The Left Hand of God *** (1955, Humphrey Bogart, Gene Tierney, Lee J Cobb, E G Marshall, Agnes Moorehead, Jean Porter) – Classic Movie Review 3366

Director Edward Dmytryk’s worthy if superficial 1955 film was a prestige production but did not deserve or win any Oscars, or indeed any prizes. However, the intriguingly oddball script, Humphrey Bogart and the distinguished support players keep it interesting.

In one of Bogart’s last films, he is cast in an unexpected role as a priest, Father O’Shea – though in fact he is really Jim Carmody, a fleeing American airman who has crash-landed in China in World War Two.

Carmody is trying to escape the wicked Chinese warlord Mieh Yang (Lee J Cobb) he has been working for as military adviser. Disguised in the garb of the dead priest O’Shea, Carmody hoves up at a mission, where villainous Mieh Yang tracks him down.

The Left Hand of God is a diverting and sincere if improbable and sometimes dull oddity. Cobb (born Leo Jacoby in New York City’s Lower East Side) of course now seems embarrassingly miscast as Mieh Yang and Gene Tierney seems lost as Bogart’s love interest, mission nurse Anne Scott, an attractive war widow.

The movie is not at all ‘the most challenging story of faith ever told on the screen’ that its makers 20th Century-Fox alleged, yet it still has its points of interest, notably the cast and the 1947 Chinese civil war background.

Alfred Hayes writes the adapted screenplay, based on the novel by William E Barrett. Also in the cast are E G Marshall, Agnes Moorehead, Carl Benton Reid, Jean Porter, Victor Sen Young, Philip Ahn, Benson Fong, Richard Cutting, Leon Lontoc and Don Forbes.

William Faulkner adapted the 1950 novel for director Howard Hawks, but his apparently dull and talky script was shelved.

It was the last star role for Tierney, who was battling mental illness.

It was the last film role for Jean Porter, who died on 13 January 2018, aged 95. She was married to Edward Dmytryk from 1948 till his death on 1 July 1999 at the age of 90. They had children, son Richard and daughters Victoria and Rebecca.

Jean Porter (1922–2018).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3366

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