Lilies of the Field (1963)
A Black man is enslaved by white nuns and forced to build a chapel.
(Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly what happens.) While traveling through Arizona, Homer Smith (Sidney Poitier) breaks down outside a nunnery. The head nun, Mother Maria (Lilia Skala), shanghais the able-bodied young man to fix their roof. Homer cheerfully does it, so the nuns ask him for more. And more. And more. Until they get him to build them a chapel from scratch.1
There’s some light drama around the construction—how will the nuns afford the bricks?2 will Mother Maria’s stubbornness drive Homer away? can Homer really build a chapel himself?—but it all works out in the end. Here’s the thing: neither Homer nor the nuns have character journeys. Homer agrees to work for the nuns, expecting to get paid. They don’t pay him but he keeps on workin’ anyway. Then, when the work is finished, he leaves. Neither he nor the nuns are changed from the events of the movie; instead, it’s just a bunch of pleasant stuff that happens.
Rating: 6/10, just a bunch of pleasant stuff that happens.
Cast and Crew
Sidney Poitier won the Best Actor Oscar for this performance and it’s a landmark win: the first Best Actor Oscar to go to a Black man.3 We last saw Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones, a so-so movie buoyed by his strong performance. Between that film and this one, Poitier had some major roles, including as Walter Lee Younger in both the stage and screen versions of “A Raisin in the Sun” and with Dorothy Dandridge in Porgy and Bess (1959).4
It’d be easy to just run down Poitier’s roles and leave it at that, but that’d miss his incredible legacy. Before Poitier, lead roles—especially non-stereotypical lead roles—for Black people were few and far between. Poitier changed that. A biographer of Poitier called him the “Martin Luther King Jr. of the movies”; now that’s a legacy. This is Poitier’s last competitive Oscar nod, but we’ll see him a few more times.
The Trivia
Since this is a movie about nuns, let’s discuss some religious institutes. First, let’s define some words:
Religious institutes differ in how they interact with the world. Monastic or cloistered orders5 are confined to their monastery or convent while mendicant orders live a life of poverty and itinerancy. We’ll discuss those two and save apostolic orders6 for another time.
Men who lead monastic, cloistered lives are called monks. The female equivalent is a nun. Colloquially, sisters—women who have joined religious orders but are not cloistered—are often called nuns as well. The male equivalent of a sister is a friar.7
Orders follow Rules, and the oldest monastic Rule in the Western church is the Rule of Saint Augustine, written by Augustine of Hippo.8 It lays out the need for poverty, chastity, and obedience. One order that follows this Rule is the Dominicans, created by papal bull in 1216.9 They’re known for their intellectual tradition: Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican (smart guy) as was Tomás de Torquemada (a less smart guy).10
Both Dominicans and Franciscans11 are mendicant orders. The Franciscans were founded by their namesake, St. Francis of Assisi12, in 1209, and they follow his Rule. They’re known for their grey habits (getting them the somewhat lazy nickname of “greyfriars”) and have an associated group of nuns called the Poor Clares.
The Benedictines, who are the oldest order in the Catholic church, follow the slightly-less-old Rule of Saint Benedict.13 Benedict’s rules are summed up as ora et labora (“pray and work”). Unlike the mendicant orders discussed above, the Benedictines are cloistered. The list of Benedictine luminaries is very, very long, but here’s one good one: Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179).14
How about some quick hits?
Trappists: The Trappists spun off from the Cistercians in 1892 (who themselves branched off from the Benedictines in 109815) though they all still follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. The Trappists are known for their cheese and beer.
Carthusians: founded in 1084 by St. Bruno of Cologne, these guys are hardcore, spending all of their time in contemplation or manual labor. Paradoxically, they also make the liquor Chartreuse.
Carmelites: these were initially just hermits who lived on Mount Carmel.16 That area wasn’t always so friendly to Christians, though, and when they were flushed out by the Mamelukes, they became mendicants.17 Saint Teresa of Ávila later reformed the Carmelites, creating the Discalced Carmelites.18
Camaldolese: these guys have “camel” in the name, so I guess they…travel long distances in the desert? store fat in their humps? spit? Just guessin’.
Odds and Ends
Homer sings the standard “Frankie and Johnny” to the nuns, which is funny because it’s about a woman murdering her lover…the song “Amen” is sung throughout the film…a TV movie sequel, Christmas Lilies of the Field (1979) had Homer (now played by Billy Dee Williams) build a kindergarten for Mother Maria (played by Maria Schell)…director Ralph Nelson pulled double duty and took the role of mean Mr. Ashton…after finishing the chapel, Homer does the Mexican hat dance (Jarabe Tapatío)…the film is based on a novella by William Edmund Barrett.
Also, heads up: this film is called Lilies of the Field. Lilies of the valley are bell-shaped flowers. Below is a painting of them from Marc Chagall that, uh, doesn’t really capture what they look like:
It’s very “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.” “If you fix a nun’s roof, she’s gonna want you to drive her to Northfolk and then build her a chapel.”
Their plan is to trust in God for the bricks, as is taught in the Sermon on the Mount. Mother Maria quotes it to Homer: “Why take thee thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field and how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, yet I say unto you, not even Solomon in all his glories was arrayed as one of these.” That means, like, trust in God for the bricks or whatever. Maria also reaches out to the Kiwanis, Lions, Moose, and Elks for donations; we discussed those groups last week in our post on Hud.
Hattie McDaniel was the first Black actor to win an Oscar for her supporting role in Gone with the Wind. The first Black woman to win a Best Actress Oscar was Halle Berry.
That’s Dorothy Dandridge, the first Black woman to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar (for 1954’s Carmen Jones, also a film adaptation of something that is an opera).
There is a difference between the two but it’s beyond the scope of what we’re doing here.
Apostolic orders tend to be more modern and actively engage with the world (often through education or healthcare). Some noteworthy ones are the Missionaries of Charity (founded by Mother Teresa), the Sisters of Charity (somehow different than the Missionaries of Charity), the Sisters of Mercy, and the Jesuits (Society of Jesus).
Or brother, since “friar” comes from the Latin (by way of French) for “brother.”
There are multiple orders called “Augustinians”; they’re beyond the scope of this post. Note that one famous Augustinian monk was Gregor Mendel.
They’re formally known as the Order of Preachers because they were created to, yep, preach. They’re called “Dominicans” because they were founded in France by a priest named Dominic de Guzmán.
The name of the Dominican Republic comes from the name of St. Dominic, so other famous Dominicans are Rafael Trujillo, Juan Marichal, and Oscar de la Renta.
Formally, the Order of Friars Minor.
He’s also the namesake of the California city San Francisco, since the Franciscans were active in California before statehood. One missionary to know is Junípero Serra (1713-1784), called the “Apostle of California.” He was canonized in 2015.
Created by St. Benedict, who was known as Benedict of Nursia and lived from 480 to 547.
Of note is that the alcohol Bénédictine pretends that it was created by a Benedictine monk, but that’s (mostly) just marketing. On the other hand, Dom Pérignon (the inventor of champagne) was actually a Benedictine monk.
The Cistercian schism was supported by Bernard of Clairvaux, the eventual St. Bernard. That’s a different St. Bernard than the dog guy, though.
Mount Carmel is one of those important Biblical mounts. It’s where the prophet Elijah called down fire from Heaven, proving to the prophets of Baal that his god was the One True God™. The Israeli city of Haifa is there now, as is the most holy site in Bahá’í (the Shrine of the Báb).
The California city of Carmel-by-the-Sea—best known because Clint Eastwood was its mayor—got its name from the Carmel Mission originally there.
“Discalced” means barefoot.