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A recurring subject in modernist art, the
idea of a hidden God has acquired a particular resonance in the
language of cinema. Movies
with spiritual themes have been made throughout the film-producing
world since the emergence of the medium in the 1890s, but it is with
the advent of the sound period in the late 1920s that the theme of
a hidden spirituality, or, alternatively, of spirituality’s
absence, appeared. Since then, many movies have simultaneously insinuated
and disguised the mystery that believers call God. This exhibition
presents thirty feature films that explore this theme, by filmmakers
such as Robert Bresson, Roberto Rossellini, Luis Buñuel, Ingmar
Bergman, Clint Eastwood, and Harold Ramis. Accompanying the series
is the publication The Hidden God: Film and Faith, comprising fifty
essays by scholars, critics, and curators, now available through
the Museum.
Organized by Mary Lea Bandy, Chief Curator, Department of Film and
Media, and Antonio Monda, Film Professor, New York University. This
exhibition is supported by Caral and Joe Lebworth.
. 1993. USA. Directed by Harold Ramis.
Screenplay by Ramis, Danny Rubin. With Andie MacDowell, Bill Murray,
Chris Elliott. Hidden within this comedy about an egotistical newscaster
forced to live the same day eternally is the spiritual journey of
a man unable to be liberated from time until he learns to love.
101 min.
. 1955. Denmark. Written
and directed by Carl Th. Dreyer, based on the play by Kaj Munk.
With Henrik Malberg, Emil
Haas Christensen, Preben Lerdorff Rye. Ordet’s depiction of
the struggle between conventional and personal religion achieves
unsurpassed heights of sincerity and torment. Among the unforgettable
characters is a young man who believes he is Christ and whose faith
is viewed as madness until he is visited by the Holy Spirit. In Danish,
English subtitles. 124 min.
. 1986. France.
Directed by Eric Rohmer. Screenplay by Rohmer, Marie Rivière. With Rivière,
Amira Chemakhi, Sylvie Richez. A young woman’s longings during
a vacation reveal spiritual substance at the end. For Rohmer, writes
Phillip Lopate, “leisure is the supreme spiritual test faced
by modern men and women”; summer is “the dangerous time
for the soul’s stocktaking.” In French, English subtitles.
98 min.
. 1987. Denmark. Directed
by Gabriel Axel. Screenplay by Axel, based on the story by Isak Dinesen.
With Stéphane Audran, Birgitte Federspiel, Bodil Kjer. At
Babette’s feast, true grace hides among the caviar and truffles
while righteousness lurks in the turtle soup and champagne: the path
to Paradise lies in succumbing to the earthly pleasures of table
and palate. In Danish, English subtitles. 102 min.
.
1939. USA. Directed by Leo McCarey. Screenplay by McCarey, Delmer
Daves, and others. With Irene Dunne,
Charles Boyer, Maria
Ouspenskaya. McCarey’s God “is a cruel God” notes
Dave Kehr, yet moments of divine intervention are “screened
by comic dialogue,” and most compelling are “the emotional
layering, the effortless transitions between tones, and the brilliant
mime” of Boyer and Dunne. 88 min.
.
1992. USA. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Screenplay by David Webb Peoples.
With Eastwood, Gene
Hackman, Morgan Freeman.
In this tragic yet calmly beautiful Western, Mario Sesti finds a “skeptical
moral lesson: … that anyone can commit the most terrible wrongs
in the name of justice, and that good and bad mirror and are mistaken
for each other.” 131 min.
. 1969. USSR. Directed by Andrei
Tarkovsky. Screenplay by Tarkovsky, Andrei Konchalovsky. With Anatoli
Solonitsyn, Ivan
Lapikov, Nikolai Grinko. For Stuart Klawans, Andrei Rublev depicts “characters
for whom there used to be a God. The absence is terrifying, not only
because material power is unchecked but because its brutalities are
exciting.” In Russian, English subtitles. 205 min.
. 1989. USA. Written
and directed by Woody Allen. With Allen, Alan Alda, Anjelica Huston.
With a story that
mixes its tragedy with comedy, notes Antonio Monda, “Allen’s
most ambitious movie deals with the fear of the universe’s
indifference and with the existence or nonexistence of a hidden God,
who may or may not be watching us.” 104 min.
.
1955. USA. Directed by Charles Laughton. Screenplay by James Agee,
based on the novel
by Davis Grubb. With
Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish. “If Milton’s
Satan were to return to Earth” writes Molly Haskell, “he
might look like Robert Mitchum. ... Seductive, honeytongued … the
malignant preacher bestrides the earth … wreaking vengeance
on all the Eves who … torture man.” 92 min.
