond to both success and failure; faithful fortitude is miracle enough.
Impossibly broad-shouldered, the 6-foot-3-inch-tall Peck casts an imposing but noble figure alongside his Chinese brethren, who look up to him for more than just his height. His actions are a stark contrast to the words and actions of his superiors in the church, who may show themselves inferior to him in spiritual matters.
Materialistic, racist, elitist, and episcopally ambitious Angus, who visits Pai-tan as a monsignor, has little use for prayer and even less for faith: He has it all figured out. Price (even taller than Peck), as Angus, is a study in contrast, yet Francis dwarfs him in stature.
Veronica watches in awe as Francis gently rebukes his superior’s dismissive remarks about the province, clarifying that heathens are not always low, just as Christians are not always high. Francis’s 10-minute episode with Angus and 3-minute exchange with Veronica, amid church ruins, are sermons by themselves; in both, Francis himself barely speaks.
Francis is no Bible-banger. To him, missionary life isn’t a numbers game. Of course, he’s a man of prayer but you rarely see him pray; when he does, he whispers.
Bereft of careerism, he’s merely trying to live out God’s plan while discerning precisely what that plan is. When his church is destroyed yet again, he says solemnly, “As long as I live I shall build my church.” He knows that his church isn’t a building in the first place. It’s inside him. It is him.
