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The Bells of St. Mary’s Movie Review

The Bells of St. Mary’s is a 1945 musical drama film directed by Leo McCarey and starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman. It’s a perfectly solid sequel to a perfectly solid original.

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“I can see you don’t know what it means

to be up to your neck in nuns“

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At a big city Catholic school, Father O’Malley and Sister Benedict indulge in friendly rivalry, and succeed in extending the school through the gift of a building. ‘Going My Way’ won Best Picture the previous year and it was the biggest earner of 1944, so of course it was going to get a sequel, which also ended up being nominated for multiple Oscars and being number one at the box office for 1945.

When all is said and done, it’s a film that is easy to see why it was so popular back then, but today it lost some of its appeal and is just solid and charming without ever being particularly memorable. The plot is way too simplistic to make a bigger impact and it just goes through the motions, though undeniably the endearing characters helped it out significantly.

Barry Fitzgerald’s absence in this sequel left a big hole that could not be fulfilled, but the addition of Ingrid Bergman at least somewhat made up for that. She was just radiant in the role of this nun that is so inherently likable. This is one of Bergman’s better and most underrated performances that was rightfully Oscar-nominated.

Bing Crosby also delivered some stellar acting work here and this just might be a better performance than the one he gave in the original that led to his Oscar win. He is very suave and memorable throughout. The relationship that develops between the two is the heart of the picture. These two are terrific. I just wish that the film had better supporting characters as they were all forgettable here.

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The Bells of St. Mary’s is a musical, but none of the songs reached the level of quality that the best number in ‘Going My Way’ had. Aren’t You Glad You’re You came up closest as it was quite endearing while the titular song was also very pleasant, though exceedingly short as most numbers here were. I wished for longer and more impactful songs. The movie was well filmed and solidly directed, but it lacked the more impressive technical aspects found in some of the best movies of the period. It’s all perfectly solid and nothing more than that. The runtime was also too long for such a simple story, resulting in a slow pace.