When in Rome

Er, not that "When in Rome"

Some months back, TCM ran a little movie called When in Rome, which I recorded but didn't watch because it doesn't seem to be available on DVD. It turns out that there's another airing tomorrow morning at 4:30 AM (or overnight tonight if you're on the west coast), so now's the time to watch and blog about it.

The movie was released 1952, but points out that it is set in 1950, which was considered a Holy Year in the Catholic Church that led a lot of people to visit Rome. (That would explain the stock footage of mass religious gatherings in Rome.) Going to Rome to take part in the Holy Year is Father John Halligan (Van Johnson), a Catholic priest from Coaltown, PA. His pilgrimage is considered a big deal in that sort of small-town Catholic community. So big that he's actually bought a new cassock for the occasion.

Fr. John is taking the boat over to Genoa and making his way to Rome from there, and to cut costs he's sharing a cabin with a stranger, who turns out to be the very nice Joe Brewster (Paul Douglas). Joe isn't Catholic, and probably not religious at all, but he and Fr. John get along well, helping each other with seasickness and stuff like that.

Of course, we already got some foreshadowing from the intro that Joe has a past, which we see when he makes off with Fr. John's new cassock, leaving John with Joe's loud suit. (You'd think Fr. John would have multiple changes of clothes.) This is because Joe was a prisoner back in the States, having escaped from his latest incarceration. Somehow, unlike Call Northside 77 the authorities couldn't send a photo or even a good description of Joe, only what Joe was wearing. So he makes it through customs no problem and is accepted by a couple of fellow priests picking him up, while Fr. John is arrested and placed in custody until he can prove his innocence.

As I mentioned, Joe isn't religious at all, which is going to become a problem when it comes time to practice any number of Catholic rituals. (Mass was still in Latin at that time, still a dozen years before Vatican II, so in theory Fr. John could have been asked to perform a Mass.) Somehow he bluffs his way through it all, and when he meets Irish Fr. McGinniss on the way to Rome and then helps him carry a cross during a procession, Joe begins to have some pangs of conscience.

Not enough to go back to America, however. Fr. John eventually finds Joe and Joe gets Fr. John to take him on a tour of some of Rome's churches that together are part of a well-known penitent's journey. Joe begins to open up, confessing his sins to Fr. John and showing a lot of admiration for the priests' pureness. They're still being pursued by the police, though, forcing them to make escapes, as they do when the wind up in a monastery where the monks have taken a vow of silence.

When in Rome is the sort of interesting programmer that MGM was making in the early 1950s that I've long felt were helping to subsidize the more expensive Freed Unit musicals. There's the obvious, if gentle, moralizing about doing good works, for example. But the story largely works even if it's old fashioned, and both of the leads are appealing in their roles. If you want something old-styled and family-friendly, you could do a lot worse than to watch When in Rome.