The Devil at 4 O'Clock

"We detest our sins because they offend thee, o God, who art all good and deserving of our love."

Spencer Tracy's Father Doolan says that and then the island explodes, and there's no irony intended by anyone involved... Yep, it's The Devil at 4 O'Clock, in which everybody (but the doctor) gets religion and then dies. The priest gets his faith back because he extorts three criminals into helping him evacuate the hospital - promising them commutation of their sentences which he is in no position to deliver. Marcel gets his faith back as he is sucked into the quicksand. Charlie gets his faith back because the priest "takes responsibility. He acts like God should act." And Frank Sinatra's Harry? Well, to be honest, maybe he doesn't. Sure, he crosses himself while Doolan prays over Charlie's body as the volcano erupts, but it's not explicit that he's doing it for any reason than to make the priest feel better...

Oh, who am I kidding? Hollywood didn't make many atheist films in 1961 and Spencer Tracy sure didn't star in them. Sure, Harry gets a good line, earlier, responding to Charlie's "Marcel prayed!" with "Yeah, and what good did it do him?" (answer - none, he still died) But I'm sure we're supposed to believe that all four of these lost souls regained their faith just before they died.

But of course, none of them were so much unbelievers as they were mad at god for their various reasons. Atheists aren't mad at god (I remember how annoyed I was at idiot Ma Walton when she ran Ashley Longworth Jr away from Erin because he was an atheist, when it was patently obvious that he still fully believed in god; you can't be as mad at god as he was if you don't still believe he's up there, screwing up...).

All four of these characters were angry at god for one reason or another. The priest had lost his faith because when he established his hospital for children with Hanson's disease, the islanders, fearing leprosy, turned against him and boycotted his church. "Year after year, saying mass to no one but yourself... If God is real, he could have used a little help from up there," the doctor told the young priest who had come to replace Doolan. That sounds like he kept his faith, you say? Ah, but in the last few years he'd lost it, turning to drink and anger and devoting himself only to the hospital. But still, when he needed someone to help him save the kids from the volcano, he turned to God.

As for the convicts, we're never really sure why Charlie is angry but it seems like he believes God is against him because he's a thief. But when he's dying it only takes a little talk about the Good Thief, the one who died on the cross next to Jesus and went to heaven - "in the end, he stole Heaven", says Doolan, "and that's some stealing" - to make him give in. He wanted to all the time. Marcel? His blustery disbelief was never more than anger at being labelled a sinner. And Harry? The ex-altar boy from Jersey City who lost God in Korea? I think, like Longworth in The Waltons, he never really believed that god wasn't real. He only believed that god had abandoned him. Thus, when he saw Doolan ministering to the dying Charlie, two men who had given up their lives to save others, he realized that Charlie was right and that god acts through people. His genuflection at the end of the film was for real.

The only real atheist in that movie was the doctor.

And he lived. (Well, in the movie he did, though I imagine such a volcanic eruption would likely have swamped the schooner... )

Of course, so too did most of the kids (the one little girl's death was to add more burden on Doolan and Harry, but it was never adequately dealt with; it was just one more thing for Harry to despair over), and so too did Camille, the lovely blind girl whom Harry married on a few hours' acquaitance, with Doolan's help (that wasn't adequately explained, but I suppose he felt she'd be better off married to an American who was in jail in Tahiti than on her own... huh?) - in fact, Camille really seems to have been there to give Harry something to renounce at the end besides merely his life. He abandons her to go and die with the other two, knowing that's what he's doing... Religion makes a man funny that way, I guess. But she lives, and so does the matron and all the people on the island who refused to help Doolan and all those who were engaged in evacuating the rest of the people. So the doctor doesn't live because he's an atheist.

Nonetheless, he is and he does. And those who regained their faith during these two days all die in the fiery explosion of the volcano which destroys the little island. But that means they won't ever face the possibility of losing it again.

And this is meant to be uplifting...