Also most Catholics couldn't care less about Catholic movies. Or other Catholic creative endeavors. And the people with the money to make Catholic movies, including Mel Gibson, expect to make more money on their ventures and don't understand that some things are worth doing even if they are not profitable.

That there are more Christians interested in Christian movies than there are Catholics interested in Catholic movies is why the recent movie Bella was pushed as a "Christian" movie. If any of its makers were Catholic, they didn't make a big deal of it.

I thought that Bella was a pretty decent effort. In spite of its flaws (the guy looking like Jesus being one of them; like Clarence the angel with wings), Bella demonstrated that Christians can make a movie with style and humor, a challenge for faiths with ideologies that can include a lot of strictures such as "You can't say that somebody looks like a whore. In fact, you can't even say the word 'whore.' You can't make a movie in New York City either!"

We are a sea change away from the day when "the Catholic movie" is as widely distributed, seen and most importantly, as well made, as such movies were sixty and seventy years ago. Nevertheless, for when and if the sea does change, here are a few ideas for explicitly and implicitly Catholic movies.

Explicitly Catholic
One explicitly Catholic movie could be about Dante Alighieri and The Divine Comedy. I don't think that The Divine Comedy itself would be easy to cram into two or three hours of film* and let's face it, Purgatory and Paradise, the upper regions of Dante's journey with Virgil, are just not as interesting as Hell.

A manageable and prudent depiction of the genius of Dante's work would be to include bits of his vision in a dramatization of his life in gangland Italy of the Thirteenth/Fourteenth Centuries. Call them Guelphs, Ghibellines, Montecchi, Capelletti, Dante's fellow political actors were what we call "the mob." Dante wrote his epic poem while he was on the lam from Florence where a contract had been put out on him. A lot of the characters in his poem were real guys who had gotten hit.

Too bad Martin Scorcese won't will still be alive if the project comes together.

We certainly don't need another movie about St. Francis, but we could use one about St.Thomas Aquinas. Yes, Thomas' was largely a life of the mind, but not without its drama, especially in his youth.

A fat kid who was thought to be stupid by his schoolmates, he was also blessed with a gangster family who didn't want him to be a common priest. The D'Aquinos would have been OK with Thomas as a bishop, that is, a simoniac who is a clergyman for the money, power and mistresses, but when their chubby son indicated a desire to join St. Dominic's new and serious order of preachers, they locked him in his room, which happened to be in a castle tower.

Thomas' brothers also released a whore in the room to distract him from his vocation. He drove her out with a torch and then escaped by shinnying down the side of the tower by a rope.

Call such a movie Growing Up D'Aquino. It could be a good zing at those Catholic families who oppose their sons' or daughters' vocations to religious life. Catholic movies should often remind Catholics that they are the biggest obstacles in the path of The Pilgrim Church.

Implicitly Catholic
In the implicitly Catholic film department let's have a faithful dramatization of The Children of Men, a very relevant story these days when, after decades of contraception and anti-family behaviors, the problem of depopulation is rearing. In a few decades, China is expected to have a severe shortage of women and a couple billion horny, aggressive men.

The 2006 film adaptation of P.D. James' novel was, unfortunately, what we can expect from establishment filmmakers, that is, people who are sympathetic to big-brother government and The Culture of Death.

State-assisted "suicide" drownings were not depicted in the film nor was the ludicrous pursuit of producing genetically "perfect" babies in a world where no woman has had a baby of any grade in 25 years. In the movie, "The Fishes" were portrayed as a somewhat sinister group; in the book they're the Christian heroes.

None of Baroness James' hints as to why people have lost the ability to reproduce made it into the script either. If sex is only for recreation, those who can't provide maximum recreation are rejected and interest and ability are eventually lost. Also, if the dwindling number of children are spoiled little savages, who wants to bring more into the world?

An attack on the pretension and snobbery of the upwardly mobile that only British Islanders can launch, Hatter's Castle,* the 1930 novel by Archibald Joseph Cronin is about a family of self-centered pricks whose middle-class-sized house pretensiously resembles a castle. The prickiest of the Brodies is the father, a hat-shop proprietor who, when he is not being obsessively conscious of a status that he does not possess, is a maestro at verbal, psychological and threatened physical abuse. Only one member of his family escapes to become a decent, happy person.

