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poster of The Great Heart
Rating: 6/10 by 8 users

The Great Heart (1938)

This short film tells the true story of the heroic sacrifice of Father Damien, the Belgian priest who suffered a living death in order to bring hope and God's comfort to the lepers confined on the Hawaiian island of Molokai.

Directing:
  • David Miller
Writing:
  • Morgan Cox
Stars:
Release Date: Sat, Dec 31, 1938

Rating: 6/10 by 8 users

Alternative Title:
Carey Wilson's The Great Heart - US

Country:
United States of America
Language:
English
Runtime: 00 hour 11 minutes
Budget: $0
Revenue: $0

Plot Keyword: self sacrifice, hawaii, leprosy, biography, catholic, leper colony, missionary priest

Carey Wilson
Narrator (voice)
Tom Neal
Father Damien (uncredited)

CinemaSerf

In 1936, a US naval vessel travels from Hawaii at the behest of King Leopold III of Belgium to repatriate the body of Jozef De Veuster (Father Damiaan). Why? Well fifty years earlier he befriended a local population of lepers on the Hawaiian island of Moloka'i where only the sick were permitted to live. With bodies strewn in what passed from the streets, he dealt with a dissolute community that openly - and correctly - blamed the white man for bringing the ghastly disease in the first place. His priestly duties see him take charge of their future and in but a decade, the place has become a home for Christianity, hope and even running water. Just how long, though, can he survive before he too succumbs to this disease? When it does arrive, this man uses the news to improve the lot for his people - supplies arriving from all over the world to make their lives better and to offer them hope and medication for the future. Carey Wilson narrates this story and Tom Neal portrays this missionary without any dialogue and that didn't quite work for me. It's an interesting story but I found that the limiting nature of the photography brought little to what would have been a better radio broadcast that allowed us to use more of our own imagination. Still, it's a story worth watching of an illness the treatment of which hadn't really advanced since the times of Ben Hur. (PS: Father Damiaan was canonised in 2009).


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