One Foot in Heaven (1941) - Irving Rapper

Something supremely magical about TCM, that is that you can find so many films otherwise unavailable from them. Approximately two days after getting cable I saw this on the horizon and was thrilled. The last remaining best picture nominee from 1941 I needed to see. The film is formulaic in almost all aspects, and falls into a limited subgenre of memoir type of films recalled by the children of whatever main character. The best known of these is I Remember Mama. This also fits into a run of religious films and although made before the US entered WWII it is still in that same mode of "country first" patriotism that Hollywood was cramming down everyone's throat at the time. Frederic March is likable but not spectacular as the preacher of the story but critics then as now know he had done better. There are charming moments in the film and the trip to see William S. Hart in The Silent Man is a definite highlight. Ironic too because the University of Chicago is showing a whole quarter long series of Hart films. 

Of course this film is largely just another one of many that I need to see for my own self satisfying mission. 1941 was no easy year to get accomplished, and this wasn't the only film of the 10 nominees that had never been released on home video, like Hold Back the Dawn though I found this film through TCM. Unlike that film though this was simply passable mild entertainment, far from the hidden gem Leisen's film turned out to be. Hard of course to recommend a film that's impossible to find, but there isn't a great deal in this picture that would captivate a modern audience. The film comments on something of the waning power of Christianity, which is so much more prophetic today.

*One Foot in Heaven was nominated for best picture