52 Movies for the Year of the Priest at Korrektiv

Rufus & Co. are having a festival! I’ve gone and italicized the ones I’ve seen, and starred my favorites. Because dammit, it’s my blog.

“Korrektiv and Transcendental Musings are celebrating the Year for Priests (or the Year of the Priest, if you please) by launching an entirely unofficial 52-week (beginning last week) festival of films about priests.

What follows is our list — hammered out over a bunch of Twitter posts and blog comments, a few beers and prayers — of 52 movies in which a priest or priests take center stage or at least play a pivotal role in the development of the films’ concerns.

I’ve arranged our selections chronologically, with the notion that it might be interesting to thus trace the evolution of filmmaking over the past seventy years while at the same time considering how perceptions of the priesthood, as reflected in these cinematic images, may have changed over that same period.
1. San Francisco (1936) [view the week of 6/19/09*]
2. Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) [6/26/09]
3. Boys Town (1938) [7/3/09]
4. The Fighting 69th (1940) [7/10/09]
5. The Devil at 4 O’Clock (1941) [7/17/09]
6. The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) [7/24/09]
7. Going My Way (1944) [7/31/09]
8. The Bells of St Mary’s (1945) [8/7/09]
9. The Fugitive (1947) [8/14/09]
10. Monsieur Vincent (1947) [8/21/09]
11. Fighting Father Dunne (1948) [8/28/09]
12. The Miracle of the Bells (1948) [9/4/09]
13. Diary of a Country Priest* (1951) [9/11/09]
14. I Confess (1953) [9/18/09]
15. Father Brown (1954) [9/25/09]
16. On the Waterfront* (1954) [10/2/09]
17. The Left Hand of God (1955) [10/9/09]
18. The Miracle of Marcelino (1955) [10/16/09]
19. The Prisoner* (1955) [10/23/09]
20. Seven Cities of Gold (1955) [10/30/09]
21. Nazarin (1959) [11/6/09]
22. Hoodlum Priest (1961) [11/13/09]
23. The Cardinal (1963) [11/20/09]
24. Becket (1964) [11/27/09]
25. The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) [12/4/09]
26. The Exorcist (1973) [12/11/09]
27. The Massacre in Rome (1973) [12/18/09]
28. Hounds of Notre Dame (1980) [12/25/09]
29. True Confessions (1981) [1/1/10]
30. The Scarlet and the Black (1983) [1/8/10]
31. Mass Appeal (1984) [1/15/10]
32. The Assisi Underground (1985) [1/22/10]
33. The Mission (1986) [1/29/10]
34. Au Revoir les Enfant* (1987) [2/5/10]
35. The Fr. Clements Story (1987) [2/12/10]
36. Under Satan’s Sun (1987) [2/19/10]
37. Don Bosco (1988) [2/26/10]
38. Francesco (1989) [3/5/10]
39. Black Robe (1991) [3/12/10]
40. Zycie za Zycie (Life for Life) (1991) [3/19/10]
41. Sleepers (1996) [3/26/10]
42. Molokai: The Story of Fr. Damian (1999) [4/2/10]
43. The Third Miracle (1999) [4/9/10]
44. Keeping the Faith (2000) [4/16/10]
45. The Confessor (The Good Shepherd) (2004) [4/23/10]
46. The Ninth Day (2004) [4/30/10]
47. Saint Ralph (2004) [5/7/10]
48. The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) [5/14/10]
49. Pope John Paul II (2005) [5/21/10]
50. The Novice (aka Crossroads) (2006) [5/28/10]
51. Doubt (2008) [6/2/10]
52. Gran Torino* (2008) [6/9/10]

Alternate Selections
· Francis of Assisi (1961)
· The Reluctant Saint (1962)
· A Man for All Seasons (1966)
· Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)
· Jesus of Montreal (1989)
· Stigmata (1999)
· St. Patrick: The Irish Legend (2000)
· Papa Giovanni John XXIII (2002)
· The Order (2003)
· Twist of Faith (2004)
· Into Great Silence (2005)
· Karol: The Man Who Became Pope (2005)