Spiritual Cinema
"Movies containing spiritual, metaphysical, conscious or similar messages or themes".
Simon Keyes explains the idea behind Spiritual Cinema.
It is the extraordinary power of cinema, high or low, serious and exploitative, to move and disturb us that we should celebrate and embrace in all its diversity. Films can fertilise our inner lives and provide a counter-balance to that compartmentalisation of our "religious" selves that Thomas Merton dubbed our "personal holiness project". The feelings and shadows that films (well, perhaps not quite every movie) incarnate in us give us privileged access to the world beyond our immediate experience. The sights and sounds of cinema can resonate in the realms of the unconscious and the archetypal like no other medium, and there is much for us to learn about ourselves in this experience.
Below is a list of "the best of" this genre...
Ikiru (1952)
8.3/10
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Takashi Shimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Kyoko Seki
A brilliant study of a man who finds he is dying of cancer and determines to spend his final months giving meaning to his life by constructing a child... Read more
The Day the Earth Stood Still ( Blu-ray ) (1951)
7.8/10
Director: Robert Wise
Starring: Billy Gray, Hugh Marlowe, Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Sam Jaffe
A spacecraft lands in Washington D.C. and an alien emerges, with a menacing robot whose destructive powers defy imagination. So begins the science-fic... Read more
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
7.8/10
Director: Robert Wise
Starring: Billy Gray, Hugh Marlowe, Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Sam Jaffe
A spacecraft lands in Washington D.C. and an alien emerges, with a menacing robot whose destructive powers defy imagination. So begins the science-fic... Read more
Diary of a Country Priest (1950)
8/10
Director: Robert Bresson
Starring: Claude Laydu, Antoine Balpetre, Gaston Severin
A priest (Claude Laydu) arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish. The apathetic and hostile rural congregatio... Read more
Francesco Giullare Di Dio (1950)
Director: Roberto Rossellini
Starring: Aldo Fabrizi, Arabella Lemaitre
A.k.a. "Francis, God's Jester". Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini lovingly render the very spirit of Franciscan teaching in this extr... Read more
Samson and Delilah ( Blu-ray ) (1949)
6.8/10
Director: Cecil B DeMille
Starring: Angela Lansbury, George Sanders, Hedy Lamarr, Henry Wilcoxon, Victor Mature
Journey through time to a gloriously extravagant setting of lust, violence, and treachery in this Oscar-winning adventure from legendary filmmaker Cec... Read more
Bicycle Thieves ( aka The Bicycle Thief ) ( Blu-ray ) (1948)
8.3/10
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Starring: Enzo Staiola, Lamberto Maggiorani, Lianella Carell
Aka 'The Bicycle Thief.' Vittorio De Sica's remarkable 1948 drama of desperation and survival in Italy's post-war depression earned a special Oscar fo... Read more
Joan of Arc (Bergman) (1948)
6.7/10
Director: Victor Fleming
Starring: Cecil Kellaway, Francis L Sullivan, Gene Lockhart, Hurd Hatfield, Ingrid Bergman...
The life story of one of history's most remarkable heroines is boldly brought to the screen in this Academy Award winning production, an epic tale of... Read more
Bicycle Thieves ( aka The Bicycle Thief ) (1948)
8.3/10
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Starring: Lianella Carell, Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola
Aka 'The Bicycle Thief.' Vittorio De Sica's remarkable 1948 drama of desperation and survival in Italy's post-war depression earned a special Oscar fo... Read more
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
7.9/10
Director: George Seaton
Starring: Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Edmund Gwenn, Gene Lockhart, Natalie Wood
In this, one of Hollywood's most delightful fantasies, the spirit of Christmas is rekindled in a young girl (Natalie Wood) by a department store Santa... Read more