Plot Intro
In the dodgy end of New York City, youthful, kindly, progressive Father Chuck O’Malley (Bing Crosby), becomes a priest at the financially failing St Dominic’s Church. Unfortunately, the current elderly pastor, Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald) leads an extremely conventional, inactive lifestyle. These two very different priests clash, but must band together to help the church as the CEO of a loan company starts closing in on them for mortgage repayments, and threatens closure…
Going My Way does for the Catholic church what You Can’t Take It With You did for capitalism and big business. It takes the stagnating, pompous traditionalism of the long-standing institutions and thoughts, and introduces it to the humane, community-loving innocence of the young. I liked Take It With You despite its sugariness, so I had relatively high hopes for Going My Way.
Unfortunately, it’s excruciating. It takes saccharine to a whole new level. Humanity, in this film’s deluded universe, has a permanently sunny disposition and can change from bad to good with ease. All of the characters one might construe as villainous have impossibly quick changes of character- and none of them are particularly villainous to begin with. The avaricious head of the loan company is really just a mild-mannered business man doing his job; the street kids that O’Malley employs for the choir are far from criminal (they’re very eloquent, their worst crime is nicking a turkey, and they have an unbelievable penchant for singing Ave Maria- realistically, these kids would have flick knives and black eyes); and Jean Heather’s character, who is introduced as a bit of a floozy who has run away from her parents, turns out to be as rebellious as a Jonas Brother. Her ambition in life is not to be a housewife but to be a singer. Good heavens, where are my smelling salts?!
All of these storylines are tied up with cloying ease, as if the writers felt their audience couldn’t possibly handle anything beyond the most tame of tales. Grimm’s fairy tales feel like a Saw movie in comparison. As a result, the film has no dramatic drive or suspense to keep its audience wondering how any issue that arises can be resolved. Sister Act covers similar territory later, but with more humour, less solemnity, and an intention to embrace silliness. O’Malley bemoans the church’s seriousness and lack of fun, but Bing Crosby’s hardly Whoopi Goldberg when he performs.
Both Crosby and Fitzgibbon received Oscars for their roles. In fact, Fitzgibbon was nominated for Best Actor AND Supporting Actor for this role (the only time this has happened), and won the latter. I fail to see why. For an actor who had such a successful and extensive career, Crosby, to me, seemed held back and lacking in liveliness, and more interested in showing off his singing voice. Fitzgibbon mumbles horrendously and hobbles about with such a ridiculous voice that he reminded me of Golem in Lord of the Rings. Both were great actors of their day but neither captivated me here.
I’m condemning Going My Way as the worst film we’ve seen so far on this Oscars project. It’s boring, overly tame and sickly sweet. I suppose audiences took solace in its sugariness after the intensity of Mrs Miniver and Casablanca but, to me, it was nauseating.
Highlight
OK, I quite enjoyed the gossipy neighbour, Mrs Quimp. She is hashtag life goals.
Lowlight
The incongruous way the songs were shoved into the story. And none of them have aged well.
Mark
1/10
Paul’s pretty much covered it all this week. I regret marking Casablanca so lowly this week because the bar for terrible films has been revealed to be a whole lot lower than previously thought. I do slightly disagree in it being the worst film we’ve seen yet, because nothing has quite beaten the miserable depths of A Broadway Melody yet.
However, it is shockingly bad. This is a film, just to remind us all, that came out three years after Citizen Kaine. Yet for the style of editing, the humourless writing and the over the top, unsubstantial performances - we might be back in the 1910s again. There’s even a jump-cut where the editor has been too over-hasty in gluing the film together, something we haven’t seen for about ten films. The only way this sentimental piece of frippery won all the Oscars it did was either bribery or there were actually no other films produced this year.
The storyline (or what there is) is a watery Sister Act, only without the wit, pizzaz, cracking songs, or Whoopi. A young priest turns up to turn around a failing church, ropes in the local tearaways who all luckily have perfect voices and sings some dire faux-operatic songs. The title song ‘Going My Way’ is an ugly tune with some vague lyrics about ‘a basket of wishes’ or some such rubbish. It’s just dreadful.
One of my main problems with this film, apart from it being just a waste of film reel, is that there are many ‘comic’ moments, all of which fall entirely flat because the cast have absolutely no comic timing. Jokes that might have raised a chuckle become tragically awkward. There’s no heart to this piece, to the extent that the copywriters who have written the blurb on the back of the DVD have retreated into writing vague schmaltzy words: ‘the neighbourhood becomes closer as the church’s meaning grows dearer to their souls’. No one has a clue what’s going on in this film.
Looking at it from the perspective of audiences’ at the time - and herein lies the possible clue of how the film took so many Oscars - we are now in the final years of the war, in which there has been a terrible blitz and many lives lost. Everyone will be in need of a little escapism, and a chance to breathe, away from the horrors and misery of the everyday reality. So in a way, I get why a saccharine-drenched film with minimal plot and some deeply forgettable songs appealed to the long-suffering audiences of wartime cinema. It’s just not something that has lasted - even an iota - to the present day.
Highlight
Bing Crosby has a lovely voice. Apparently this voice was enough to win him ‘Best Actor’, because his acting skills certainly didn’t do anything.
Lowlight
Literally everything. But if I had to pick a specific thing, I’d say Jean Heather as a demented 18 year old who becomes a housewife and delights in fetching her husband’s hat is a pretty poor blow to the feminist movement. Not to mention a dire acting performance.
Mark
1/10 (the mark is solely for Bing’s voice)
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