Agnes of God

The ending is beautiful. I once owned the soundtrack.

Jane was AMAZING in it.

Haunting film.

I think that it is adorable that you rented it often as a kid.

I don't think it holds a candle to the stage play.

Didn't they try to make the Asian chick look like a white woman in it? Is that WHITEFACE? Kind of like Blackface only they try to put another ethnicity in there and pretend she's white...

She looks completely Asian these days as does her sister.

Amanda Plummer, Gerry Page, Liz Ashley. That must have been quite a scene backstage.

Norman Jewison direction was wrong. As was setting it in Canada.

Loved it. I first saw it dubbed in Spanish

I saw the original Broadway cast soon after opening. It was staggeringly exciting theater. I suspect Elizabeth Ashley was drunk that night. The stage manager came out at 8:10pm to announce a delay. She said Ms. Ashley had "twisted her ankle", and that someone was out scouring the neighborhood for "sensible shoes". That got a big laugh. At 8:35, the curtain went up, and Ms. Ashley made her entrance waving a cane, which she used, or ignored throughout. We suspected she was drunk, but you had to witness it. She was compelling! Page and Plummer were merely superb. Lee Remick really goofed by getting fired from this dazzling production.

I thought Jane Fonda's performance was mediocre. %0D %0D Bancroft was good. Tilly was wonderful. Bancroft and Tilly were both nominated for Oscars, but didn't win. %0D %0D SPOILERS. The movie had a stupid happy ending. Agnes gets no punishment for killing her baby; they just send her back to the convent, where presumably she lives happily ever after. In the play after the psychiatrist finds out Agnes killed her baby she removes herself from the case. Mother Superior leaves it up to the judge to decide what to do with Agnes; she's sent to a mental institution where she languishes and dies. That would have been a better ending than the insipid movie version.

Lee Remick was **FIRED** during previews. She was replaced by Elizabeth Ashley.

LOVED the part in the movie where they were discussing what brand of cigarettes the Saints would smoke. It still makes me laugh.

It was Ann Bancroft's first cigarette in years after quitting.

[quote]LOVED the part in the movie where they were discussing what brand of cigarettes the Saints would smoke. It still makes me laugh.

Honestly, that's my favorite scene in the play, and I think the movie louses it up.

How did they louse it up, VotN?

[quote]How did they louse it up, VotN?

I think in the play, it becomes the first scene where the Mother Superior and the shrink seem to actually respect each other. There's something that's just so blah about how Bancroft and Fonda interact with each other.

And I don't think it's Bancroft's fault.

For me what made the play was Plummer. It was the perfect role for her - the craziness worked well and she was wrenching near the end.%0D %0D Tilley was good, but she's a more placid actress and a tad dull compared to Plummer.%0D %0D However, I couldn't stand Ashley in the play. She spent most of the time posturing with a cigarette in the most mannered way. It was borderline camp, and I wondered if Page wanted to smack her. I certainly did.%0D %0D Fonda is generally on autopilot for the film - competent but nothing more.

I saw it on stage with the original B'way cast, and even though I love Anne Bancroft and Jane Fonda, the film did not work at all.

Did you know this is based on a real incident?

"In the winter of 1977, a tragedy was painfully and painstakingly unfurled in the Monroe County, New York courtroom of Judge Hyman Maas. Eleven months earlier, on April 27, 1976, a Roman Catholic nun and school teacher, Sister Maureen Murphy, surreptitiously gave birth to a baby boy at the Our Lady of Lourdes parish convent in Brighton, just outside Rochester. It was alleged that she then shoved a pair of panties into the infant%E2%80%99s mouth, asphyxiating him, and left his remains in a wastebasket.

After the body was found, the 36-year-old member of the Sisters of St. Joseph was questioned, but she denied ever being pregnant. Medical examiners at nearby Genesee Hospital concluded that she had, in fact, recently delivered a baby, and had apparently managed to conceal the pregnancy under a traditional nun%E2%80%99s habit, but Sister Maureen claimed she did not remember it. She was charged with first- and second-degree manslaughter along with criminally negligent homicide.

It was a high profile case. Ms. magazine dispatched Catherine Breslin to cover the trial, which lasted ten days. The fact that Sister Maureen had waived her right to a jury trial only served to heighten the courtroom drama. Even in the supposedly enlightened days of the late 1970s, some questioned out loud whether a Catholic nun could expect to receive a fair trial from a Jewish judge.

