As long as you’ve got breath in you, you can do what the oddball hero of Film of the Week does: you can turn your life around — turn, our Word of the Week. But I wouldn’t recommend relying on your own strength of will. “When in Rome,” the saying goes, “do as the Romans do.” Well, that’s what we’ve got in this week’s warmhearted and lightly comic drama of redemption, When in Rome. But how it comes about, there’s the rub.
The setup of the film is this. Joe Brewster (Paul Douglas) is a gangland criminal from the United States, on the lam. He’s hustled himself aboard a ship from New York to Genoa. On the same ship is a young Catholic priest, Father John Xavier Halligan (Van Johnson, one of the truly good guys in Hollywood; we’ve featured him in Battleground and, a couple of weeks ago, The Caine Mutiny). Father Halligan is heading to Rome for the Holy Year, 1950, dedicated by Pope Pius XII. Rome’s always going to be a city with a lot of priests about, but that’s going to be the case especially now. So when Brewster meets Father Halligan on the ship, and they become friends — at least, Brewster appears to become the priest’s friend — it gives the criminal an idea. He steals Father Halligan’s clothes and leaves the ship as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, while the police, of course, pursue the real Father Halligan, who had nothing to wear but the clothing Brewster had left behind.
You might think it would be hard for Father Halligan to prove who he is, in the days before a picture of a fingerprint could be flashed in seconds across the world via the internet. But it isn’t hard at all. How many lifelong thugs can chant the Mass? So the police enlist Father Halligan, who has an uneasy conscience about it, as their helper in ferreting Brewster out.
“Clothes make the man,” they say, and they do so in this film, because Brewster’s disguise begins to get to him. Everybody treats him as a priest, and of course he has to act the part, which he does, awkwardly enough. But a question begins to dog him more closely than the police ever could. Why has he lived the life he has? What started it all? What has been the good of it? Why does the past hang like a millstone around his neck? He’s on the hook for a life sentence back in America, and it’s only a matter of time before the police catch him in Italy. What should he do? Meanwhile, what should Father Halligan do? He had forged a connection with this man before he knew he was on the Most Wanted list. You can’t get sentimental about a thug. But is Brewster no more than that? Then he sees Brewster, dressed as a priest, in a procession of priests, and — you will have to watch the film to find out what Halligan does, and what Brewster does.
In yesterday’s Poem of the Week, a selection from the Divine Comedy, we saw Dante just after he’d been dunked in the good River Lethe, so that all the sins of his past would be washed from that part of our memory that weighs us down, so it would feel as if somebody else had committed them. Joe Brewster isn’t just fleeing from the police. He’s fleeing from his own past. That’s impossible to do. Impossible for man, that is.
By the way, you ought to enjoy the performance of the lead, Paul Douglas, who is one of our favorite dark horses here at Word and Song. Douglas was a sportscaster who one day said, “Why don’t I try my hand at acting?” He turned his career clean about, and he was a rousing success, often in whimsical semi-comic leading roles, as in When in Rome, and as the hard-swearing and hot-tempered manager of the last-place Pirates, who is, shall we say, supernaturally persuaded to change his ways, in Angels in the Outfield. Isn’t spring training right around the corner now?
Note: We are sorry that we could not find this film streaming anywhere right now. Nor were we even able to find an original trailer. If you have Amazon Prime, you may be able to rent it there. We will keep checking to see if the film becomes available in a free version.
Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add comments to our posts and discussions.
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I just checked my public library and while my local branches did not have it, I found several copies of the DVD within our larger library consortium. So check with your library and ask about inter-library loan if they don’t own this film. I have been able to borrow almost every film I’ve read about here. (And this is in a rural area in the Southwest USA)
I’m intrigued! Now I know to keep an eye out for this one, if ever it should cross my path. Sounds like a plot that Chesterton might have contrived…….🥰