(1944, b/w) A holy hokey film from director John M. Stahl, based on A.J. Cronin's novel, full of sentimentality and two servings of honey. At Tweedside, Scotland, in 1938, Monsignor (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) has come at the request of Bishop Angus Mealey (Vincent Price) to meet with Father Francis Chisholm (Gregory Peck in his second feature film, a performance for which he was nominated for an Oscar, though he made no effort to speak in a brogue like a Scotsman), expecting to recommend retirement for the elderly priest who'd spent most of his adulthood in China.

In his native parish Father Chisholm has earned a reputation for preaching unorthodox sermons ("All atheists are not godless men …") and offering queer advice ("Eat less," to a stout woman, "The gates of paradise are narrow"). Before retiring to bed, the monsignor happens to pick up Fr Chisholm's journal, begun in 1878, when he (Roddy McDowell as the boy Francis) witnessed his parents washed away during a storm.

Later as he prepares to leave for college with Angus, his distant cousin and sweetheart Nora (Jane Ball) fears he'll follow Aunt Polly's hopes of his becoming a priest. "But there isn't a chance of it," he assures her with a big kiss, only to find out a year later that she's given birth to a baby girl without a husband.

After Nora's death, he half-heartedly enters the priesthood and is unsuccessful (disputative with his superiors) in his first two curacies. However, Bishop Hamish MacNabb takes particular interest in his peculiar ("stray cat") priest, believing that the inquisitive young man is "in the church not by chance but for a reason." The bishop asks Fr Francis if he would be willing to go to the city of Pai Tan in the Chekhow province as a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of Faith.

Upon arrival Fr Francis discovers the ruins of the former mission, rice-Christians (who expect to be paid for their faithfulness), and animosity toward foreigners. A young Chinese, who took the name Joseph upon conversion to Christianity, volunteers to serve, saying it is "a privilege to work for God."

Fr Francis agrees to raise a young girl after her mother, having no other relations, dies; using blessings and remedies - sent in a crate from his best friend, Willie Tulloch (Thomas Mitchell), "MD and heathen" - he saves the life of the Mandarin's young son from an infected wound, for which Mr Chai gratefully gives "the hill of the brilliant green jade" on which Fr Francis constructs St Andrew's mission, a walled compound with church, school, and other buildings.

Three nuns arrive to teach the children; Rev Mother Maria-Veronica (Rosa Stradner), the daughter of a baroness, struggles with her feelings of contempt for those inferior to her, finding in Fr Francis an exemplary model of humility.

Soon after Willie comes for a visit, the Box Rebellion breaks out; the mission is caught between the contending Republican and Imperial armies. Willie, a dedicated atheist, expresses appreciation to his old friend: "You haven't tried to bully me into heaven."

Making a tour through Asia, "stuffy" Monsignor Angus drops by to see his friend from their days at Holywell College, finding Francis nearly as inscrutable as the Chinese themselves. When a Methodist mission plants itself in Pai Tan, Fr Francis greets the Protestant couple with genuine warmth of welcome without theological rancor. "As long as I live," he tells the Rev Mother, "I shall build my church."

This movie is as sappily disappointing as I found Gregory Peck in The Yearling.

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