Alex said:

You recommend this movie because it speaks about redemption. Well, read the Bible or lives of the saints if you want to think about redemption. You don't watch a sɛҳuąƖly explicit and profane movie to do that.

Exactly.  I know where you are coming from, clevispin, and that you think it's okay, that it shows gritty, life on the streets as it really is, and all of that, but the film is really sensationalistic.  You shouldn't be watching films like this at all.  You should not wallow in violence and depravity on screen -- you already know it's bad, you don't need Abel Ferrara to tell you that.  

What about the scene where the "bad lieutenant" blackmails some girls into miming a sex act for him?  Was this scene necessary to show the "badness" of the titular lieutenant, or does it rather entice the viewer to sin himself?  Was it necessary to show the nun actually being raped, and if I remember correctly, full-frontal naked?  This is a truly sick erotic fantasy that Cain Ferrara tries to make acceptable by giving it some religious overtones.  

Is all of this somehow redeemed by showing Christ howling on the cross?  And how is it redemption to let a couple of dudes who raped a nun free?  The bad lieutenant's justice is as lame and un-Catholic as his mercy.

You can't just whitewash a pervy movie by throwing in Catholic iconography.  

I don't believe that God works through films.  Films seem to be almost entirely the province of the devil.  Even the ones that seem good always slip in some kind of false prophecy or something inappropriate.

I probably know more about film than anyone alive.  If I were proud of this, it would be a boast, but it's not.  Considering that I've seen so much, it is sad how few films there are that I would consider showing a young person today.  

I think one of the best films on a religious subject -- I won't call it a "Catholic" film -- is Roberto Rossellini's miniseries Acts of the Apostles, which mostly focuses on St. Paul's activities in converting various regions.  It is filmed in a very lived-in, objective, you-are-there, slow-paced style that Rossellini himself described as catechetical.   I wouldn't go that far, but the film is intriguing and after sitting through six hours of it, you feel kind of like a desert Father yourself.

http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0165093/usercomments

Bumping for Copticruiser rather then muck up the Television - EXCELLENT ARTICLE! A Must Read! thread.

Here are a few movies that I think are the type you are looking for.

Molokai: The Story Of Father Damien (2008)

Francis of Assisi  (1961)

The Reluctant Saint (about St. Joseph of Cupertino)  (early '60s)

St. Teresa of Avila, miniseries in Spanish, English subtitles (2008)

St. John Bosco: Mission to Love  Italian, English subtitles (2007)

I've viewed and enjoyed all of these.  There is some sɛҳuąƖ innuendo in the, The Story of Fr. Damien, but no nudity.  

Has anyone seen- "The Keys to the Kingdom" ?

I have a theory that religious films of the 50's and thereabouts were made deliberately boring in order to drive people out of the Church, ha ha.  Has anyone seen King of Kings?  Christ is portrayed as having the charisma of a block of wood, he just stands there and lectures in a monotone.  It would take a great deal of imagination to make a film that has so little imagination.  You literally could not be more boring if you tried.  Yet the director, Nicolas Ray, made many trashy films that were entertaining.

Easily the best Christ film in terms of artistic style is Last Temptation of Christ by Martin Scorsese.  The lighting and the editing is state of the art, the images evoke lots of good religious art from the past.  The problem is that it's blasphemous and heretical.  

Mel Gibson's Christ film, from what I have seen, has trashy Titanic-style hard-edged lighting and THX sound effects, which are totally inappropriate for the life of Christ.  I developed a prejudice to this film early on, I'll admit, so I'd better watch it before I say anything else.  

There are lots of films made about Joan of Arc.  Don't get excited.  This is in order to push rebellion and feminism to girls.  Unless you think girls watching these films will be able to understand that Joan of Arc wore men's clothes for special reasons and based on divine inspiration.  Or that they will comprehend that Joan being burned was an act of an English cleric that was probably politically motivated, rather than an act of the mean, macho, masculine Church itself.

But of course, the historical context is blurred over or misunderstood, and all that people take away from Joan of Arc films is a sliver of a girl standing up for her right to be a soldier on the battlefield, and then persecuted by some  Inquisition-like court.  It makes it look like she is standing all alone against men, and against the unfair and unjust Church itself.  Bleh.

St. Francis, also, is turned pretty much into Doctor Doolittle crossed with a hippie, a forerunner of Vatican II, in certain works of art ( Brother Sun, Sister Moon by Zefferelli, which is scored with songs of Donovan! )

Quote from: Darcy

I think this might be okay
"The Passion of Joan of Arc" 1928 can be watched on youtube in 8 parts.

This 1928 version has close up, full screen nudity.

Is it on the youtube?
I watched it on Turner Classic Movies and there wasn't that scene in it.  A few weeks ago they showed four Joan of Arc movies in a row at TCM.

One of the movies was from the sixties ? and in French and B&W. It was the transcripts of her trial. Very powerful.

This looks like a comprehensive list of Joan of Arc movies.
http://smu.edu/ijas/movielis.html

The 60's one is by Robert Bresson, who called himself a Jansenist, and whose style was to film everything in a way that was supposed to be "realistic" but made people look like robots or puppets of fate, acting like automatons.  As usual with these "genius" artists, it's something that seems profound but when you look at it more closely it's really quite meaningless.  Worse, contrary to Catholic teaching ( suggesting no free will, a deterministic worldview ).

I am very negative when it comes to the media, in case anyone hasn't noticed.  Where were the so-called Catholic film directors during Vatican II, why did they never say something about it in a film?  Name me ONE film that depicts the Novus Ordo Mass as something to be concerned about, or that discusses it at all.  Show me one picture of a "Catholic" film director going into a church.

I've always found it fascinating how the Church is portrayed in post-VII films as being PRE-VII.  A good example would be The Exorcist, directed by the Jєωιѕн William Friedkin.  In The Exorcist, the priest is some old-school severe devil-hunter type, not an effeminate man spouting New Age platitudes.  You never, ever see the Novus Ordo Mass in films.  Literally, these films create an alternate reality where the Church is still in its heyday.

There is a conspiracy of silence going on, and it is no accident.  Probably the ONLY reference to Vatican II and the Apostasy EVER in a film was a passing allusion in Scorsese's ultra-profane The Departed ( I saw it before I was baptized ), where a character says "We used to have the Church, that kept us together."  But even that is wrong, since we still have the Church, it's just under siege.

The truth is not going to come from Jєωιѕн Hollywood, or from the communist-liberal French or Italian film industry.  It's all liberal.