Customer Reviews

Films of Faith Collection (The Nun's Story / The Shoes of the Fisherman / The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a GREAT collection for those of us who are into religious films! Warner Brothers has announced the individual release, or a "Films of Faith" Collection in time for Easter 2006! This will include Audrey Hepburn's "The Nun's Story" and the inspiring "The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima".....but most exciting is the inclusion of the Anthony Quinn film of Morris West's book, "The Shoes of the Fisherman" (about the election of a Russian Pope nearly a decade before John Paul II was elected from Poland!). In particular, "Shoes of the Fisherman" is known for its great attention and accuracy of detail in showing the conclave pagentry and process (although in reality this election process has since been updated due to the larger number of Cardinals now eligible to vote in a conclave). For those of us into "churchy" movies, this film has long been considered the Holy Grail of church-themed movies and it is very exciting that it is coming to DVD!

I was very happy to read that these movies were going to be released on DVD. As the saying goes, "they don't make movies like this anymore". These are some of the best religious movies ever made. They capture the struggles and pains of the human person in a challenging world. At the same time, they also express a great sense of hope to a fragile world. Since these movies were made so long ago, I hope our younger viewers will take the opportunity to see these great movies. They will always be truly inspiring.

This is a warm remembrance of Christian witness that will speak to a universal audience. The Nun's Story is a fairly accurate and touching tale of one woman's quest to follow her heart just as the world falls into war. This is a great example of the Catholic Church in the early 20th century. With Shoes of the Fisherman, you have a great story of a Pope from the Slavic World, more than a decade before Pope John Paul II. The turmoil of an ancient church trying to deal with a modern world is very well told and is still quite relevant.

Wonderful movies about those people whose lives were dedicated to caring for others. That is our purpose on the this earth. These movies give wonderful testomony to how much happier and satisifed your life will be be caring for others. Your blessings and true happiness only comes by serving. Give and you will be rewarded

The Films of Faith were a great deal! I was only looking for "The Nun's Story," which is a phenomenal movie, and instead bought 3 great movies for a great low price! My 4-year old and I have watched "The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima" at least 10 times already. I highly recommend the movies in this collection and for this incredible price, it's hard to beat this deal.

Each of these movies are wonderful in their own right--and it's wonderful to see them released as a box set!

Seen again for the first time in a couple of decades, Warner's beautifully restored DVD of The Nun's Story is a real surprise, avoiding the mawkish sentimentality that usually accompanied old Hollywood's approach to Catholicism with a sober, quiet unostentatious majesty and a mostly successful attempt to avoid cliché (there's no romance with Peter Finch's surgeon as you might expect). Fred Zinnemann, who now seems on the verge of being completely forgotten, constantly does things slightly differently - not just jump cutting from continent to continent, but avoiding convention in subtle ways. When Sister Luke departs for the Congo, not only is her departure handled in the bare minimum of shots but they're also not the ones you usually expect: no head on shots of the ship leaving for the open sea, but instead zooming out from a sideways view before cutting to the ship's wake. The visual economy never feels Spartan, but at the same time it fits the subject matter perfectly.

Audrey Hepburn too is something of a revelation. Too often an irritatingly kooky pixie clotheshorse, here she abandons many of her usual affectations that you either find charming or maddening to give the kind of sincere and grounded performance that was too rarely asked of her. It's a quietly powerful and surprisingly honest film that stands up to the test of time. Shame that for some reason Zinnemann gets Dean Jagger to voice one of the bit players as well, which briefly takes you out of the movie before a sudden act of unexpected violence shocks you back in, but there's little else to fault in it.

The only extra on the DVD is the original trailer.


As Pope operas go, The Shoes of the Fisherman is pretty enjoyable. Dated but shot on a lavish scale in the days when doorstop novels were turned into star-studded epics rather than TV miniseries, it skirts close to guilty pleasure territory without ever providing any unintentional laughs as Anthony Quinn's political prisoner is freed to act as a mediator between the Church and Russia only to find himself elected Pope. Laurence Olivier delivers the bacon as the Russian premier in one of the first of his hammy blockbuster supporting turns he took to supplement his meagre £150 a week salary at the National Theatre, with John Gielgud turning up for one scene as an ailing pontiff while Oskar Werner, Leo McKern and Vittorio De Sica get the more substantial roles. Too much screen time is wasted on David Jansenn and Barbara Jefford's marital problems, an irrelevant subplot that simply gets discarded entirely in the last third, and the political crisis in the background with a starving China threatening world war isn't entirely convincing. Yet there is some substance there even if the politics, both theological and secular, are somewhat confused - how many roadshow pictures feature a philosopher-priest (Werner) under investigation for developing the theories of Teillhard de Chardin? There's even one surprisingly touching scene between Leo McKern and Quinn near the end of the film about loneliness, and Alex North's grandiose score, incorporating as its main theme part of his rejected score for 2001, is quite magnificent. And if you've ever wanted to see Zorba the Pope reciting the Shema Yisrael, this is the movie for you.

It's just a shame that the recent DVD runs into synch problems in the last third and that the making-of featurette has been cropped from 1.33:1 to 1.85:1, meaning that the extracts from the film in it are cropped both horizontally and vertically!


Shot in the spectacularly crappy WarnerColor system, the unconvincing color is the least of the credibility problems with The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, in which any relationship to the real events at Fatima in 1917 is purely accidental (no mention of any secrets here). The kind of film that gives atheism a good name, it could probably convert the Pope to the ranks of the unbelievers so outrageously heavy-handed is its Hollywood piety. But more bizarre than the clichéd sentimentality is the fact that this isn't a film about faith at all but an astonishingly crude and cynical McCarthy era bit of anti-Communist propaganda - hey folks, even God hates Commies! The one surprise is the outright hostility with which the local Catholic priesthood is depicted: disbelieving, antagonistic and clearly doing everything possible to hush things up to protect their jobs and to avoid giving the cartoon commies an excuse to persecute them again, it does hint that someone somewhere along the production line wanted to do something a bit more daring before the saccharine won out. The fact that the film's real-life leading character saw the film and didn't like it says it all.

The DVD transfer copes as well as can be expected with the vagaries of the color system, though some interior shots are particularly grainy and unnaturalistic. The only extra is the original theatrical trailer.

I HAVE BEEN WAITING A LONG TIME FOR THESE THREE TITLES. EACH IS A MAGNIFICENT PORTRAYAL OF FAITH AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT DESPITE WHAT SOME REVIEWERS HAVE SAID. ALL ARE A JOY TO WATCH AGAIN AND AGAIN.

Just as the title of my review states, all of the movies included in this box set were Catholicism-linked, historically factual, informative, and overall, entertaining.

Would have never heard of these movies OR this boxset if not from word of mouth from friends/colleagues.

Great for anyone interested in background information on a few Catholicism's heroes, but even simply as movies, these were great as well.

This is a great collection to have. It is very inspiring and wonderful movies to share with your family. These classics feature some of my favorite actors and actresses.