We Americans tend to be products of our time and culture. My grandma loved her radio “stories” like One Man’s Family – Carlton Morse’s popular radio production that ran from 1932 to 1959. (Two of the original cast members, J. Anthony Smythe and Page Gilman, stayed with the show for its entire 27-year run.) Grandma faithfully listened to the show – in daily 15-minute segments, Monday through Friday – right through Chapter 30 of Book 146. As a boy I listened regularly to Bobby Benson and the BRB, The Lone Ranger, and other radio shows in the late ‘40s.
But as a product of the 1940s and ‘50s, I really loved the movies. At age 12 I sneaked out to see the 1955 Cinemascope blockbuster, Land of the Pharaohs, starring young Joan Collins (has any actress ever aged better?) as the temptress who marries the Pharaoh, has him murdered, and then finds herself buried alive with him in his pyramid. (My mother wouldn’t have approved, as Miss Collins wasn’t wearing much – although her costume was modest by today’s standards.) In my wasted youth I saw other great films like Rear Window, High Noon,and Stalag 17.
Naturally, I married a woman who also loved films. We both still do, but we don’t go to the pictures very often these days (even though we qualify for “financing” offered at the box-office). My readers know, without my saying so, that the Cinema has fallen on evil times – thematically, if not financially. The grand old values of the silver screen – faith, love, heroism, self-sacrifice, justice, duty, redemption and reclamation – have been supplanted by sordid, postmodern tales of unrepentant wickedness, lust, greed, betrayal, and hopelessness. David Russell’s Three Kings was so violent and degenerate that we actually left the theater before the show ended. Others, like Burton and Johnson’s Corpse Bride, are so grotesque and devoid of any affirming value, even in the previews, that we wouldn’t consider seeing them. (Does this garbage really pay?)
Even comedies have had a rough go in recent years. The remake of the Pink Panther, starring Steve Martin as Inspector Clousseau, required a complete makeover and cleanup to render it presentable to families with children. The result was an uneven film that couldn’t decide whether it was a slapstick comedy or a serious-themed film with comedic scenes. Whatever it was, it fell far short of the classic Peter Sellers genre. Maybe only Blake Edwards knew how to make those films. And was there ever a Pink Panther-ingénue to match Elke Sommer in A Shot in the Dark?
But I digress. My actual purpose here is favorable mention of three films and a TV series that I believe will come to be regarded as new classics. They are Hornblower, Facing the Giants, Amazing Grace, and Blue Bloods. I recommend all to my readers – especially if they have wondered whether it’s worth going to the movies any more, or if there’s anything decent on TV. These are now available on DVD from various vendors.
Hornblower.
The A&E production of Hornblower – directed by Andrew Grieve, and starring Welsh-born actor Ioan Gruffudd (in the title role of Horatio Hornblower) and Robert Lindsay II (as Captain Sir Edward Pellew) – is a splendid rendition of C. S. Forester’s classic tales. Filmed on board ship – with the cast at sea as long as six weeks at a time – the series is gripping, inspiring and infused with the virtues of honor, bravery, loyalty, self-sacrifice, justice and redemption. These qualities ultimately overcome the greed, jealousy, hatred, lust, stupidity, cowardice, betrayal, abuse and villainy often found in the wartime British Navy, circa 1805.
Every boy (and every dad) in America will benefit from this marvelous series. Ladies won’t mind, either. (Every woman in my family is in love with Gruffudd, who is stunning in the title role.) The stories are not all blood and guts. I’ll admit that a tear came to my eye when Hornblower’s squad – having unexpectedly escaped from a Spanish prison during a wild storm – agree to return to the prison with Hornblower because he had given his parole to the prison’s commandant. “If Mr. Hornblower gave his word, that’s good enough for us,” said one of the sailors. What man would not give his right arm for such loyalty and trust from his subordinates?
Hornblower consists of eight 100-minute episodes made for television: The Duel; The Fire Ship; The Duchess and the Devil; The Wrong War; The Mutiny; Retribution; Loyalty; Duty. They are not for young children or the weak of stomach – as they contain realistic battle scenes and other vignettes replete with violence, terror, blood and death. Nevertheless, the stories leave the viewer cheered, uplifted and optimistic. They are truly excellent.
Facing the Giants.
Facing the Giants is a cinematic dark horse that took the entertainment world by surprise in late 2006. The film was written and produced by Alex Kendrick and his brother Stephen. Technical professionals did the filming, but cast members were not professional actors. Most were ordinary people from the Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, and from the surrounding area. Many of the male lead characters are pastors and youth workers. Their depictions of people of a small Georgia community have a verisimilitude that can come only from real life-experience.
Giants is an inspiring film of faith in action. The context is a high school football team at a Christian high school, but this is not a Hollywood “Knute Rockne” football-story. It is an unabashedly Christian film about real people facing real problems. The backdrop is a southern culture that loves its teams and its sports, but sometimes forgets that the Big Picture actually consists of a lot of “small pictures” of people experiencing pain, doubt, insecurity, setbacks and frustration. The football scenes are realistic and well done, since real football teams were used in the filming, but the real action (and real faith) plays out both on and off the field.
Don’t avoid this film because it looks like just another high school “football” story. It grabs you by the throat from the start and never lets go. Both my wife and I wiped away tears as we left the theater. The film’s spiritual and emotional punch is profound. Take your kids to see it, too. The bogus PG-13 rating (for “too much religious speech”) clearly came from Hollywood denizens jealous of the film’s success. Ratings people yawn at profanity, but they get the vapors when God’s name is heard as more than a “four-letter word.”
