SATAN NEVER SLEEPS: Blu-ray (2oth Century-Fox, 1962) Twilight Time

Some of the worst-looking rear projection seen anywhere in a major motion picture, gets cobbled to stunning location work in Wales (subbing in for China) in Satan Never Sleeps (1962); director, Leo McCarey’s nothing ventured/little gained return to the sort of warm and fuzzy odes to Catholicism first – and far better – explored in his Oscar-winning, Going My Way (1944) and its follow-up, The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945). If not for Thomas N. Morahan’s superb production design, borrowing heavily from the Chinese villages and missionary sets built on an impressive scale for 1958’s The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, Satan Never Sleeps would have very little to sustain the viewer’s interest in this otherwise maudlin tale of rebel uprising. The picture is severely hampered by its nonsensical screenplay; Claude Binyon and McCarey (loosely cribbing from Pearl Buck’s novel), serving up a dish that cannot differentiate between light-hearted comedy, heavy-handed politics, and, the romantic potboiler, tinged in reconstituted Catholicism. Oh, please…and let us pray! Despite some credible performances, Satan Never Sleeps stirs its sentiment with a sledgehammer into an uncomfortable blend of partisan and pious melodrama: a very lengthy and mostly tedious anti-communist gumbo, with stars, William Holden, Clifton Webb and France Nuyen doing their best to remain reverent, relevant and ‘above’ it all.

Webb, in his final screen appearance, looking fragile and careworn (indeed, he would die a scant four years later) is nevertheless at his most tart and exceedingly lovable as Father Bovard, the aged priest about to hand over the reins of his mission to the earthy Father O’Banion (Holden) – shades of the Barry Fitzgerald/Bing Crosby mentoring in Going My Way, minus the singing and Crosby’s lithe ability to make us care about more secular and progressive men of the cloth. Holden is plainly miscast, unable to shake his screen persona as the rugged he-man and even feeding into its tradition, more butch than saintly in his leather bomber jacket. We can definitely see what a doe-eyed ingenue like Siu Lan (Nuyen) could find attractive in this stock company cleric, easily distracted from his catechisms as she barges through his open bedroom window at night to plead a case for young love. The other major player in this absurd drama is Weaver Lee – as People’s Party leader, Ho San. As a child, Ho San was almost inculcated by Father Bovard in the ways of the good Christian. But now, indoctrinated into Mao’s Red Army, he instead is a real hard-liner; full of his own ambition and pride, entrenched as an important commi-stooge in the ‘new (dis)order’ sweeping across the land.

China in its critical year of 1949 is the setting for this monumentally stodgy piece of super-kitsch. After a truly awful attempt at a pop song for the main titles (music by Harry Warren/lyrics by Harold Adamson and Leo McCarey, and sung with lounge-lizardry sass by Timi Yuro) we settle in on a few unconvincing stock shots taken from the location work for 1958’s The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. It all looks remarkably Chinese – but fake – thanks to some badly assembled rear projection/matte work, with obvious and distracting blue halos around Holden and Nuyen, the latter astride a mule, descending a mountain pass. The rest of Satan Never Sleeps’ score is by Richard Rodney Bennett and is otherwise utterly forgettable; the sets we are soon to encounter, also hand-me-downs from ‘Sixth Happiness’, ever so slightly re-dressed by Jack Stephens to look predictably ‘old world’, and, in a semi-bittersweet state of decline.  Diverting from his intended destination, Father O’Banion leaves Siu Lan in the care of Father Lemay (Ronald Adams), the suspicious cleric of a nearby mission, who nevertheless manages, in a few awkward moments, to coax from the rather sheepish Father O’Banion a Coles Notes version of the misguided puppy love that has brought Siu Lin through this length of their journey. The girl is frantic to accompany O’Banion to his outpost, but is delayed by Lemay and his nuns.

