Of course, also in the film's favour, it had the seemingly ageless Mary Wickes playing one of the nuns... seriously, the woman's career lasted for most of the 20th century and she always looked the same, just more so as she got older.
In the first part of The Trouble With Angels, Mary and Rachael- especially Mary- are rather unlikable. Rachael, as the Mother Superior correctly deduces, is a follower; Mary is the leader and planner. And at first, the pranks they pull are meant to defy and anger the nuns. This would be understandable if the nuns were nasty and unreasonable, but they're not. The girls arrive at the school determined from the start to hate it and cause trouble despite the fact that the school and grounds are beautiful, the scholastic demands placed on them are reasonable not stringent, and the nuns treat them fairly and often with outright kindness. For example, when Mary is kneeling in the chapel, praying for forgiveness-supposedly- for one of her many misdeeds, one of the nuns brings her a cushion so that her knees won't get sore. So when Mary continues to plot things to upset them, she frequently comes off as mean spirited. Fortunately, we are gradually shown why Mary is like she is which goes a long distance to explain, if not excuse, how she behaves. Her parents are dead and her guardian is her businessman uncle who spends most of his time and attention on his multiple "secretaries", ignoring Mary until she becomes a problem, at which point he bundles her off to St. Francis. She's pretty much been left to raise herself and then along comes the Mother Superior, enforcing a code of conduct and placing reasonable but firm expectations of education and behaviour upon her. For the first time in her life Mary is butting heads with an authority figure and it's natural that she resents it before she learns to be grateful for it. It's after meeting Mary's uncle (who's with his latest "secretary") that the Mother Superior decides not to expel Mary, which she had been planning to do. Instead she decides to try harder to reach the girl, telling one of the other nuns that she needs to find a way to teach Mary, "... to bend but not break, to yield but not capitulate, to have pride but also humility." This power struggle between the Mother Superior and Mary Clancy is the central conflict in The Trouble With Angels. Obviously, the Mother Superior comes out victorious as Mary decides to become a nun though, as I said in my previous post, there is no evidence given in the film that Mary ever feels any kind of spiritual call. What there is evidence of, though, is Mary's growing respect for the Mother Superior and the other nuns. When she's not up to no good, frequently we see Mary lurking behind posts and on staircases, just quietly watching the nuns go about their business. Even when she is up to something, the tenor of her misbehaviour gradually changes. At first, her misdeeds are designed to actively and obviously defy the nuns and cause them stress. At about the midpoint, her rule breaking is just that... breaking the rules, such as smoking in the basement with Rachael. It's still wrong, but passively rather than aggressively. In her final year, Mary actually breaks the rules in order to help the nuns; the school needs a new boiler, which they can get the money to purchase if their marching band wins the state competition. Mary and Rachael sneak off from a museum field trip to go spy on their main competition and find out what their band needs to do to beat them. Again, they're still engaging in misdeeds, but their motivation has totally changed. This all points to a shift in Mary's thinking though, as I said, I see no evidence of any spiritual awakening. What I can buy is that Mary eventually saw something worth having in the nuns' way of life. Every summer she would go home and witness her uncle's sleazy existence where she knows herself to be unwanted, and then return to the convent school where the nuns all seem to have great care for each other, and a sense of purpose. She further witnesses this when the girls are taken to a seniors' home at Christmas time, to serve tea and chat with the elderly people there. Once again quietly observing, Mary sees the sadness of many of the residents whose families appear to have forgotten them, not even bothering to visit at Christmas. This again can be contrasted with the nuns at the convent, who lovingly care for and include in every day life the elderly and failing sisters of their order. At one point, Mary asks the Mother Superior how she could bear to leave her former life, and Mother Superior replies that she "found something better." Considering the life that Mary has known outside of school, it would not be completely surprising if she did the same. What I do derive quite a bit of amusement from is the way The Trouble With Angels craps all over "progressive" education. Before Rachael is sent to St. Francis, she was attending a progressive school where she was learning to grow sweet potatoes and play the "silent piano". Her father gets fed up with this, demanding to know why he's paying $40 an hour for piano lessons in which she doesn't play an actual piano. Rachael is shocked when, at St. Francis, she is studying actual core subjects and is required to work at them. At Mary's urging, she writes to Mr. Petrie- the principal at her former school- telling him that the nuns are "stifling her creative flow" and that she might be driven to an "act of desperation". Like a good little progressive, Mr. Petrie shows up to protest this treatment of his former student. He is soundly routed by the Mother Superior: To sum up, The Trouble With Angels is rather a mixed bag. The plot is pretty thin, and the ending abrupt and frankly, unconvincing. On the other hand, Rosalind Russell is great as the Mother Superior- the beat thing about this film, in fact. And the movie does have some interesting- and thought provoking- moments. As for Hayley Mills using this as a stepping stone away from her Disney persona... well, she's certainly a bit more malevolent in The Trouble With Angels to begin with, but then ends up becoming a nun so I'm not sure how well that worked out. Of course, also in the film's favour, it had the seemingly ageless Mary Wickes playing one of the nuns... seriously, the woman's career lasted for most of the 20th century and she always looked the same, just more so as she got older. 1. The Man Who Came To Dinner, 1942 2. White Christmas, 1954 3. The Trouble With Angels, 1966 4. Sister Act,1992
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