Rent Saints and Sinners (1949)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- When Michael Kissane (Kieron Moore) was sent to prison for stealing Church funds, he lost his reputation along with his freedom. On his release two years later even Shelah (Sheila Manahan), his former sweetheart, refuses to accept that he might be innocent, and her rejection drives him into the arms of seductive fellow-outsider Blanche (Christine Norden). Only Ma Murnighan (Maire O'Neill), a wily old spinster with a penchant for prophesy, believes in Michael's innocence - and when she falls ill she hits upon an ingenious plan to winkle out a confession from the real villain and clear Michael's name for good...
- Actors:
- Kieron Moore, Christine Norden, Sheila Manahan, Michael Dolan, Maire O'Neill, Tom Dillon, Noel Purcell, Pamela Arliss, Sheila Richards, Edward Byrne, Eric Gorman, Liam Redmond, Tony Quinn, Anita Bolster, William G. O'Gorman, Cecilia McKevitt, Eddie Byrne, Dave Crowley, Glenville Darling, Gabrielle Daye
- Directors:
- Leslie Arliss
- Producers:
- Leslie Arliss
- Writers:
- Paul Vincent Carroll, Leslie Arliss, Mabbie Poole
- Studio:
- Network
- Genres:
- Classics, Comedy, Drama
- Collections:
- Cinema Paradiso's 2024 Centenary Club: Part 3
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Reviews (1) of Saints and Sinners
Poteen the Village to Rights - Saints and Sinners review by CH
Whitman-like, each filmgoer can contain multitudes. To watch Saints and Sinners (1949) is to switch many times between exasperation and some delight. Written by its producer and director, Leslie Arliss with Paul Vincent Carroll (from his story), it opens with some fine location work in an Irish village (or one that purports to be) as Kieron Moore returns after two years' absence.
He does not find a friendly welcome. After all, he has been in gaol for purloining the funds collected for new bells at the church, the province of the Canon, Michael Dolan. From the start Moore maintains his innocence, all the for so as he now finds himself rebuffed by Sheila Manahan who has taken up instead with a local bank manager and adds to the insult by offering him work as pot-man in the inn owned by her father. He calls her bluff by accepting (as he says of the cellar, “it's an improvement on the suite I've had for the past two years - I can open this door”).
So far, something almost gritty, especially as it emerges that many of the villagers are hardly on the level: diluted alcohol, a sharpster of an undertaker whose cunning is prompted by the fact that “people are too healthy round here”, and a general penchant for gambling fuelled by one old woman's ability to name a horse who comes in first at 20-1.
Another perspective is provided by the arrival from America of a couple, Tom Dillon and the ever-sultry Christine Norden (as Blanche, a name which often suggests flames leaping from the heart). She has faith in Moore, temptation is aroused (a splendid automobile in which he divests himself of the humiliating chauffeur's outfit as she says “I could make you even more of a human being if you gave me the chance”). It is well lit, the crowd scenes are well arranged, and the landscape (the surrounding hills, the church, a ruined abbey, the waterside) looks splendid. And yet, as the betting predictions signify, there is an Irish whimsy to much of this (mercifully, the appearance of a talking donkey is brief and incomprehensible) which brings fears of the apocalypse at noon in the shadow of which Dolan is in demand on all sides as Hell beckons.
When reined in, the ensemble playing does have something of a lesser Ealing about it - and who can ever resist the appearance of a rebarbative Marie O'Neill?