Arriving several days late to his own mission outpost, O’Banion is greeted by a very impatient Father Bovard. Eager to depart by Jeep, Bovard could not care less about the excuse for O’Banion’s tardiness. In short order, we also meet the mission’s house boy and cook, Ah Wang (Burt Kwouk – strictly playing it for comedy relief), and Sisters Agness (Athene Seyler), Theresa (Edith Sharpe) and Mary (Lin Chen) – all of them, window-dressing, with little to no purpose to serve hereafter. Regrettably, Father Bovard does not get very far; ambushed in the village by People Party’s leader, Ho San and provided a military escort back to the mission. Ho San and Father Bovard are sworn enemies; Bovard, overcome by personal regret over Ho San’s chosen path in life. While Ho San initially promises certain provisions and autonomy for the mission and its staff, rather willfully he dismantles virtually every assurance to demoralize and crush his former mentor. Ho San disbands the mission’s school, erects a communist flag in place of the old insignia, and, has his soldiers confiscate all food rations, smashing to bits the mission’s dispensary. However, Ho San’s desecration of the chapel – eventually transformed into a meeting place for the Communist Party – is the final straw, building a bon fire in the courtyard where all of its religious icons are incinerated as Bovard, O’Banion and the Sisters look on in abject dismay and horror.

Quietly ashamed of their son, Ho San’s mother (Marie Yang) and father (Andy Ho) manage to save the chapel’s crucifix from this inferno. Meanwhile, Siu Lan has arrived on the mission’s doorstep. After professing herself as a qualified cook to Father Bovard (the mission is in desperate need of one after Ah Wang is bribed by Ho San to leave post haste – Ah Wang foiled by Father O’Banion in his theft of a few bottles of wine), Siu Lan quietly confesses to Father Bovard her love for a man she hopes to one day soon make her husband. Unaware, at first, this man and Father O’Banion are one in the same, Father Bovard encourages the girl to pursue her love match. Alas, Ho San has taken an interest in Siu Lan too. O’Banion thwarts the first two attempts to take advantage of the girl, but is ruthlessly subdued by Ho San’s soldiers – bound and gagged to a chair and forced to observe while Ho San rapes Siu Lan. At the end of their struggles, Siu Lan plunges a dagger deep into Ho San’s back before freeing O’Banion from his restraints. Ho San retreats, surviving this wound – barely – but incurring a serious infection later as a result. As Bovard, having taken a heavy sedative, knows absolutely nothing of the rape, he and O’Banion attend a feverish Ho San at his pleasure. O’Banion offers to take their previously confiscated Jeep and ride into Lemay’s mission to acquire the penicillin necessary to save Ho San’s life. As part of the bargain, Father Bovard shall remain imprisoned in the local jail. If O’Banion does not return, Bovard will be shot.

O’Banion agrees to these terms, but manages to smuggle Siu Lan out of the village. Once safely away, O’Banion leaves Siu Lan by the roadside where she takes a bus back to her own village – sadder, but hopefully wiser...maybe. Returning with the penicillin, O’Banion and Bovard are set free briefly to return to their ravaged and deserted mission. We learn the Sisters since have been sent away. Ho San recovers from his infection and continues his tirade on the village. Several months pass. Siu Lan returns to the mission, shamed and outcast by her own family as she is great with an illegitimate child conceived on the night of the rape. Bovard has a terrible hunch the baby is O’Banion’s; this suspicion allayed when Siu Lan tells him the truth. O’Banion and Bovard are taken by force and tortured by Ho San’s soldiers to confess they have deceived the local villagers and misappropriated funds from the mission for their own personal pleasure. Yet, even in his weakened condition, brought to the town square under military escort, Bovard defies Ho San’s second in command, Chung Ren (Robert Lee), making it clear to his flock it is the communist party who are the real liars. This declaration incites a grassroots uprising against the Red Army’s stronghold, and this, on the eve Ho San’s performance is being critiqued by Kuznietsky (Martin Benson); the Russian emissary, newly arrived to witness his progress in disseminating the communist manifesto in China.  

Siu Lan gives birth to a son, cared for by Ho San’s parents, who make him aware of the birth. While Ho San briefly bonds with his child, his mother and father sneak into the chapel and begin to dismantle all of the communist paraphernalia, intent to restore the crucifix to the altar. They are discovered by Chung Ren and executed where they stand for the crime of insurrection against the state while Ho San helplessly looks on. Meanwhile, Kuznietsky has decided Ho San has not been sufficiently brainwashed by the party to be an asset to its membership. He is deposed and ordered to surrender to troops now loyal to Chung Ren. Instead, Ho San suffers a daring moral conversion, orchestrating an escape for Fathers O’Banion and Bovard, Siu Lan and their son. Discovered by helicopter as they flee across the barren landscape, this foursome takes refuge beneath the trees and just moments from the border where they might survive in relative safety. Inexplicably, Father Bovard sacrifices his own life, acting as a decoy by driving the car over a perilous precipice while O’Banion, Sui Lan and Ho San successfully flee on foot. In the penultimate moments of our story, O’Banion weds Sui Lan and Ho San inside a church in Hong Kong; the couple, presumably meant for happier times ahead.

