The Bishop's Wife (1947)

REVIEW

Your reactions to The Bishop's Wife will largely be shaped by how well you react to the similarly sentimental fantasies that Hollywood was churning out during the 1940s - if you like Here Come Mr Jordan (1941), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and their ilk, you'll lap it up. If not, not even the dream team of Cary Grant, David Niven, Loretta Young and Elsa Lanchester is going to do much to help.

It is unashamedly and unapologetically sentimental and moralistic, but coming as it did just two years after the end of World War II and released the year after Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, Hollywood producers were probably banking on feel-good fantasies mopping up at the box office. It's a Wonderful Life famously fared poorly at the box office, though The Bishop's Wife did rather better and even bagged five Academy Award nominations.

But it hasn't fared as well with fans in the years since, most regarding it - rightly - as inferior to the Capra film, though it still has a lot to offer. Grant, as ever, oozes charm as the angel Dudley and Niven, despite many claims elsewhere, is fantastic as Henry, the clergyman suffering a loss of faith. Young, too, is spot on as Henry's long-suffering wife, keeping audiences guessing as to whether she'll fall for Grant or stay with her husband Niven, though she does tend to get sidelined whenever Grant and Niven are in the same scene. The supporting cast is great fun too, particularly Monty Woolley as a writer's-blocked history professor, though it's a shame that writers Leonardo Bercovici and Robert E. Sherwood (along with uncredited Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder) and director Henry Koster couldn't find more for Elsa Lanchester to do.

But it's Grant's show and he steals it effortlessly, gently sending up his own slightly smug screen persona while managing the comedy with the lightness of touch that was his trademark. So good is he here that it's hard to believe that, originally, he and Niven were to play the opposite roles. Good though Niven is here, he lacked the easy charm that Grant brought to the role.

Despite what many more cynical commentators would have you to believe, The Bishop's Wife isn’t the schmaltz-fest you might be fearing. While it lacks the dark, almost horrific turn that It's a Wonderful Life takes when George Bailey finds his entire life erased and his beloved hometown transformed into Hell on Earth, The Bishop's Wife does at least keep its feet on the ground - the problems, worries and stresses that are threatening to tear apart Henry's faith, life and marriage are all presented as being very real.

The film is about faith, but that doesn't preclude those of us not a religious bent from enjoying it. Refreshingly, for a film with very blatant religious themes, The Bishop's Wife does try to take a different tack to many of its kind. Dudley's mission is not to help Henry build the massive cathedral he's been dreaming of, but to understand that smaller gestures are always more appreciated and that, crucially, having strong religious beliefs doesn't preclude the pursuit of happiness and, yes indeed, a bit of fun. It's a good message, one surely lost only on the most stubbornly scornful.

Despite it's defiantly old-fashioned charm and traditional values, The Bishop's Wife was remade for the more cynical 90s, given an ecumenical and racial twist in Penny Marshall's The Preacher's Wife (1996). Predictably, it didn't work. Denzel Washington lacks the charisma of Cary Grant and Whitney Houston and Courtney B. Vance are just bland in the Young and Niven roles.

The Bishop's Wife is very much an acquired taste. You either like these shamelessly emotional fantasies or they send you screaming to the nearest Lucio Fulci film for an antidote the schmaltz. If you've a taste for such things, The Bishop's Wife is one of the best of its kind thanks to excellent performances (this is real acting by genuinely talented performers) and the assured direction of Henry Koster, who went on to make a string of films with James Stewart, including the excellent aviation thriller No Highway in the Sky (1951) and the classic fantasy Harvey (1950). The Bishop's Wife deserves a better reputation than it has in some quarters though it's probably best watched at Christmas (Cary Grant, David Niven, Christmas… how can you go wrong?), when it's simple messages of faith and love will be more palatable.
KEVIN LYONS

Last Updated: 15 October, 2008