I’ve annotated a list of movies playing on Turner Class Movies in June 2021 (with the immeasurable help of John Glover). Watch overlooked movies that feature Christian themes and the dynamics of Grace. Wrap up the month with some Hitchcock-heavy films, and “One For the Angels.” All times Eastern and subject to change.

June 16, 11:45 am, Tennessee Johnson (1942)

This is a terrific movie. It’s been kind of “suppressed” in recent times, partly because it is somewhat sympathetic to the South after the Civil War and partly because its subject, President Andrew Johnson, has gotten tarred a little, within mainstream circles, by a kind of “likeness” to the 45^th president. Those are both unfair criticisms, as you will see if and when you see Tennessee Johnson for yourself. The ending embodies reconciliation and forgiveness in a palpably Christian manner. See this movie if only to deter you from (unexamined) “narratives.”

June 16, 1:45 pm, Northwest Passage (1940)

Kenneth Roberts, who wrote the excellent novel on which this movie is based, was a protégé of Booth Tarkington. Both writers were relatively conservative, politically, during the presidency of FDR. What I mean is, they were both more skeptical concerning human nature than the New Deal was by and large, though they were both “moderate” as personalities. The movie Northwest Passage, while it takes a while to get started, is extremely realistic in depicting the French and Indian War. In fact, the big battle scene is probably too realistic! What I hope you will wait for is the unexpected and explicitly Christian ending. God shows up at the last minute, we might say; but, “Boy, does He come on time!”

June 16, 8:00 pm, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

For me, the jury is still out concerning Tennessee Williams. (My mom accosted him once, in an underground garage in Washington, D.C. — she was a lifelong fan. But when she told me the story later that night, my heart went out to him a little …) What I mean to say is that Tennessee Williams’ basic attitudes to life always seemed predictable to me — i.e., “anti-establishment” in a way that is now widespread. On the other hand, Tennessee Williams was a true poet! He understood pathos, and everyday human tragedy.

A Streetcar Named Desire is a superb movie, with memorable performances by all the leads. It also depicts mental illness as it really is. (Williams’ sister was a permanent resident of a psychiatric hospital in Ossining, NY, where I was a fairly regular visitor during our time in Scarborough-on-Hudson.)

June 16, 10:15 pm, A Raisin in the Sun (1961)

An African-American woman uses her late husband’s life insurance to build a better world for her children. I only saw this movie once, at a film festival in D.C. and as a teenager. Though the movie feels a little stagey — it is based on a celebrated play by Lorraine Hansberry — A Raisin in the Sun is moving in the extreme. See it.

June 17, 12:30 am, Lord of the Flies (1963)

William Golding is more or less a downer, and Lord of the Flies embodies the man’s low anthropology. The movie, if you can handle the subject matter, is very well done. (And the choirboys do get rescued.) For the record, I saw this movie the weekend it opened in Washington. My school friend’s mother took us to see it. As she drove us back, up Massachusetts Avenue, she observed, “All men are beasts, aren’t they?” We three boys, all of whom were 12 years of age, said, almost in unison, “Uh …” (i.e., “What?”).

June 17, 2:15 am, Light in the Piazza (1962)

Always make a beeline to a movie directed, as Light in the Piazza is, by Guy Green. There’s a lovely and often lightly Christian feel to his films. This is one of his best, about real family relationships, disaffected, disabled, and otherwise. The ending is fabulous, and dear. (Then, if you can find a copy of Green’s very last movie, concerning a WWII partisan who is also regarded as a Christian saint, I will be forever indebted. Thus far it has evaded all of my several attempts to locate it, anywhere).

June 18, 9:30 am, House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Now we’re back on familiar and very solid ground. You’ve probably seen this, or at least read about it, with the skeleton that came cranked out of the screen at a key moment. It is a ridiculous movie that is also universal somehow. A parishioner in South Carolina, who was my contemporary in age, once said to me, with complete seriousness, “In my opinion, House on Haunted Hill is the greatest movie ever made.” She won my admiration forever. I mean, hands down, absolutely.