Setting aside the idiotic notion that any woman would blissfully marry the man who stole her virginity by force, and this while still professing her undying love for another, Satan Never Sleeps is awash in far too many melodramatic loopholes and contradictions elsewhere to click as it should. The plot, such as it remains, is awkwardly stitched together and hampered by McCarey’s inability to focus on the severity of the situations being played out. Given the uncanny light-heartedness that permeates even the darkest passages of the plot, most of the pithy one-liners delivered by Bill Holden in atypical deadpan – half tongue-in-cheek/half careworn disgust for which Holden was well-regarded – one senses McCarey would have much preferred to tell a tale about big-hearted clerics who do God’s work with a wink, nudge and a song or two interpolated throughout. Regrettably, Satan Never Sleeps is not this kind of a movie and, in retrospect, the comedy is grotesquely out of step with the drama.

The character of Ho San is severely flawed; his interminable hatred for Father Bovard diffused in just a few quick instances of personal reflection.  This boy has a lot of growing up to do, and apparently, does it all in the last 10 minutes of this movie’s 2-hour plus run time. Holden leather-jacketed preacher is so transparently McCarey’s despairing crack at invoking the sweat-shirted Father O’Malley that, without a Bing Crosby behind the reversed collar, it falls haplessly flat, uneasily to find no eternal resting spot on Holden’s squared off shoulders. Holden does his uber-finest when nervously mugging for the camera, half-concealing Siu Lan’s amour for Father O’Banion. Otherwise, he is entirely unsuitable for the part. Of the performers, Clifton Webb fares the best. Indeed, his stiff-britches/caustic clergyman is joyously stubborn to a fault; a cross between Barry Fitzgerald’s Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way and the fussbudgety ole persimmon, Mr. Belvedere, Webb created in 1948’s charming little Fox programmer, Sitting Pretty.  In the final analysis, Webb alone – although he thoroughly commands our attention in every scene in which he appears (even when unconsciously lying/dying in bed) – cannot keep this faux religious potboiler from falling apart.

Satan Never Sleeps arrives on Blu-ray via Twilight Time’s alliance with Fox Home Video. I suspect the recent Fox/Disney merger has already begun to impact the former studio’s ability to allocate the necessary funds for film preservation, as Satan Never Sleeps’ 1080p transfer is among the shoddiest yet to arrive from their ‘preservation’ work passed along to TT for third-party distribution. What we have here is a horrendously faded original camera negative, leaning heavily towards a chalky mess of greenish greys and muddy/ruddy browns. Flesh tones are either orange, pasty pink or jaundice yellow. Outdoor scenes have had their contrast blown out to the point where nothing appears to have been photographed under ‘natural’ light conditions. Dimly-like interiors possess a thick, soft characteristic. None of the colors in this palette pop as they should. Reds are orange and blacks veer from a queer blue-black, into an even more unhealthily lit green-black tint, depending on the scene. Age-related artifacts do not seem to be an issue, although nothing is able to mask the horrible process shots scattered throughout: the actors, shot under optimal lighting conditions, looking ‘cut-n’-paste’ against these rear-projected backdrops. The audio is even worse. We get two options: 2.0 DTS and 1.0 DTS. Despite its limitations, the mono mix is preferred here. It’s thin, but clean.  The faux stereo is plagued by a hollow reverb and echo that distorts dialogue and results in several audio drop outs along the way. Outside of an even more badly worn theatrical trailer, TT affords us NO extras – not even their usual isolated score. Bottom line: Satan Never Sleeps is not a great movie and this Blu-ray is nothing like a quality affair. Pass and be very glad that you did!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2

VIDEO/AUDIO

2

EXTRAS

0