"The Left Hand of God" is set in China, in 1947, during the civil war between Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang and Mao's Communists. A priest, Father O'Shea, arrives at a remote Catholic mission station where he is welcomed with open arms as the mission has been without a priest for some time since the death of his predecessor,. O'Shea proves a popular and inspirational pastor, but he is hiding a guilty secret. It turns out that he is not a priest at all, but an American pilot named Jim Carmody who crashed his plane during World War II. Carmody was rescued by a local warlord, General Yang, and became his trusted adviser, but decided to desert the General's service after witnessing atrocities carried out by his men. An additional complication comes in the shape of attractive mission nurse Anne Scott, with whom Carmody has secretly fallen in love. The climax of the film comes when General Yang arrives, insisting that Carmody rejoin his army or else he will burn down the village.
The film can be seen as both a physical and a spiritual drama. Carmody is a lapsed Catholic, and this is an important plot point; were the character to have been written as a lifelong atheist the film would have been a very different one. (An atheist, for a start, would probably not have had the knowledge of the Catholic faith to enable him to impersonate a priest convincingly). Carmody finds that his faith is beginning to return, and finds himself in a dilemma. For a layman to impersonate a priest is, in Catholic eyes, a serious sin, for which Carmody stands in need of absolution. Yet can he confess his imposture without destroying the faith of his congregation, who have come to trust in him and who have derived genuine spiritual comfort from his bogus "ministry"? Carmody may not be a priest, but as he says he has started to find in himself some of the qualities that a man would need to be a priest.
I have never read the original novel by William Edmund Barrett, but I understand that the author was a practising Catholic and the film has some similarities to the works of another Catholic author, Barrett's British contemporary Graham Greene. Like a number of Greene's novels, it takes place in an exotic setting, and the theme is characteristically Greeneian. It reminded me somewhat of Greene's "The Power and the Glory", where the hero is a genuine priest, but in his own eyes an unworthy one.
By 1955, Humphrey Bogart was already seriously ill with the cancer that was to kill him two years later, and "The Left Hand of God" was one of his last films; he was to make only two further movies. Yet even towards the end of his life he was still keen to expand his range by taking new and challenging roles, as in "The Barefoot Contessa", "Sabrina" (a rare venture into romantic comedy) and "The Caine Mutiny" in which, unusually, he gets to play a weak, emotionally vulnerable character. ("The Caine Mutiny" and "The Left Hand of God" were made by the same director, Edward Dmytryk).
Bogart was always a good actor, but in some of his early films, such as "Dark Victory", he could seem unconvincing when he ventured outside his familiar territory of film noir and crime dramas. In his later films from the fifties, however, he showed that he was more than just a good actor within a limited range, and became a genuinely great one. His performance in "The Left Hand of God" is one of great power and subtlety; he is, paradoxically, convincing both as a genuine priest (which is what we at first believe him to be) and as a bogus priest when his secret is unmasked.
The other characters, however, are not so good. Gene Tierney as Anne, a relatively minor role, has little to do except look decorative. Lee J. Cobb is poor as General Yang, making this menacing Chinese warlord seem neither Chinese nor menacing. In the fifties there was something of a tradition, now fortunately defunct, of white actors playing Oriental characters (Jennifer Jones in "Love is a Many-Splendoured Thing", Curd Jurgens and Robert Donat in "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness", etc.), but like most such portrayals Cobb's is unconvincing, especially as all the other Chinese roles in this film were played by ethnically Chinese actors. Cobb's failure to seem sufficiently menacing is surprising, given that he could seem very menacing indeed, as in "On the Waterfront" or "Twelve Angry Men", but here Yang comes across as too relaxed and urbane.
For this reason I would not rate this film as highly as "The Caine Mutiny". In that film Bogart received excellent support from the rest of the cast, such as Fred MacMurray and Van Johnson, support which is lacking here. Moreover, I suspect that most people today, regardless of their religious convictions, will not accept the film's strong implication that the incident in which Carmody wins his freedom and the safety of the villagers from Yang was a genuine miracle. Einstein famously said that God does not play dice with the Universe. This film would seem to suggest that He does. 7/10
The film can be seen as both a physical and a spiritual drama. Carmody is a lapsed Catholic, and this is an important plot point; were the character to have been written as a lifelong atheist the film would have been a very different one. (An atheist, for a start, would probably not have had the knowledge of the Catholic faith to enable him to impersonate a priest convincingly). Carmody finds that his faith is beginning to return, and finds himself in a dilemma. For a layman to impersonate a priest is, in Catholic eyes, a serious sin, for which Carmody stands in need of absolution. Yet can he confess his imposture without destroying the faith of his congregation, who have come to trust in him and who have derived genuine spiritual comfort from his bogus "ministry"? Carmody may not be a priest, but as he says he has started to find in himself some of the qualities that a man would need to be a priest.
I have never read the original novel by William Edmund Barrett, but I understand that the author was a practising Catholic and the film has some similarities to the works of another Catholic author, Barrett's British contemporary Graham Greene. Like a number of Greene's novels, it takes place in an exotic setting, and the theme is characteristically Greeneian. It reminded me somewhat of Greene's "The Power and the Glory", where the hero is a genuine priest, but in his own eyes an unworthy one.
By 1955, Humphrey Bogart was already seriously ill with the cancer that was to kill him two years later, and "The Left Hand of God" was one of his last films; he was to make only two further movies. Yet even towards the end of his life he was still keen to expand his range by taking new and challenging roles, as in "The Barefoot Contessa", "Sabrina" (a rare venture into romantic comedy) and "The Caine Mutiny" in which, unusually, he gets to play a weak, emotionally vulnerable character. ("The Caine Mutiny" and "The Left Hand of God" were made by the same director, Edward Dmytryk).
Bogart was always a good actor, but in some of his early films, such as "Dark Victory", he could seem unconvincing when he ventured outside his familiar territory of film noir and crime dramas. In his later films from the fifties, however, he showed that he was more than just a good actor within a limited range, and became a genuinely great one. His performance in "The Left Hand of God" is one of great power and subtlety; he is, paradoxically, convincing both as a genuine priest (which is what we at first believe him to be) and as a bogus priest when his secret is unmasked.
The other characters, however, are not so good. Gene Tierney as Anne, a relatively minor role, has little to do except look decorative. Lee J. Cobb is poor as General Yang, making this menacing Chinese warlord seem neither Chinese nor menacing. In the fifties there was something of a tradition, now fortunately defunct, of white actors playing Oriental characters (Jennifer Jones in "Love is a Many-Splendoured Thing", Curd Jurgens and Robert Donat in "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness", etc.), but like most such portrayals Cobb's is unconvincing, especially as all the other Chinese roles in this film were played by ethnically Chinese actors. Cobb's failure to seem sufficiently menacing is surprising, given that he could seem very menacing indeed, as in "On the Waterfront" or "Twelve Angry Men", but here Yang comes across as too relaxed and urbane.
For this reason I would not rate this film as highly as "The Caine Mutiny". In that film Bogart received excellent support from the rest of the cast, such as Fred MacMurray and Van Johnson, support which is lacking here. Moreover, I suspect that most people today, regardless of their religious convictions, will not accept the film's strong implication that the incident in which Carmody wins his freedom and the safety of the villagers from Yang was a genuine miracle. Einstein famously said that God does not play dice with the Universe. This film would seem to suggest that He does. 7/10