Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

thejcowboy22 Strange but true! On a cold cloudy March Saturday morning in 1974 I went to work for my Dad at his Boiler and heating company in Ozone Park,New York. My father acting as a General in the military, barking out the orders had about 12 men in his employ and sent them out to various locations throughout the New York metropolitan vicinity. I was sent with a crew of four to Jamaica, Queens to erect a brick wall to separate the newly added boiler room in a textile company. When I arrived at the factory, there were palates filled with cement bags and cinder blocks as far as the eyes can see. All day long I was mixing concrete and lifting blocks. When the long day was over I came home sore and tired. Put on the Television and saw a Black man arguing with a group of Nuns in the American southwest. Noticed the same cement cinder blocks and; well; my attention was held for the next 90 minutes. Sidney Poitier plays an unemployed heavy equipment operator Homer Smith who's station wagon just happens to overheat at the out-of-the way convent. Mother Maria (Lilia Skala) claims that Homer Smith or as she calls him "Schmidt" was brought here by divine intervention. She pesters him to all ends with demands on building a new house of worship. Smith gives in and agrees to build a chapel. I could feel his solitude and pain in that hot desert sun carrying bricks and mortar. The Arayaan Sisters in her Black Habits and poor Smith taking the complaining all day made this movie so plausible. Great supporting role by Stanley Adams as the philosophical cafe owner Juan. Mr. Ashton (Ralph Nelson) who currently employs Smith is amazed by the teamwork and moral obligations by the local people,(Mainly of Mexican decent), of this area give what they can in order to help Smith build with Bricks, wood, and in time a chapel sprouts up among the desert sands for all to see. Our heavy set cafe owner goes on."A place where children can receive the sacraments.For these men, for their children to have faith, it is important.To me it is insurance. To me life is here on Earth. I cannot see further. But, if there right about the hereafter. I've paid my insurance." You watch a chapel being built. First by the lonely Smith and little by little everyone joins in. Love the evening English lessons Smith gives the European sisters and rewards them with lollipops. The AMEN song is infectious and pleasing to the ear. Just a good feeling for a passerby in a station wagon who makes a difference in this small remote region of America. I give this one 7 church bells. AMEN!

evanston_dad Ralph Nelson's inspirational do-gooder film from 1963 can be forgiven some maudlin tendencies because of the era in which it was released, but it's a bit hard to take now. Sidney Poitier made history by becoming the first black man to win an Academy Award and the first black person period to win in a lead category. But his performance is hammy and exaggerated, another in the long line of examples of the Academy giving actors Oscars for the wrong performances. He plays a handy man who stops off at a convent in the middle of nowhere to service his car and then ends up staying to help the dear little nuns build a chapel. It's a movie about cultural understanding, which is a topic that never goes out of style, but it hasn't aged particularly well, and it feels too safe for the incendiary times in which it was released, as if Ralph Nelson and his screenwriter, James Poe, were too eager to be liked to risk offending their audience with tough subject matter. Topics like racism and World War II are briefly mentioned in passing, but the film quickly skirts away from them in order to give us another cute scene of Poitier teaching the nuns how to speak English."Lilies of the Field" is a pleasant movie, and let that description be either thumbs up or thumbs down depending on your personal preferences.Nominated for five Oscars total, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Lilia Skala, as the head nun), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Black and White Cinematography (Ernest Haller).Grade: B

SnoopyStyle Homer Smith (Sidney Poitier) stops at a convent in the Arizona desert to get some water for his car on his way to the west coast and find some work. Mother Maria (Lilia Skala) leads four other Germanic Catholic nuns. They think he's been sent by God. With low funds, he decides to work a day for money. She sends him up to fix the roof. He does two days' work but when he tries to get paid, Mother Maria quotes the Bible, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." The nuns have no money and Homer is convinced to do more work. Eventually, he builds a chapel for the nuns and their poor Mexican migrant worshipers.This is what faith-based movies should aim for. It is compelling. It is funny. Homer and Mother Maria are a funny comedy duo. At its core, this is powerful message of faith and goodness. Poitier wins the Oscar, the first competitive award for an African-American.

metrobiz Before the serious part of the Review, this film contains probably the first on-camera use of "whatever," so prevalent among today's "mean girls," spoken by the Mother Superior.•• Not only is the cinematography B&W beautiful, showing the dunderheaded Instagram narcissists of today as Zuckerburgs using the internet to find girls, and the Poitier performance Oscar-worthy - deserved - for its perfect pitch of old-southern- black'ery that never quite breaches cliché' and a black man with modern aspirations, it serves as a a Crystal Ball vision 50-years forward to what we have today politically - with the clash of Euro-Black-Latino integration and a black man leading the amalgam. Add to that the uneasy Baptist-Catholic traditions, the agnostic, the entitled white "hey boah (boy)" business owner, latinos looking for work in the building trades, etc., and we see exactly what exists today, with a black man actually providing the leadership, if somewhat unwillingly at first, prodded by a zealot. In a sense, one sees all that's "bad" about America thrown into a filmed pot (plot) in the arid Southwest to combine to make the finest Louisiana gumbo one can imagine - the genius of the American Experiment for all its contentious nonsense and prefab prejudice. The film even presages the rise of Austrian nuns 2-years later as an entertainment motif in "The Sound of Music." And yet, for its themes, it emerges in the milieu of "It's A Wonderful Life," "Miracle on 34th Street," and "White Christmas" somehow. It's title? From the Bible, Matthew 6.Amazing. A must-see for true film'ophiles. An under-sung classic.