On March 5, newspapers around the country carried United Press International%E2%80%99s account of the judge%E2%80%99s verdict. The defense had conceded that Sister Maureen committed the act, but had also argued that blood loss during childbirth along with the overall trauma of the experience had impaired her judgment, that she may not even have been fully conscious during the episode, and that she had not actually meant to kill the baby. Judge Maas agreed and found her not guilty on all counts (see %E2%80%9CNun cleared of charges in son%E2%80%99s death,%E2%80%9D The Bryan Times, Bryan, OH, March 5, 1977, 10)."

Fuck, and the murderess, Sister Maureen Murphy is still around in the Catholic Church. Look at this (see link)

Typical catholic. Lie, Lie, Lie.

Have to agree...I saw both the original Broadway play and the film, and I think the first was far more riveting and visceral. (I know it was live theater, but that combination of actors, and being right there, made it one of the productions that made the biggest impression on me as someone who ended up going into the theater).

Any one see the 1928 film "The Passion of Joan 'd Arc"?

You want riveting? Try it.

A month late...well...I thought I'd share my experience with the original production. I saw the show with Ashley and Page and Plummer eleven days before they left the Broadway production to its second cast. The production was stunning. Plummer, who received a Tony for performance, captured a wonderfully innocent and ethereal performance that never denigrated into cartoon values. She made it completely human. Geraldine Page was a show-stopper who had the audience's heart throughout. If Ashley was the weak link it is because the play is structurally unsound. Pielmeier has written that he intended to play to ask questions to not to provide answers but, from the Boston try-outs forward, a number of characters (and my entire sense of the production, for numerous reasons I will not belabor here) comes out heavily in favor of the miraculous over logic. Oddly, I feel the movie ends up making more the case for logic - almost certainly due the intense effect of realistic detail that film brandishes. The stage works much more in the mind of the audience, and Agnes of God almost more-so than any other: It was staged on bare wooden floor with two straight-back chairs and a standing ashtray. It was, regardless of its script flaws, the most amazing piece of theater I have ever seen and totally dominated the three fine performances from three superb actresses. The film didn't hold a candle to it. For those who like the film, I wish I could share that Broadway performance with.

I have to confess that I have not seen the film. I did see the play on my first visit to New York in July of 1982. . I guess I have avoided seeing the movie version because the play made such a strong impression on me, that I couldn't imagine the movie could measure up. I agree that all 3 actress pulled their weight throughout the play. Geraldine Page did win the audience to her side, and Amanda Plummer so young and showing great acting skills. Loved Ashley as the outsider looking in lighting up cig after cig.%0D %0D Along with Amadeus the night before, and American Buffalo with Pacino a couple of nights later, it was a great introduction to Broadway (and off Bdwy) for this young guy from the provinces.

R19, are you sure you aren't thinking of another group?

Saw the play with Page, (a revered and rightly-so goddess in the role), Diahann Carroll (a major relief after the train wreck that was Elizabeth Ashley), and Maryann Plunkett (a stand-out in the rep. company founded by Tony Randall. Of the three, Plunkett had the hardest time, as the director insisted she play in note for note as Plummer had done it. Since she had no choice, she was summarily wiped off the stage by Page and Carroll. Fortunately, she had great roles in NAT to demonstrate her considerable ability.

I've always wanted to know why Fonda refuses to discuss this movie. She did no promotion for it either, if I recall.

R26, wasn't that her last movie until her recent forays back?

x

Rugby guy gets an honorary MARY! FUCK! award for that account.

I saw the play on Broadway after Amanda Plummer had left and Carrie Fisher had taken the title role, except the night I went, Carrie was out sick. I remember I gasped when Agnes had stigmatic blood, too naïve to know the tricks of theatrical magic.

Both Bancroft and Fondo were awful. I’d have loved to have them for tea, but just awful in the movie. I loved the idea of the movie, though. Subtitle: Nuns are people, too!

This just might be the oldest DL thread that's still open for discussion. I just assume everyone from the OP up to R27 is dead by now.

I've always been interested in checking out this movie but its IMDb score is pretty low (6.6) and its RottenTomatoes score is even worse. The critics did *not* like this one.

We love it, you old goat. Watch it and come back to complain about the Footware, or whatever.

Canadian cultural appropriation! They did it with "Amnesie" too! That real story took place in Savannah!

