Frank Capra (1931)

As Florence Fallon, a minister’s daughter, Barbara Stanwyck makes a quiet entrance in her and The Miracle Woman’s opening scene.  The church service taking place is to be the last conducted by Florence’s father before his replacement by a younger preacher.   As she makes her way to and stands at the lectern, you need to look twice to check that this is Stanwyck, so unremarkable, even dowdy, is her appearance.  When Florence starts to speak, she does so tentatively.  In the course of the next few minutes of The Miracle Woman, she’s transformed.  Her volume gradually increases as she makes clear her bitter resentment of the treatment of her father, forced into retirement by the church elders, after many years of loyal service.  Branding the whole congregation hypocrites, Florence announces that her father won’t be making his scheduled farewell appearance because, broken-hearted, he died in her arms a few minutes ago.  Stanwyck builds this impassioned speech so excitingly that you want to applaud.  The church is silent, though.  The entire congregation has fled, but for one.

The last man standing is Bob Hornsby (Sam Hardy), a huckster-promoter who sees a big future for Florence as a celebrity evangelist.  (The screenplay by Jo Swerling and Dorothy Howell is an adaptation of a play, Bless You, Sister, supposedly inspired by the career of Aimee Semple McPherson.  The play’s authors were John Meehan and Robert Riskin – the latter went on to write regularly for Frank Capra.)  While Barbara Stanwyck compels belief in Florence’s angry disillusion with the religion she’s been raised in, it’s less clear why Hornsby discerns in her a talent for religious illusionism – but he has to for the story to move forward.   When we next see Florence, she’s the high priestess of a ‘Temple of Happiness’ that travels the country performing theatrical stunts/fake miracles to huge audiences.  Hornsby is her manager.

Frank Capra’s description of evangelism as show business is sharp-eyed and level-headed, a blend that reinforces the bizarreness of the enterprise.  This is one of the strengths of The Miracle Woman; another is the interaction of pretence and authenticity in the story.  When he hears Florence’s inspirational spiel on the radio, blinded war veteran and music composer manqué John Carson (David Manners), preparing to jump from an upstairs window, decides life is worth living after all.  After their first meeting, when he attends one of her shows, John and Florence start meeting socially.  He conducts a courtship with the help of his ventriloquist’s dummy, who can say things John can’t bring himself to say.  Stanwyck gives Florence, even in her public performances, a streak of cynicism that the film audience can pick up even if the onscreen audience can’t; but it’s the look in Florence’s eyes, as she grows closer to John and contemplates his doubly blind adoration of her, that reveals the depth of her self-loathing.  When she breaks down and admits to him she’s a sham, John insists that she has genuinely helped people – he knows it from personal experience.  In order to try and restore Florence’s faith in herself, he pretends that she has performed a miracle and he has recovered his sight.  Although she quickly realises he hasn’t, John’s make-believe strengthens Florence’s love for him.

Hornsby blackmails Florence into travelling abroad with him – officially to the Holy Land though he actually has Monte Carlo in mind.  Moved by John’s devotion, she intends, however, to use the occasion of her farewell show to tell her followers the truth about herself and the Temple of Happiness set-up.  As might be expected, this is the climax of The Miracle Woman.   There’s a showdown with Hornsby, who accidentally starts a fire that rapidly engulfs the Temple.  (The blaze is visualised most impressively by Capra and his cinematographer, Joseph Walker.)  For the second time in the film, Florence’s congregation departs at speed.  Blind he may be but John feels his way towards her unconscious body and rescues Florence from the flames.  In an epilogue to the main action, Hornsby is walking down a New York street with a prizefighter whose career he’s now promoting.  He catches sight of a Salvation Army band and Florence at the forefront of it.  ‘And she gave up a million bucks for that, the poor sap’, Hornsby scornfully remarks.  Florence reads a telegram just received from John:  doctors have told him it may be possible to restore his sight; in any event, he loves and wants to marry her.   As for Florence’s faith in God and humanity, that has certainly  been restored.  She marches down the street with her Salvation Army colleagues, singing ‘Glory Glory Hallelujah’, tears of joy on her face.

Frank Capra, a practising (Catholic) Christian, sets out his stall clearly at the start.  The opening titles include not only an apt verse from the Bible (‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves’ – Matthew 7:15) but also an explicit declaration of intent:

‘The Miracle Woman is offered as a rebuke to anyone who, under the cloak of Religion, seeks to sell for gold, God’s choicest gift to humanity – FAITH.’

What follows, as will be clear from the above, is quite a melodrama – although, as in the previous year’s Ladies of Leisure, Capra’s use of music is judiciously rationed.  That the film delivers emotionally as a demonstration of the redeeming power of love is down largely to the odd combination of performances in the three main roles:  Stanwyck is tremendous; David Manners is limited but underplays appealingly; Sam Hardy is rather dull – a weightless heavy.   This may not have been intentional but the under-powered villain of the piece makes it easier for Capra to illustrate a human potential for goodness – there’s no substantial opposition.  Beryl Mercer, in the next biggest role (obviously written though it is), is enjoyable as John Carson’s well-meaning housekeeper.

8 March 2019