. 1963. Sweden. Written and
directed by Ingmar Bergman. With Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand,
Max von Sydow. A Protestant pastor is tormented by his inability
to love and his fading faith. “The question of ‘God’s
silence’” writes Tony Pipolo, permeates Winter Light, “not
least the images of the characters’ tortured faces.” In
Swedish, English subtitles. 81 min.
. 1950. Italy. Directed by Roberto Rossellini. Screenplay
by Rossellini, Federico
Fellini. With Aldo Fabrizi, Brother Nazario Gerardi. Intentionally
naïve in style and sentiment, this film offers nature at its
most vigorous to enhance the bonding of the monks, their commitment
to faith, and their selfless devotion to the poor. In Italian, English
subtitles. 86 min.
. 1958. USA. Directed
by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Alec Coppel, Samuel Taylor.
With James Stewart, Kim
Novak. In Vertigo, as in other stories of the Fall into sin, notes
P. Adams Sitney, “Hitchcock’s films only play at seducing
us with mythic archetypes and psychoanalytic suggestions; instead
they demonstrate the moral truths of his Catholic upbringing.” 128
min.
. 1948. Italy. Directed by
Roberto Rossellini. Screenplay by Rossellini, Anna Benvenuti, Jean
Cocteau, Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli. With Anna Magnani, Fellini,
Jean Renoir. In the short films that comprise L’Amore—A
Human Voice and The Miracle—Rossellini and his
star Magnani boldly experiment with the ways in which speech, or
the rhetoric of knowledge and persuasion, communicates. In Italian,
English subtitles. 69 min.
. 1953.
Italy/France. Directed by Roberto Rossellini. Screenplay by Rossellini,
Vitaliano Brancati.
With Ingrid Bergman, George Sanders, Leslie Daniels. A husband and
wife find humility on an existential journey toward self-discovery. “They
know they can’t live without each other,” notes Virgilio
Fantuzzi. “They rediscover the love that they had lost—or
it miraculously rediscovers them.” In English. 83 min.
. 1943. Denmark.
Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer. Screenplay by Dreyer, Poul Knudsen,
Paul LaCour, Mogens Skot-Hansen.
With Thorkild Roose, Lisbeth Movin. Dreyer’s masterwork describes
a world in which everyone is guilty, God hides Himself, and characters
discover, as Michael Wood writes, that “there is power in evil.” In
Danish, English subtitles. 97 min.
. 1946.
Japan. Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Screenplay by Yoshikata Yoda.
With Kotaro Bando, Minosuke Bando. The
exquisite pictorial art of Kitagawa Utamaro fascinated Mizoguchi,
himself a painter. Behind Utamaro’s passionate quest for beauty
and loving relationships with women is revealed the longing for a
spiritual harmony bound to and maybe directed by a hidden God. In
Japanese, English subtitles. 98 min.
.
1965. Mexico. Directed by Luis Buñuel. Screenplay by Buñuel, Julio Alejandro.
With Claudio Brook, Silvia Pinal, Luis Aceves Castañeda. “Simon
is the model of the man trying to deny the flesh and the world,” writes
Michael Wood, “and all of Buñuel’s gags help us
to see both the craziness and the weird appeal of his attempt.” In
Spanish, English subtitles. 45 min.
. 1994. France/Poland/Switzerland/Great
Britain. Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Screenplay by Kieslowski,
Krzysztof Piesiewicz. With Zbigniew Zamachowski, Julie Delpy. White addresses the theme of “the equality of men in facing solitude,” writes
Monsignor Enrique Planas—“the equality of sorrow and
suffering, and equality in the eyes of God.” In Polish and
French, English subtitles. 91 min.
. 1975. Great Britain/USA.
Directed by John Huston. Screenplay by Huston, Gladys Hill. With
Sean Connery,
Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer. “Huston’s film shifts
the emphasis of Rudyard Kipling’s tale from imperial adventure
to overweening human ambition and frailty. And when human frailty
appears, can God and his judgment be far behind?” (Steven Higgins).
Courtesy Warner Bros., Los Angeles. 129 min.
.
1965. Japan. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Screenplay by Kurosawa,
Masato Ide, Ryuzo Kikushima,
Hideo Oguni. With Toshiro Mifune,
Yuzo Kayama. “Red Beard has no Book, no revelation, no inner
voice to help him face the iniquities and absurdities of the world.
