This 1945 movie pairing Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman for the first and last time and obliging them to play out a purely subtextual romance as priest and nun was not just a box office hit; for all intents and purposes it arguably WAS American popular cinema for that year, the year before, and the year after. For that reason alone a Blu-ray is desirable if not necessary. Then there's Robin Wood's perspective on it, articulated thusly in his "Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: Hollywood and Beyond": "Far from being the piece of sentimental kitsch it's usually represented as—sneered at by intellectuals, watched annually by millions as a wholesome 'family' Christmas entertainment,
the two views equally misguided and perfectly complementary—"The Bells of St. Mary's"occupies a privileged position in the [director Leo] McCarey oeuvre as the one film that moves beyond the implicit rejection of the traditional patriarchal family to suggest (tentatively, sketchily) the possibility of an alternative model." So there. But it is indeed also catnip for lovers of the lead actors and McCarey's gentle humanism. Is this Olive disc a little soft-looking? A lot of the time, yes? Does the movie deserve better? Absolutely. But not even grading on the curve, I'd have to deem this disc a slight disappointment, but hardly a disaster.