Hatter's Castle is set around 1880--and includes an actual special effects event, the Tay Bridge train wreck-- but this is a story that could easily be adapted to modern times. Catholic parishes in affluent suburbs are full of families more or less like the Brodies. Let's see: James could be the owner of a surgical supply company. Instead of having a castle, the contemporary Brodies have a wine "cave" in their backyard. Their daughters are on the path to becoming miserable old maids because Mom and Dad don't think that even senior partners or neurosurgeons are good enough to marry them. Oh, and one son becomes a priest but he's only interested in ministering to millionaires.

And we could never have too many movies based on the stories of Flannery O'Connor and Evelyn Waugh. O'Connor's novels and short fiction written in the '50s and early '60s often have the atmosphere and grit seen in modern movies. And in spite of what Flannery said about her characters experiencing grace even at the last moment of their lives, her tales are about bad people getting what they deserve.

Many photoplays of Waugh's work have already been made--Brideshead Revisited being the one people have heard of--but I've only seen one movie that comes close to the spirit of Waugh's books. That was Bright Young Things based on Vile Bodies and directed by Stephen Fry, a Jewish fella. Those who transfer Waugh's work to film erroneously highlight his characters' wealth and status rather than their decadence, spiritual poverty and foolishness.

More to come.

*although, I believe, a movie of Dante's work has been made.

**Hatter's Castle was actually made into a movie, starring the wonderful Robert Newton, back in the '40s.

Already Done: a Distinguished Heritage of Catholic Moviemaking

It is no coincidence that the last great era of Catholic moviemaking occurred around the 1940s, a time when the influence and power of the Catholic Church in the U.S. was at its zenith. Yes, Hollywood feared the disapproval of bishops and pastors, but the Catholic laity were also not the heavily compromised, bewildered, ashamed-of-their-church booboisie that many Catholics are today. In the '40s and thereabouts, there were enough Catholics with pride in their faith and a desire to root for Catholic things to create a demand for Catholic movies. Explicitly Catholic movies of that golden age include The Song of Bernadette and Monsieur Vincent (in French with subtitles).

Catholics can be proud of the fact that one of the greatest and most beloved movies of all time, It's A Wonderful Life, with its message about human dignity, is a product of the Catholic imagination. It was not only directed by Frank Capra, but largely written by him and it contains numerous autobiographical patterns.

Capra was ahead of his time when it came to thinking about such issues as euthanasia and subjective morality. He treated both, albeit lightly and humorously, in his film version of Arsenic and Old Lace (1941; released 1944).

Although Capra was dissatisfied with it, Pocketful of Miracles (1962), his last movie, is, I believe, his most overtly Catholic film. It even has a statue of the Blessed Mother in one scene. This delightful photoplay of Damon Runyon characters is about intercessory prayer (Queenie, a nightclub singer, pesters Dave the Dude to help Apple Annie.) and becoming good by developing good habits and doing works of charity.

A friend and contemporary of Frank Capra was Thomas Leo McCarey. He wrote and directed two mid '40s classics starring Bing Crosby as Fr. O'Malley, the embodiment of what everyone (back then, anyway) expected a priest to be. Fr. O'Malley was also a regular guy who liked baseball and golf and who had chosen the priesthood over marrying a rising opera singer.

These movies were, of course, Going My Way, co-starring Barry Fitzgerald and The Bells of St. Mary's co-starring Ingrid Bergman. They were the last blatantly Catholic movies to win Academy Awards and win many they did. Both deal with moral issues, greed, juvenile delinquency, even cohabitation (although only adult movie-watchers would understand the last.) The hit song Swinging On A Star from Going My Way is about living honestly and responsibly. Both movies also show how people of good will who have conflicts can resolve them.

Another great Catholic director was Jesuit-educated Alfred Hitchcock. One could write volumes about the Catholic sensibility in his work. I'll give you one example. Recently I rewatched Hitchcock's Strangers On A Train in which a nice-guy tennis-player's life is invaded and messed up by a creep. Bruno Antony initiates his personal acquaintance with Guy, the tennis-player, by kicking his foot, a homosexual signal from way back. There are a number of other indications that Antony is gay. Initially, Guy (and a silly old woman at a party) find him amusing, but the adventurous, amoral, immature Bruno is hardly the stuff of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. There is a lesson in Strangers On A Train for contemporary folks who have swallowed the propaganda that all gays are cute and benign.

Among accidentally Catholic movies was Green Dolphin Street, the title melody of which has become a jazz standard, long after the movie itself has been forgotten.

Based on a novel written by a minister's daughter, Green Dolphin Street is about an English Channel island family whose members choose to make the best of bad situations and over the years grow in character and find true happiness. One daughter, played by Donna Reed, does a very Catholic thing. Even Lana Turner becomes less of a bad girl as the story progresses.