He can only rub at his beard, roll up his sleeves, and struggle to
practice the good, of which he himself is an absolute incarnation” (Jean-Michel
Frodon). Courtesy Criterion Collection/Janus Films, New York. In
Japanese, English subtitles. 185 min.
. 1977.
USA. Written and directed by Steven Spielberg. With Richard Dreyfuss,
François Truffaut,
Teri Garr. Religious references relating to the Gospel abound in
Close Encounters, the marvelous adventure of a group of men and women
who find redemption as unstoppable as their pure faith. 132 min.
. 1996. Denmark/Sweden/France/The
Netherlands/Norway. Directed by Lars von Trier. Screenplay by von
Trier, Peter Asmussen.
With Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgård, Katrin Cartlidge. Von
Trier narrates the story of Bess, a passionate young woman who transforms
herself into a female Christ in order to heal her husband. Her saintly
sacrifice will be rewarded with the ringing of the bells of heaven.
159 min.
. 1966. France/Sweden.
Written and directed by Robert Bresson. With Anne Wiazemsky, François Lafarge, Philippe
Asselin. The entirety of this “concerto for donkey and orchestra,” notes
Gilles Jacob, “is inscribed within [a] dance of hesitation,
[a] swinging movement between poles: good and evil, wealth and poverty,
honesty and theft… God and the Devil.” Courtesy Rialto
Pictures, New York. In French, English subtitles. 95 min.
. 1999. USA. Written and directed
by Paul Thomas Anderson. With Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, William
H. Macy. The multiple interconnected narratives of Magnolia, writes
Richard Peña, offer a “dialectic between a world that
is planned and purposeful versus a world that is random and arbitrary.” 188
min.
. 1963.
Portugal. Written and directed by Manoel de Oliveira. With Nicolau
Nunes da Silva, Ermelinda Pires. In filming a Portuguese village
passion play, writes Richard Peña, Oliveira “perversely
shows the impossibility of the salvation or renewal symbolized
by Christ’s passion and resurrection in Christian belief.” Courtesy
Cinemateca Portuguesa, Lisbon. In Portuguese, English subtitles.
85 min.
. 1990. Switzerland/Great
Britain/France/Burkina Faso. Written and directed by Idrissa Ouedraogo.
With Rasmane Ouedraogo,
Ina Cissé, Roukietou Barry. “A social order—evolved
from tradition, ferociously maintained, yet unquestioned and unexamined—is
the spiritual cohesion that binds the African villagers” (Laurence
Kardish). Courtesy New Yorker Films. In Mooré, English subtitles.
81 min.
. 1977.
France. Written and directed by Robert Bresson. With Antoine
Monnier, Tina Irissari. James Quandt notes that this moral
tale illustrates “that the world is hopelessly
corrupt and despoiled, and that the various solutions
society offers…are
variously fraudulent, misguided, impotent.” Courtesy
New Yorker Films. In French, English subtitles. 95 min.
. 1963. Sweden. Written
and directed by Ingmar Bergman. With Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom,
Håkan Jahnberb. “The
Silence stands as one of [Bergman’s] most potent and uncompromising
gazes into the abyss,” writes Tony Pipolo. “It fearlessly
speaks of an emptiness at the center of existence, the perception
of which can only be met with silence.” In Swedish, English
subtitles. 93 min.
. 1999. Iran/France. Written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami.
With Behzad Dourani, Noghre
Asadi. Godfrey Cheshire writes that “Kiarostami is often at
his most serious when he appears to be at his most jokey…what’s
most hidden in the film is also what’s most crucial: an idea
of God that belongs specifically to Iranian esoteric thought.” Courtesy
New Yorker Films. In Farsi, English subtitles. 118 min.
. 1992. USA. Directed by Abel
Ferrara. Screenplay by Ferrara, Zoë Lund. With Harvey Keitel, Brian McElroy, Frankie
Acciarito. “In Abel Ferrara’s film, about a man at the
end of his spiritual tether,” writes Kent Jones, God is “not
seen, but felt. In the stillness of Ferrara’s camera.” Introduced
by Jones. 98 min.
. 1978.
France. Directed by François
Truffaut. Screenplay by Truffaut, Jean Gruault. With Truffaut, Nathalie
Baye, Jean Dasté. Joshua Siegel notes that “Truffaut
preserves the ambiguity” of the three Henry James stories on
which The Green Room is loosely based, suggesting that salvation
comes “in the form of a beneficent, merciful woman who understands
the sinner better than he understands himself.” Courtesy MGM/United
Artists, Los Angeles. In French, English subtitles. 94 min.
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