Reply #4: I wondered about that one, too. [View All]

[onager]

I was sitting there at the end going: "WTF? Where did THAT come from?"

Warpy mentioned Chocolate. I was bracing myself for the Miracle Conversion at the end of that movie. But as I remember, it happily never happened. I haven't seen that movie in a while, but I recall it being one of the most affirmative portrayals of non-believers I've ever seen.

For some insane reason, I was up at 7 AM this morning watching one of the finest examples of Bible-thumping, flag-waving jingoism in American cinema history: Sergeant York. (Here in Egypt I get Turner Classic Movies, which showed it.)

It's hard to believe a director as good as Howard Hawks actually shot that Miracle Conversion scene. York found religion after he was literally struck by lightning. (The real Sgt. Alvin York had a more prosaic explanation for getting converted--his wife made him join the church. No lightning bolts necessary.)

Some of the flag-waving is excusable, in the context of the time it was made--1941. Hitler and his stooges were trampling Europe and Checkbook Isolationism was rampant in the U.S. The year before, the Selective Service Act had only passed Congress by one vote and FDR spent a lot of political capital making that happen.

Nice irony--one of the characters in the movie is Tennessee Rep. Cordell Hull (played by Charles Trowbridge). In 1941, the real Cordell Hull was FDR's Secretary of State. He spent much of the year in peace negotiations with the Japanese, concluding those negotiations rather suddenly on December 7.