The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952)

Screenwriters James O’Hanlon and Crane Wilb have done their homework, for the most part, and do a fine job of laying out and structuring the basic facts of the apparitions at Fatima, where in 1917 three young Portuguese children reported seeing the Virgin Mary appear on the thirteenth of every month from May to October. (Oddly, opening narration claims that the story starts on Sunday, May 15, not 13. The 15th of May that year was a Tuesday, not a Sunday; the first apparition did fall on a Sunday, but it was the 13th, not the 15th.)

At the same time, the filmmakers never manage the depth or clarity of Jewish writer Franz Werfel’s 1942 novelization The Song of Bernadette, on which the earlier film is based. Where that film fleshed out characters and issues with a level of complexity and nuance, The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima is content to sketch simple types and familiar patterns: the disapproving mother (Angela Clarke, who also plays the Lady and provides a couple of voiceovers), the sternly skeptical priest (Richard Hale), the loveable rogue (Gilbert Roland), etc.

As Lúcia, 12-year-old Susan Whitney is earnest and sympathetic, though the story too often reduces her to anxious tearfulness, and she lacks the conviction and range of Jennifer Jones’s Bernadette. Sherry Jackson and Sammy Ogg are unaffected and appealing as Lúcia’s cousins Jacinta and Francisco. Roland steals the show as a fictional scoundrel with a heart of gold who affectionately humors the children and does what he can to make them happy — even in jail.