Agnes of God **** (1985, Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft, Meg Tilly) – Classic Movie Review 10,937

Director Norman Jewison’s 1985 mystery drama Agnes of God stars Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft and Meg Tilly. It was nominated for three Oscars: Best Actress (Anne Bancroft), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Meg Tilly) and Best Original Score (Georges Delerue). Tilly won the 1986 Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture.

There’s terrible trouble at the nunnery where naive young novitiate Sister Agnes (Tilly) is accused of having a baby and strangling it to death, and Doctor Martha Livingston (Fonda) is the court-appointed psychiatrist out for answers: is Agnes competent to stand trial for the murder of the baby? Tilly, Fonda and mother superior Mother Miriam Ruth (Bancroft) grab their chances like stars who know they are on to a good thing that they don’t get offered very often.

John Pielmeier’s screenplay works well, though it worked even better as a stage play in the theatre where it was a surprising hit considering the weighty and unresolved material. The film was a hit too, costing $10,000,000 and grossing $25,627,836 in the US.

There are top technical credits, especially Sven Nykvist’s pictures and Ken Adam’s sets, but also Georges Delerue’s score. Nykvist shot it as if it were in black and white not only because of the lack of colour in the nuns’ costumes but also because of the lack of colour in the Canadian landscape. Pielmeier said Jewison ‘had the idea of setting most of our story in a convent in Québec. It allowed us to create an environment that would be unfamiliar and, I hope, interesting to the audience.’

Also in the cast are Anne Pitoniak, Winston Reckert, Gratien Gélinas, Guy Hoffmann and Gabriel Arcand.

Anne Pitoniak, who plays Fonda’s mother, played Mother Superior Miriam Ruth in the original production of the play when it was first produced at Actors’ Theatre of Louisville in March 1980.

The original Broadway production opened at the Music Box Theater on 30 March 1982 and ran for 599 performances until 4 September 1983. Pielmeier recalled: ‘With the exception of two chairs and an ashtray there was no set. All the scenes took place in the doctor’s office, and the piece depended completely on the three actresses. It is a very bare-essential kind of play.’ The Mother Superior was played by Geraldine Page, the role taken over by Anne Bancroft in the film. Bancroft was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for Agnes of God (1985), but ironically lost to Page for The Trip to Bountiful (1985).

Bancroft said: ‘After seeing Agnes of God I would like people who believe in God to think again and people who don’t believe in God to think again, as well.’

Fonda commented: ‘What it forces you to do is to begin to probe how you feel about miracles, faith, innocence, about the human need to believe in things that can’t be explained.’

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,937

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