In the 1996 British comedy-drama Secrets & Lies, Hortense, a young middle-class black woman in London, having lost both of her adoptive parents, decides to seek out her biological mother - who turns out to be a working-class white woman named Cynthia.

Director Mike Leigh is known for collaborating in depth with his actors to create vivid, deeply realized characters and performances. Secrets & Lies is an outstanding specimen of a lost genre: a kitchen-sink drama that relies entirely on its rich humanity to keep us watching. Andrew Petiprin joins Criteria to discuss the movie.

Links

Spe Salvi Institute https://www.spesalviinstitute.com/

Article about the displacement of Cockneys, "Indigenous London" https://firstthings.com/indigenous-london/

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Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com

James, Thomas, and Nathan Douglas conclude their journey through Terrence Malick's filmography (thus far) with a discussion of the film that introduced him to many Catholics: A Hidden Life, about the Austrian martyr Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, who was killed for refusing to swear loyalty to Hitler. Coming after Malick's avant-garde phase of the Weightless Trilogy, A Hidden Life is a more conventional narrative but retains much of the stylistic and formal development of his past few films.

Links

Original episode on A Hidden Life https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-58-hidden-life-film-review-w-james-majewski/

New Polity podcast on Bl. Franz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD04XvxBLkE

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Anthony D'Ambrosio directed, wrote, and produced the outstanding new film Triumph of the Heart about St. Maximilian Kolbe. In this inspiring interview, he discusses the difficult path he and his team charted to produce this independent film with a low budget, high artistic standards, and deep Catholic spirituality.

Film is an expensive medium. Since a high budget requires one to calculate mainstream appeal in order to make one's money back, a low budget can leave more room for artistic and spiritual integrity. Though the production faced many hardships, it was buoyed up by the hope that the project could break a new path for other Catholic filmmakers to follow.

Triumph of the Heart is available to screen at your parish, and will start streaming on its official website November 1.

Links

Show Triumph of the Heart at your parish https://www.triumphoftheheart.com/

Our review of Triumph of the Heart https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/triumph-heart-is-film-worthy-its-subject-st-maximilian-kolbe/

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Roberto Rossellini's 1946 World War II film Paisan has a unique structure: six vignettes following the American troops north from their landing in Sicily through Naples, Rome, Florence, Romagna, and the Po Delta. However, the film takes the perspective of the Italians, with the Americans more often than not naive outsiders. It is a fascinating exploration of the clash of cultures in the tragic scenarios of war and foreign occupation. One segment in particular will be very interesting to Catholics: an American priest serving as an army chaplain visits a Franciscan monastery along with his Protestant and Jewish chaplain counterparts and encounters a more intense and less ecumenical religiosity than he is accustomed to.

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Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com

James and Thomas discuss the original creepy clown movie, He Who Gets Slapped, starring Lon Chaney in an amazing performance as scientist Paul Beaumont, who suffers a mental breakdown after his research and his wife are stolen by a wealthy baron. Leaving his former world behind, Beaumont becomes a circus clown known only as He, whose entire act consists of attempting to say profound things while being slapped and ridiculed by the other clowns, recreating his trauma - until one day, he comes back into contact with the man who betrayed him... The film explores the effect that the crowd's propensity for mockery and humiliation has on the human psyche.

The film is by the pioneering Swedish silent-era director, Victor Sjöström - his second movie made in the US. It remains very engaging for a silent film, and makes a good introduction to the medium.

Watch He Who Gets Slapped for free on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_qlCtPdqto

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James and Thomas review an outstanding and very intense new film about St. Maximilian Kolbe, directed and written by Anthony D'Ambrosio. Triumph of the Heart is set mostly in the starvation cell in Auschwitz as Kolbe and his companions try to find a way to die with hope and dignity. Don't miss it, in theaters Sept. 12.

https://www.triumphoftheheart.com/

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Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com

James and Thomas discuss one of their favorite films, The Night of the Hunter, directed by Charles Laughton. It's about the sacred innocence of children, and discerning true vs. false prophets. A unique mix of fairy tale, horror, and Southern gothic with expressionist visuals, The Night of the Hunter contains some of the most striking and poetic sequences ever filmed.

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Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com

In Alfred Hitchcock's 1953 film I Confess, a young priest in Quebec City is suspected of murder because of his unwillingness to break the seal of confession. A major theme of the film is the incomprehension with which the world sees the priesthood, such that people project their own sins onto the priest, resulting in a kind of white martyrdom.

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Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission.