The Miracle Woman (1931)

Florence Fallon (Barbara Stanwyck) loses her preacher father and takes to the pulpit to denounce his uncaring flock for not appreciating his goodness. She takes her bitter rants to the radio and becomes a highly successful evangelist with greedy promoter Bob Hornsby. John Carson is a blind struggling songwriter taken with Florence's sermons. His faith in her restores her faith in humanity.Frank Capra and Stanwyck bring a nice tale of redemption and salvation. This is Capra a little bit before his biggest hits. It certainly has his movie belief in humanity and goodness. Stanwyck has her usual acting power. John Carson should be less well off and leave that dummy out of this please. He needs to work with orphans or heal the sick which could inspire her. Stanwyck and the Capraism mostly work which is very good. This is like an early flawed prototype for Capra's later icons.

Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Capra did four films together in the early Thirties for Columbia and as this was Capra's early work it's of varying quality. The Miracle Woman has Barbara Stanwyck as an Aimee Semple McPherson type evangelist bilking the public for all it's worth under the tutelage of Sam Hardy.Barbara's got good reason to be cynical, her father who was a devout minister died poor and uncared for by his Pharisee like congregation. With Hardy's encouragement she starts to see religion as a way to make some real dough. Doesn't that sound familiar for today.She's going along in her cynical way until she meets David Manners, former veteran of the Great War who left his eyesight behind in it. Manners is the main weakness in The Miracle Woman, he's obviously a man of some culture and learning and I could not accept that this would be the kind of woman he would fall for.The similarities between The Miracle Woman and Elmer Gantry are too obvious to ignore. Richard Brooks's classic is so much better done covering the same ground. As for Stanwyck she gives a great performance in a film that never quite gets its message across.

This isn't bad, a kind of re-telling of the story of Amee Semple McPherson and her Four Square Gospel, a popular religious movement during the 20s. She'd be a television celebrity today. McPherson, I think, disappeared mysteriously and some time later showed up without any adequate explanation for her absence. It was widely thought that she'd been shacked up with a married boyfriend someplace, maybe on the Monterey Peninsula. Charges were brought. The scandal that followed was scandalous.Barbara Stanwyck plays a similar character in this early 30s production. Her religious beliefs are genuine and intense, and she empties a church while defending her father's integrity, shouting that the congregation is hypocritical. A perfectly pragmatic bad guy, Hardy, latches onto Stanwyck's emotional impact and talks her into organizing a kind of religious traveling circus, complete with shills in the audience and phony faith cures. His argument is simplicity itself, a spun-out version of Kant's hypothetical imperative. Sure, we're all hypocrites. So why not be a hypocrite that makes money out of that hypocrisy? Still bitter, she agrees, and the show is a great success. Enter David Manners, a blind ex aviator from World War I. (Kids: that was 1917-1918.) Distraught and hopeless, he's about to jump out of a window when he hears one of her radio broadcasts and undergoes some kind of Road-to-Damascus number.They meet. They fall in love. Everything looks rosy except that Stanwyck is now beginning to feel some guilt over her phoniness. She wants out of it but Hardy has arranged things in such a way that she's trapped in her role as fake preacher. There's humiliation, disgrace. But the director, honing his skills for such later successes as "It's A Wonderful Life" and "Mister Smith Goes to Washington", let's everybody off easy.I've never found Barbara Stanwyck as compelling an actress as some others have but she puts a lot into this role. She looks vulnerable. She would hit a neat peak in her career with "Double Indemnity", partly because of that tight sweater, that golden anklet, and that outlandish blond wig. She should have probably retired earlier than she did because the image she left with too many people is that of the hard-faced dominatrix of some revoltingly rich family of ranchers.But the script isn't bad. The blind pilot is something of a bore, but Sam Hardy as the corrupt manager has an admirably complex role and does well by it. Too bad the movie has lost so much of its historical resonance. Who remembers Aimee Semple McPherson today? Everyone did in 1931.

I can't believe I've never seen this film before. After all does a Christmas pass without "It's a Wonderful Life"? Could anyone over forty possibly not be exposed to Mr Deeds, It Happened One Night. Meet John Doe or Mr Smith Goes to Washington (especially around American elections)? Yet in my 57 years I have never seen this Capra film until TCM aired it today. Hallelujah! This is like discovering Beethoven's 10th. I could not take my eyes off this movie for one second. From the very first scene when Stanwyck enters to deliver her father's final sermon and her first, the story grabs you by the throat and won't let go. This movie has all the essential Capra elements: the innocent among the villains and cynics who've lost their innocence; the crowd being swayed by sham theatrics; the hard-boiled woman revealing the heart of gold; and most of all, the sheer unpredictability of his vision and the compelling logic of his moral universe. And how he makes you care for those innocents and even the cynics caught up in riptides of life. He had such a great hand in directing his actors too. especially the women. Is it possible that Barbra Stanwyck has looked more beautiful or sexy? It doesn't hurt of course that he had a great actress and a stunning women to work with. Her work is truly fine here. Our villain here (Sam Hardy) does a lovely job of making us care about his hapless victims too. His touch is just restrained enough for us to believe one could fall for his temptations and evil enough to be afraid of. And he's balanced by oddly convincing hero, blind composer David Manners who makes a great innocent as well as not a bad ventriloquist.This is definitely a must see for any Capra fan!