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The Keys of the Kingdom Movie Review

The Keys of the Kingdom is a 1944 drama film directed by John M. Stall and starring Gregory Peck. It’s a very boring and long, but well acted feature.

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“As long as I live, I shall build my church“

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Father Chisholm, a young priest is sent to a society of non-Christian Chinese to establish a Catholic Church. This is yet another movie from this era that promotes Christianity, which in itself makes it dated, but thankfully that promotion doesn’t overstep its bounds. The film focuses mostly on the positive things in regards to religion and the Chinese characters aren’t walking stereotypes as you’d expect from this period in film.

However, they are still very weakly developed and the overall story only really has a couple of personalities that it bothered to properly realize. One is the main father character, who in his monologues and conversations with others shows us his fears regarding mortality and especially legacy. He’s an interesting, very positive character that inspires hope in all humans.

It’s a shame that this cast includes the likes of Thomas Mitchell and even the great Vincent Price and they were both underused significantly. Mitchell fared somewhat better as he fitted the material at hand well while Price wasn’t all that well cast as you wouldn’t find him appropriate in this kind of dramatic environment.

The Keys of the Kingdom is really only worth seeing for the central performance from Gregory Peck himself. This was only his sophomore feature and the one movie that established him as a rising star in Hollywood. He was superbly cast as he always excelled at playing these kind souls with admirable qualities. He was so good here that he definitely deserved his first Oscar nomination.

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The technical Oscar nominations that the film received were also deserved as undeniably the cinematography, score and production design are quite strong and polished. There is no denying that the film is well made and solidly directed, but it is so slow paced and so ridiculously long that it really became boring very quickly. It’s an admirable story that is very inspiring and heartwarming, but it needed a more streamlined approach to make it more effective for modern audiences.