Best Actress: Jennifer Jones

 Lord forgive me...

via thnklikeaqueen

The Song of Bernadette was as dull as rocks. If you thought this movie might condense the story of how Bernadette Soubirous came to have visions of the Virgin Mary in 1850s France and how long it took the powers-that-be in her town to accept that perhaps there was something truly miraculous about the spring she digs up on the Blessed Virgin Mary’s orders, then you thought wrong. It’s like we’re experiencing it all in real time alongside Bernadette.

Every agonizing second feels like it takes five seconds. We establish that the Soubirous Family is dirt poor. And that Bernadette is sickly. And that her pious teacher think she’s dotty. And that she shouldn’t be going to the river with her sister and friend, because she’s sickly. But she does it anyway, and oh my God it takes her forever to find a place to sit down and take off her stockings, and then when she does… that’s when Linda Darnell—sorry, I meant the Blessed Virgin Mary—appears to her for the first time.

And then we have yet another endless sequence of Bernadette revealing what she saw, people believing her, people calling her a kook. Her mother forbidding her from going to see the vision again. Being talked into letting her go. The reverend forbidding her from coming to him about it, even though the vision told Bernadette to visit him. For some reason the law gets involved? People were smallminded back then. There’s an endless cycle of whether or not to put Bernadette into an asylum, but she always gets out of it because ‘sHe StIcKs To HeR sToRy EvErY tImE.'

And then when the Blessed Virgin Mary appears again and tells Bernadette to wash in the spring, but there’s no spring there so Bernadette figures it means she must dig for it, and then she washes her face with the mud, and the townfolk all groan and point and the law tells them to leave, and then it takes forever for the water to flow and for the final stragglers who lingered behind to notice it, and somehow even longer for them to run back to the crowd and let them know that there is a spring there!

You’d think this’d be it, wouldn’t you? If this were an ‘80s movie, there’d be a montage outlining what happens to each character as some catchy music plays. But somehow, inexplicably, this is not the end of poor Bernadette’s woes. Oh no.

Because even though the spring is shown to have miraculous healing powers and has cured so many people of their ailments, FOR SOME REASON THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE STILL DON’T BELIEVE BERNADETTE. There’s a whole sequence about a man rushing into a doctor’s office exclaiming that after he washed his eyes in the spring he can see again. And despite the fact that he’s walking around the office with more coordination than I have on a good day, the doctor doesn’t believe him. And then he says “Well, read the letters on the poster,” and the guy goes, “I can’t read them,” and the doctor thinks it’s because he can’t see the letters but it’s because he was illiterate before and the water didn’t make him literate. I swear, these people.

You must be imagining: Jess, surely the Church believes Bernadette? NO. Only her town reverend believes her, and he can’t even convince the Bishop (? I confess, I don’t know the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and I’m too lazy to look this part up) to open an investigation, because he doesn’t fully believe, and he’ll only open an investigation if the Emperor (not Napoleon Bonaparte) directs him to. So then the law arrests a woman from going to the spring—because, while all this is happening, they’ve boarded up the spring and have made it illegal to take its water—and she’s like “Fine, I’ll pay the fine. I’m sure my lady, the Empress, will appreciate all this brouhaha but I’m taking the water.” And then the baby Emperor (also too lazy to Google the hierarchy of the French Empire, so sorry) is cured of his illness and guess who’s goaded into directing the Bishop into opening an investigation? That’s right, the Emperor.

SURELY. Surely, you’re wondering: “Jess, now is the montage and the neatly wrapped up ending?” Nope. Now they bring in Bernadette for more questioning. You know, the kind we already saw? And her story still hasn’t changed. (Why do they think she’d lie about this or all the evidence they have about all the miraculous healings?) And now she’s banding about the term ‘Immaculate Conception’ (confession: she might have been saying that earlier, the timeline’s all confused in my head now) and this is the sticking point for some of them: for a poor, uneducated, frail girl from a poor part of France, how would she know the term ‘Immaculate Conception’, which had only just recently been introduced into the Catholic Church? (That part I did Google last night, because the reverend was very stuck on this point.)

Also, because this is now an Official Investigation, they realize Bernadette has only three options: she goes to an asylum if they find she made it up, she goes somewhere that I forget if they find something I forget, or she goes to a convent if they believe her. Because she can’t live an ordinary life anymore. She’s too famous. So she goes to a convent.

And guess who’s in charge of her? The pious teacher she once had, who believes she’s been making the whole thing up because she can’t imagine why God would reward Bernadette over her. So she tortures her emotionally as soon as she joins the novitiate and sweet Bernadette endures it because the Blessed Virgin Mary promised her happiness in the next life, not this one.

And then it’s revealed that Bernadette has been suffering. She’s got tuberculosis that’s gotten into her bones and there’s a gnarly tumour on her leg (according to Google, anyway. We don’t see it in the film, just Gladys Cooper’s horrified reaction to it) and she’s not long for this world. And poor Bernadette won’t take the spring water because “it’s not meant for me” so she dies slowly and in agonizing pain, while the men of the Church crowd her deathbed to repeat over and over and over again the details of her testimony and she begs the Blessed Virgin Mary to appear to her, and then, overjoyed, she finally dies.

The end? You wonder? Oh no. Now there’s a funeral montage. The town of Lourdes is mourning Bernadette and we’re treated to a montage of all the people who treated her poorly in life having the final words. Including Vincent Price, who (for some reason) played the lawmaker and was eventually reassigned after the Bishop ordered an investigation. He’s come back to gloat that he’s smarter than everyone mourning Bernadette (in an internal monologue).

Glad a skeptical man—even if it is Vincent Price—got the final word here, and not Bernadette. Heaven forbid.

If you’re still here… I hated this movie.

And God love her, but Jennifer Jones doesn't really do anything here except use those doe eyes and that breathy girlish voice to really sell that she's the 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous. She was better in better movies, but I'm sad to say that I did not like this performance at all, especially when you see who she was up against. 

Jennifer was nominated against Jean Arthur (The More the Merrier), Ingrid Bergman (For Whom the Bell Tolls), Joan Fontaine (The Constant Nymph), and Greer Garson (Madame Curie). Honestly, throw a dart, hit a name, give her the Oscar, she definitely deserved it more. (I'd have voted for Joan Fontaine in The Constant Nymph, because that's one of my favourite Joan movies; and I hate that we live in a world where Jean Arthur never got rewarded.)

Fun fact, in my novel, The Majestic Sisters, Melly takes the place of Jennifer Jones and is nominated for an Oscar against Jean, Ingrid, Joan and Greer. No spoilers, you'll have to read to find out if she wins!

DID I LIKE THE SONG OF BERNADETTE? Uh uh. Not at all. 
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Did you like The Song of Bernadette? What are your thoughts on Jennifer Jones's Oscar win? 

Keep up with all my Rewatching the Best Actresses posts here.