I like those nuns being locked up all winter in the freezing funk of Montreal, only able to speak French.

Agree with R15 about Ashley - attitudinizing as opposed to acting. It was really Amanda Plummer's performance that made the piece riveting. Page was good, but overacted (Bancroft did in the film as well).

The film has no real dramatic momentum, and Fonda phoning it in doesn't really help. Meg Tilly, as someone corrected noted, is a more placid actress than Plummer, and Tilley is shot as if she's nothing more than some naive innocent.

[quote]I used to rent the video all the time as a kid.

Seriously?

Not OP here, R37. But I can go one step further. I bought the tape. I thought it was great (as a kid) but I had also coming out at 15 to my parents and by then, at 18, was already quite hurt by the Church, having also been smart enough to know when a priest was coming on to me and I got away from him. My cousin did not. I loved the music, the serenity, the peacefulness and sensory experience of the mass but the abuse, sexism, and homophobia - no. So when I left the Church I felt I had lost something I've never experienced in any other church – the mystery of the Church that Catholics find lacking elsewhere. I have no idea of Pielmeier had a beef with the Church but as I grew older it seemed to me he was more going after ex-Catholics and this is what failed the story.

I loved Anne Bancroft in it. She was a dead ringer for one of the nuns that taught me as a child and the way she seemed alternately judgmental and compassionate, right up to the final interrogation of Agnes. She seemed genuine to me. Tilly was very good in portraying someone you could believe was "touched" in all the meanings of that word. Fonda though seemed flat, to me, I never bought it when she said she loved Agnes. And the play never explained that leap. The whole "my sister died in a convent" is so contrived and the crazy mother Anne Pitoniak (a great actor) was just so expected. If Fonda had that same sense of loving the Church despite all of that and there was more about her grieving over her sister, it might have been believable, but that whole bit is insane.

In retrospect, there were ways around it -- Livingston (Fonda) herself should have been more torn as a Catholic, still praying, wanting to take communion, etc., wanting to believe. If she doesn't believe it's a virgin birth, she must think Agnes is not mentally well so she could've killed the child (which she actually did). If the film had played off of her doubts, it would've made more sense - maybe not willing to admit she believes Agnes in some weird way but that there might have been a birth that the Church would want to cover up for some reason.

They also have the older nun in the film tell Agnes to go to the barn on her deathbed (don't remember if this is in the play) but she died. If there had been some other way to show that she told Agnes things that seemed mystical (maybe a nickname her sister had used for Livingston and the old nun told her she would come). Doesn't Agnes do something like close to that in the film? It would've been better coming from the nun who had the vision of the man in the barn. You could at least have made it believable that this nun had a way of giving the impression that she had some special insight, or that LIVINGSTON started to believe that maybe it was real. The play was a three-hander - the film clearly wasn't. But they could have kept the old nun alive and said something to Livingston to just plant a seed - a doubt - in Livingston's mind that the nun might have had a vision or was just senile and Agnes bought it.

Nor was there any way they could get around the imagination, since it was a film there was a need to show the impregnation - so we get doves and light. So believers and nonbelievers alike are supposed to think what? It really MIGHT be God? OOOOH! Why not something that looked like an angelic man? Agnes says she saw one at the end of the filn, so why not show it. Catholicism accepts that God came down from Earth and "became man", but to have there be actual sex would have been so contrary to the Christian fantasy and so not-Catholic (REAL sex is for marriage only!)

The problem with the film, more than the play, is that you never got a sense of the mysticism of the Church so the whole idea that Agnes believes it makes sense. The score is beautiful but the sublimated sensuality of the Church is missing, especially since it's old school Catholic (stern and cold) – a subtle homily, the touching, the holding hands, the truly communal singing, even Communion is used for a plot twist. It just feels like a cold film.

I LOVE this movie, but I recently read that Jane Fonda was very unhappy on this film. Problems at home with her marriage, coupled with the fact her part was no enlarged. That most of it was reacting to Anne Bancroft and Meg Tilly, rather than acting

The movie was garbage.

"I don't find anything interesting about the choices a character faces in major films or theater projects. The characters are just cut-out dolls with the American flag sewn on them."

