Watch Lilies of the Field For Free

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Well-intentioned, feel-good movie. However fairly syrupy and predictable. The movie had great ideals: people of different races and nationalities working together to aid the community. However, the writer and director are hardly subtle in the way they go about their soapboxing.The story hasn't aged well either, as the age and nationality divide aspect was much more relevant in the 1960s.Furthermore, it just comes across as unrealistic and contrived: eg labourer works for a group of nuns for a day, expecting to get paid by the end of it, doesn't, but, instead of leaving, works for them for a few more days, and is surprised when he, once again, gets screwed at paying time. Then sticks around for a few more months and is once again surprised when they don't pay him or even buy materials.This said, despite being overly and overtly idealistic and syrupy sweet, and fairly predictable in its motives and plot, the movie does have a feel-good quality to it which makes it worth watching.Good performance by Sidney Poitier in the lead role. Worth noting that this is the only performance he won an Oscar for. Considering his other work, eg In the Heat of The Night, A Patch of Blue, The Defiant Ones, this is very surprising. The Defiant Ones was his only other nomination, in fact.

Before the serious part of the Review, this film contains probably the first on-camera use of "whatever," so prevalent among today's "mean girls," spoken by the Mother Superior.•• Not only is the cinematography B&W beautiful, showing the dunderheaded Instagram narcissists of today as Zuckerburgs using the internet to find girls, and the Poitier performance Oscar-worthy - deserved - for its perfect pitch of old-southern- black'ery that never quite breaches cliché' and a black man with modern aspirations, it serves as a a Crystal Ball vision 50-years forward to what we have today politically - with the clash of Euro-Black-Latino integration and a black man leading the amalgam. Add to that the uneasy Baptist-Catholic traditions, the agnostic, the entitled white "hey boah (boy)" business owner, latinos looking for work in the building trades, etc., and we see exactly what exists today, with a black man actually providing the leadership, if somewhat unwillingly at first, prodded by a zealot. In a sense, one sees all that's "bad" about America thrown into a filmed pot (plot) in the arid Southwest to combine to make the finest Louisiana gumbo one can imagine - the genius of the American Experiment for all its contentious nonsense and prefab prejudice. The film even presages the rise of Austrian nuns 2-years later as an entertainment motif in "The Sound of Music." And yet, for its themes, it emerges in the milieu of "It's A Wonderful Life," "Miracle on 34th Street," and "White Christmas" somehow. It's title? From the Bible, Matthew 6.Amazing. A must-see for true film'ophiles. An under-sung classic.

Godsent Homer Smith builds a chapel to five nuns from East Germany.There's the plot in short of this movie.Lillies of the Field (1963) is directed by Ralph Nelson.It's based on the 1962 novel by William Edmund Barrett.Sidney Poitier, who turned 85 last month, gives a terrific performance as Homer.He was the first African American man to win an Oscar.Lilia Skala, who earned a nomination, is superb as Mother Maria.Also great job from other nun performers (Lisa Mann, Isa Crino, Francesca Jarvis and Pamela Branch).Stanley Adams is excellent as Juan.Dan Frazer, who passed away last December at the age of 90, is brilliant as Father Murphy.Director Nelson himself plays the part of Mr. Ashton, and he's great.Jerry Goldsmith is behind the music.I liked this movie.Especially I enjoyed when they started singing "Amen".That Poitier fellow can really sing! This movie leaves you with a nice feeling.

Disney films follow a pretty straightforward formula.Mini conflict --> mini schmaltzy resolution. Rinse and repeat for 90 minutes. By the end, the overarching conflict also ends with a summarizing schmaltzy resolution. Depending upon your point of view this is either wholesomely feelgood or nauseatingly sweet.It's this formula which Ralph Nelson puts to work in Lilies in the Field. Immigrant nuns seeking to build a chapel in impoverished desert country pray for help. It arrives in the form of unemployed itinerant worker Sidney Poitier.What separates this from Disney fare is the story's touchy social themes. In 1963 Disney didn't do films that dealt with themes like racism, faith, poverty and immigration. This was pretty aggressive subject matter for a time when Lyndon Johnson was still a year away from proposing the Great Society.So it's possible that Nelson decided that he needed a generous spoonful of sugar to make his social medicine palatable. Judging by the box office, he was right.In Sidney Poitier he has a star who conveniently combines a palatable personality with social relevance -- the color of his skin. Poitier delivers a friendly and mostly believable Oscar-winning counterpoint to the flinty-with-a-heart-of-gold Mother Superior who leads her little band of nuns on their seemingly impossible quest to build a chapel with no money or resources.Speaking of no money and no resources, perhaps the most remarkable thing about this film isn't the story on the screen. It's the story of the making of the film. Ralph Nelson, who produced as well as directed, was compelled by United Artists to hock his house in order to guarantee the film's paltry $240,000 production budget.Even more amazing -- and I'm still having a hard time believing this -- Nelson et al shot the entire film in precisely two weeks in Tuscon. With no money, Poitier and cast broke union rules to rehearse in secret at Nelson's Los Angeles home before heading to their Tuscon location. And the chapel at the center of the story was actually built as the film was being shot, then destroyed after.Lilies of the Field is a sweet and generally agreeable examination of social issues just coming to the fore in 1963. That Nelson did a good job gauging his audience's tolerance for his sensitive themes is testified to by the movie's strong box office and its star's Best Actor award.But those with a taste for stronger medicine (or those seeking an indication of how much social attitudes changed in just four years) might prefer some of the same themes in 1964's Poitier masterpiece, In the Heat of the Night.