Amazing Grace.
Amazing Grace is another new classic. It’s a fine cinematic account of the life and career of William Wilberforce, the English politician and committed Christian who worked more than twenty years to engineer legislation that finally abolished the slave trade in the British Empire. The legislation was signed in 1807, and the complete ban on the slave trade began in 1808. In today’s “Woke” climate, many young people might not even know that all that actually happened.
The film – starring Ioan Gruffudd (see Hornblower, above) as Wilberforce – is very well done, has a superb cast, and features splendid period costuming and visual effects. It poses some difficulties for American audiences, however. One of these is historical ignorance. Even Christians know very little about Wilberforce and his work. When I mentioned the film to some men at church, they thought I meant Wilbur, owner of the talking horse, Mr. Ed.
A key figure in the film is William Pitt (the Younger) – Wilberforce’s friend and a brilliant politician who became Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24. He served in that office from 1783 to 1801, and from 1804 until his death in 1806. Americans who have been taught that “meaningful history” began around 1932 – or even as late as 1960 – have probably never heard of Pitt, whose father (Pitt the Elder) was also Prime Minister.
John Newton (played by Albert Finney) – the ex-slave-trader who was converted to faith in Christ and became pastor of the church in which Wilberforce grew up – is also an important character. Many non-churched viewers might not realize that Newton also penned the lines to “Amazing Grace,” one of the greatest hymns in the English language.
Another problem Americans will have with “Amazing Grace” is that it is a somewhat slow-moving historical drama, not an action film in the Mel Gibson genre. At times it traverses events and epochs that can be hard to follow without some historical context. No one is assassinated or gets hurt when the brakes on his carriage are tampered with. No one dies, although Wilberforce comes close to it a few times – but only from illness.
Wilberforce’s political war on the slave trade is not a tale of high adventure, nor even a drama of plots and intrigue. It is a story of perseverance, commitment and dogged faith in action exercised by a committed Christian striving for big stakes. For American Christians who believe that living inside “God’s will” probably means working in professional Christian ministry, the story of Wilberforce is distinctly counter-cultural.
When he came to personal faith, Wilberforce thought he should enter the ministry. But his friends (especially William Pitt) and his counselor (John Newton) pointed out the immense good he could achieve with his political gifts. This, they advised, was surely God’s purpose for his life.
In the end, they are proved right. Working from the conviction that his objective was in God’s purpose, Wilberforce achieved the stupendous task of reorienting the entire mind of a nation and its culture away from the then-commonplace practice of buying and selling human beings as chattel. When Wilberforce began his campaign, few Englishmen even regarded slavery as a problem. When he had finished, the world was changed forever. The film’s subtitle could be: “How One Man Made a Difference.”
William Wilberforce’s was a life well lived. Today, few schoolchildren – not even blacks – know his name or what he did. And that’s too bad. Amazing Grace might help remedy that ignorance. Today, more than ever, we need all the help we can get on that score.
Blue Bloods.
The wildly popular CBS TV series, Blue Bloods – now in its 12th season – breaks out of modern television’s secular straitjacket by depicting the lives and professional activities of a devout Irish-Catholic family whose adult members work in various roles of New York City law enforcement. The senior member of the close-knit Reagan family is retired Police Commissioner Henry (played by Len Cariou). His son, Francis (played by Tom Selleck), is the current Commissioner who has lost his oldest son, Joe, to murder by a corrupt cop. Both Henry and Frank are widowers.
One of Frank’s remaining sons, Danny (played by Donnie Wahlberg), is already a top NYPD detective; and Frank’s youngest son, Jamie (played by Will Estes), is a Harvard Law graduate who breaks in as a rookie NYPD patrolman and later becomes a sergeant. Frank’s daughter, Erin (played by Bridget Moynahan), is a New York Assistant District Attorney. Actresses Vanessa Ray, Sami Gayle, Amy Carlson, Abbigail Hawk, and actors Tony and Andrew Terraciano, Robert Clohessy, Peter Hermann and Gregory Jbara round out the cast of principal characters. It is a very strong cast.
The episodes are filled with police actions that often include violence, injury and death – but never in ways that glorify evil behavior. The cop-side of the Reagan family works hard to solve the crimes they encounter – often butting heads with Erin, on the prosecutorial side, to obtain the documents and sanctions allowed by law. And mixed into those interactions are the relationships, dynamics, conflicts, and griefs of an active modern family whose members always have the foundation of a strong Christian faith to fall back on.
A remarkable signature scene of every Blue Bloods episode is the Reagan Sunday dinner, which every member of the family makes a maximum effort to attend. The gathering often includes arguments and lively exchanges concerning cases being dealt with by both cops and prosecutors. If things get too heated, Grandpop Henry commands the combatants to “keep it civil.” He also serves as the family’s prophetic voice. In one memorable family-dinner scene he says, “I see God’s light in this family every day.”
The centerpiece of the Sunday meal is always the distinctly Christian blessing offered in unison by the entire family, before the meal. In off-screen interviews, several members of the Blue Bloods cast have said those family-dinners were their favorite scenes in the episodes – indicating that more than just acting was involved.
If you grieve for what’s happened to the movies, and wonder if TV drama is kaput, don’t miss these films and the Blue Bloods series. All is not lost if products like these can still emerge.
“In my day, men were men, and women were glad of it.” (Gary Cooper)