Filmed during World War two "Going my way" is a movie that the great Bing Crosby drove all the way to the Oscar ceremony where it won 8 Academy Awards, including the Best Picture. This Crosby vehicle is a simple tale of a New York church where the incumbent ageing priest has a loose grip on goings on. O’Malley is sent by the bishop to balance the books and tend to a congregation who need direction from someone with a spring in their step, although they don't know it. Yet. Swinging his way from scene to scene in a straw boater hat cocked to one side, he plays Father O’Malley: a young priest blessed with a casual demeanour and irreverent charm that the 'squares' just don't understand. The existing Priest at O’Malley’s new parish appears at first to be immune to his persuasive powers- however, old timer Father Fitzgibbon's (Barry Fitzgerald) icy resistance is sure to melt before too long. I’m sure you get the picture. I found it to be more amusing when imagining Father Gibbons to be Father Jack (of Father Ted fame) in his 'youth', before the "DRINK" and "GERLS" addled him. This, and very little else, got me through. As you would expect, the film manages to crowbar in a few musical numbers. For those of you who only know him from his duet with David Bowie, Bing Crosby was a pre, during and postwar superstar- but watching a film that makes no effort to stretch him and just inelegantly rides his coat-tails inelegantly to the bank without any real justification for its existence is a little trying. The comic relief (and boy, is it a relief) comes in the form of Herman and Tony, the street rats terrorising the neighbourhood with their gang of miscreants. Father O’Malley wants get them onside with a view to bringing them in under his wing, and after bringing them in with ball games and hot dogs they relent and join his choir. I'd love to see this approach tried out on the 'Drill' music generation. The modern viewer finds themselves watching a kind of ‘Dangerous Minds’ meets ‘Sister Act’ sub plot. With a touch of physical comedy borrowed (HEAVILY) from the three stooges, 45 minutes in my interest is finally piqued. They make rare appearances in the rest of the film, but when they do you see glimpses of naturalism and verve (both comparative) that are missing everywhere else. And yet, it seems that my interest was not just piqued, but also peaked. A rendition of Bing’s ‘Silent Night’ followed and it was downhill from there. The best drama the writers could come up with for the final act was Father Fitzgibbon taking a walk in the rain (without an umbrella!?), a landlord not evicting a pretty 18 year old because she was pretty (oh my!) and O’Malley’s past love making a very respectful reappearance in his life to see how he is doing (oo-er!). As far as Oscar Winning pictures go, it is lacking in every department. Not even the choral rendition of ‘Would you like to swing on a star’ did anything for me and I admit it is a personal favourite of mine. The last 15 minutes of the movie are concerned with tying things up: the street rats choir is invited to go on a world tour, the landlord and young lady are discovered to have fallen in love & married and most improbably of all Father Fitzgibbons meets his long lost (and preposterously even more elderly) Irish mother, which was just plain silly. Fitzgibbons was established to be ancient, so to bring his mother in for the last 2 minutes to tug at heartstrings seemed absurd. I’ve seen a few stinkers in reviewing past pictures, but this isn’t even one of those. Very little happens at all. No doubt it was a fantastic relief for an audience in 1944 to go to the pictures and in between newsreels updating them on the crucial Allied advance in the south Pacific and western Europe to have two hours of bland nothingness, interspersed with Bing's baritone. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for me and I’ll bet it won’t work for you either. |
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AuthorPablo Griffiths is a man with a passion for many things. He has recently taken an interest in writing about film, and himself in the third person. |