Everyone knows the answer to the trivia question that Sidney Poitier won the oscar for best actor in 1963 for Lilies of the Field, but if you ask them what the movie was all about, they’d be damned if they know anything about the plot. But that’s why I’m taking this film history course, so you, the faithful reading several, can share in the knowledge and of course to use this knowledge to win a couple of bar bets on the side.

Sidney Poitier plays Homer Smith, a carpenter/drifter who stumbles upon a convent of refugee East German Nuns (hey it was the cold war) who are convinced that this baptist handyman was sent by god to build them a chapel in the bad lands of southern Arizona. Normally, I dismiss religious comedies because well, they tend to suck. The writers of this film could’ve gone down the easy route and generated humor in the “we have conflicting religious views” vein, but thankfully, they kept this down to the minimum and kept the humor and the tone of the film lighthearted.

Lilies of the Field was also ahead of the time in the respect that they were pro mexican immigrant labor as Sidney Poitier used the local Mexican population to help build the chapel, also you die hard republicans out there should be proud in the fact that the laborers had worked for free. So none of the local indigenous population wasn’t affected economically by thier actions.

I think the real star of the film was the actress who played the mother superior, whose name I did not catch in the credits. She had just the right combination of sternness and cuteness that I like in a woman. I wanted to pluck her off the movie screen, take her home with me and deflock her, if you catch my drift.

next week on the syllabus: The 400 Blows

jareddriskill