NR | 1h 34m | Drama, Comedy | 1949
Director Henry Koster’s breezy film “Come to the Stable” (1949) draws on writer Clare Boothe Luce’s story, believed to be loosely based on the real-life heroism of two nuns, American Benedict Russ and Frenchwoman, Mother Mary Aline Trilles de Warren. Both nuns immersed themselves in charitable work in France during World War II, then left Europe and, against heavy odds, set up America’s first Benedictine monastery for women.
In the film, Chicago-born, France-schooled Sr. Margaret (Loretta Young) and France-born Sr. Scholastica (Celeste Holm) worked in a children’s hospital in a French town during WWII. When the building, used by the Nazis for covert ops, became an Allied target, the nuns rushed most of the children out. But over 100 critical cases couldn’t be shifted. On Sr. Margaret’s request, American troops leveled the town as they’d planned but spared the hospital. The nuns vowed to build a children’s hospital in America to repay that debt. But where? How?
Enter Amelia Potts (Elsa Lancaster), a U.S.-based painter of religious portraits. In Europe, the nuns spot Potts’s nativity-scene painting on a postcard and track her down in the Christmassy calm New England town of Bethlehem. With the blessing of her wealthy neighbor and landlord, music composer Robert Mason (Hugh Marlowe), Potts hosts the nuns at her house. While there, the missionary duo hatch a plan to build their hospital on a nearby plot of land.
Progress is patchy. That hilltop plot belongs to New York-based mafia boss Luigi Rossi (Thomas Gomez). The local Bishop’s pragmatism rules out his active support for Sr. Margaret’s faith-inspired idealism.
Worse, the initially indulgent Mason is losing patience with the nuns. Their increasingly noisy fundraising campaign keeps messing with his treasured late-morning sleep, his plans as a composer, and that Christmassy calm he’d taken for granted.
The screenplay is earnest enough, but many scenes intended to be funny end up being only mildly amusing. It is Koster’s cast that enlivens his film.
Lancaster is endearing as the absent-minded artist, loosely based on Lauren Ford, who had illustrated some of Clare Boothe Luce’s books.
Holm, who’d been to school in France, frequently mutters her exasperation or surprise under her breath (in French).
Giving Back
The nuns recognize those who give, even out of their poverty. Potts keeps apologizing that she’s too poor to offer money but ends up opening every corner of her house to them. Sr. Margaret acknowledges that Potts, far from poor, is rich in kindness and faith.For all their faith, neither nun sits back hoping that mere prayer will see them through. They put their backs into fund-raising.
Clare Boothe Luce was an anti-communist socialite, diplomat, and writer. Intentional or not, some of her writing hinted at how capitalism could be a force for good. Her regard for the right to property ownership and free-market enterprise creeps into her story.
Koster’s nuns depend on charity all right, but they throw themselves headlong into leveraging their talents, too. Of course, they beg. But they also borrow. They raise chickens, geese, and ducks in the Potts household, converting it into a veritable farm. They sell produce, whether raw (eggs, milk) or processed (jams, patties, cheese, and embroidered trinkets).
The reference to the Gregorian chant that Mason is accused of plagiarizing from the nuns, points to a giving of the self as the ultimate giving. Unlike most song arrangements, the chant is unaccompanied by instruments, relying on the musicality of the voicing itself. That tradition recognizes the human voice as God’s gift, making it a return offering to God in prayerful praise and gratitude. In a roundabout way, Mason discovers that, no matter how creative he appears, man doesn’t create but merely improvises on what God has created.