Interesting thoughts, R38, but I can't buy the solutions since to me the film makes Dr. Livingston such an anti-Catholic whack job that she believes Mother Miriam would kill the baby. Maybe Pielmeier thought it was believable that Miriam would do it, but taking it seriously is nuts, since Mother Miriam at one point thinks God allowed the birth to happen and says if Agnes could put a whole her hands and if wine could become the blood of Christ, she could believe it. Why would a devout Catholic kill a child, much less one that she thinks even theoretically could be God's will. What she actually did was what was credible, all of which makes Fonda's theory and attempt to solve the crime, with Miriam as the only murder suspect, so utterly ridiculous.

Maybe what the film needed was someone as crazy as Amanda Plummer to be the true believer who thought it was the child of God and someone else (another nun, a priest) wanted it dead because that person thought child of God but of the devil. Or the new character herself said it. Then you'd have a believable suspect that wasn't Agnes. Mother Miriam was never believable as a baby killer.

Roger Ebert made the best point about the film, though, that if you're going to sustain the possibility about it being a virgin birth you at least have to finish off the idea of why God would allow it to be killed by choosing a mother who was so unstable? Or was it some crazy angel that wanted to fuck Agnes and God didn't interfere? The whole idea of believing it wasn't a man - even a man sent by God – but was mystical is what the film just can't sustain, especially to have a nun (Agnes or Mother Miriam) believe it and then kill it. Agnes being not right in the head gives a somewhat credible example of how religion in the hands of a nutjob can go wrong, but why mix it up with the mystical plot? Agreed having Dr. possibly wanting to believe might have allowed the audience to suspend credibility and make a leap of faith, but otherwise it makes no sense.

Sorry, I meant if Agnes could put a hole in her hands...

The climax of the film - where Agnes is hypnotized and remembers the night of the birth - recalls the simplicity of the stage version in the bare attic room set. I saw the stage show and had forgotten how there was no set and only chairs used, but because the acting was so good, it wasn't static.

r32 here. Watched the Bluray yesterday. A pretty bland movie with a muddied message. Loved the rustic shots and that attic space. Fonda is the best thing about it; I'd never seen her in anything else before but she's just tremendous.

I'm a former Catholic, but it didn't connect with me on that level either. I did enjoy that moment of the young nun realising she got impregnated without her consent and now being angry with god. Very ahead of its time. Though that breakthrough didn't last very long. Also, why Québec? What's the meaning behind that? An extra level of alienation? Not that I'm complaining; more movies should be filmed there.

In conclusion, I firmly believe this one shot reveals the essence of (male) homosexuality - you're simultaneously spellbound by Fonda turning around, and also wondering what that guy's story is and who he's fucking tonight. My brain nearly melted as I'd never pondered both things at the same time before. In that way, these two seconds were more sacred to me than anything else in the movie.

[quote]r8 Agnes gets no punishment for killing her baby; they just send her back to the convent, where presumably she lives happily ever after.

I bet.

Yes, I know, I'm bumping a 9 year old thread, but I happened on it and I am so disappointed that the link at R18 doesn't work. Does anyone know what happened to the real life nun, Sister Maureen Murphy?

Only watched it once and dont remember it. Who was the baby daddy and wasn't the nun half retarded? Why did she kill the baby?

R48, it’s been decades since I saw it, and now I must see it again. But as I recall, there was some elderly male caretaker or priest or something, and I remember wondering why it was so impossible that they impregnated a “simpleminded” woman. Sperm can be viable well into old age.

Beautiful photography and soundtrack... Good performances. I dug it. Its almost a little 3 Sisters-ish (Altman) the Tilly stuff has a fantasy/dreamy element. And I remember it was winter in that film. It was very beautiful. I haven't seen it in many years. Im 43. I think it was shot in Canada. And I remember Fonda smoking a lot. I loved Fonda's bizarre mid 80's The Morning After and Agnes of God shit. Love those weird periods. (not blood ones, of course)

Jesus COCK, I am replying to a thread from when I was 33!!!! What the fuck is it with these bumpers? How do you even find these old threads!

I would like a gay "inspired by version" with a Justin Owen / Kip Coffman type in the role of "Agnes."

I preferred the sequel, Murray of Yahweh.

Dunaway instead of Fonda would have been divine.

I thought Agnes was the Stevens' nosey neighbor?

That was later in life when she'd left the convent. She was always on the lookout for dead newborns and abortions, for obvious reasons.

R55, Gladys Kravitz. Her husband was Abner.

I refuse to watch this film . Fonda repels me. Agnes = sheep.