June 18, 2:00 pm, The Black Scorpion (1957)

Solid ground again. The Black Scorpion begins slowly, but after our hero-geologist get inside that cave, it’s a total success. I made my friend Samuel Freeman, who is now one of America’s leading political philosophers — if not our leading political philosopher — sit down with me and watch the entire movie. I don’t think he has ever forgotten that. Anyway, see it, if only for Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion animation during the scene in the cave.

June 19, 2:00 pm, Shake! Otis at Monterey (1987)

I haven’t seen this documentary, but it’s got to be good. Two of my best friends growing up actually attended the now-celebrated Monterey Festival. Eric Burdon was there, too, and you name it. The high point for many was the set that Otis Redding performed. And isn’t it funny: I knew quite closely a person in college for whom Otis’ song “Dock of the Bay” was the summit of all popular music — and perhaps, even, of human feeling.

June 20, 6:15 pm, Father of the Bride (1950)

I’ve written about this one before. But have you seen it yet? It is worth all of the plot’s prelims, misunderstandings, and false starts for the utterly non-ironic and very touching climax, in which the young couple are married in church according to the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. Everything just suddenly gets deep.

June 21, 4:15 am, Mamma Roma (1962)

Well, this is on the Criterion Collection, wouldn’t you know, mainly because it is early Pasolini. And it is very fine. The plot is about a streetwalker who tries to save her son from a life of crime. There is direct Christian imagery in it, and a moving ending (as I remember, for I used to own Mamma Roma). Almost all of Pasolini’s movies are worth seeing, with one exception. You know the one!

June 21, 3:45 pm, The Night of the Iguana (1964)

Tennessee Williams again, and quite good. For me it is worth it just for the way Richard Burton, as a relatively youthful Episcopal minister, is attired during the opening scene in church. Ultimately, The Night of the Iguana is about faith and its partial recovery, and is very loosely based on a novel by Graham Greene — though it’s still mainly TW. Directed by John Huston. Also starring Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, and Sue Lyon.

June 23, 3:45 am, Tension (1949)

A man who had planned to murder his wife’s lover becomes the prime suspect when somebody beats him to it. This is actually an excellent film noir, though I’m not sure it’s worth staying up this late to see it. (Record it instead!) Audrey Totter is mean and devious, Richard Basehart is gullible and sweet, and Cyd Charisse is the loving, saving woman whom Neil Diamond pled for in “Solitary Man” (1966). I got married to my life’s “Cyd Charisse” in 1973. Her name was Mary Cappleman.

June 25, 12:45 am, Wuthering Heights (1939)

In Birmingham I used to say to people, “Psychology is everything and psychology is also nothing.” What I meant is that human actions can only be explained in connection with the inward drives that animate them. And yet God and the Gospel often make inward compulsions beside the point. Now, the 1939 Hollywood classic Wuthering Heights — let alone the novel on which it is based — is an almost perfect instance of that maxim: the lovers in Wuthering Heights are drawn together by an unconquerable inward attraction. Yet only the gratuitous, redemptive love of God could ever really help them. (And Heathcliff removes himself from that Love, in the novel, by direct intention — and in the movie, by implication.) In short, this is a wonderful movie, but is only a partial index to “What Really Makes the World Go ‘Round.”

June 25, 6:00 pm, The Family Way (1966)

Well, we all lined up to see this movie when it first came out, and for one reason. We were told that it showed Hayley Mills, whom every young boy had literally worshipped at the age of 12 (i.e., in Pollyanna and The Parent Trap), in a new light. This was the sole reason for the film’s notoriety, and its relative success. All I remember is being moderately disappointed, and also uninterested in the actual point of the film. Seeing The Family Way again now, it is fairly touching — the story, I mean. And there remains that scene (or is it two?).

June 25, 6:00 pm, The League of Gentlemen (1960)

This is a fairly ironic bank-robbery thriller that features a whole line-up of famous English character actors. But the reason you might make a point of seeing it this month is Roger Livesey’s portrayal of an impostor Church of England clergyman. His performance is funny, touching, and devious. He does get caught, by the way.

June 26, 1:00 pm, Torn Curtain (1966)

This is a late Hitchcock that one loves and also hates. The scene in the Berlin art gallery is fantastic, and the evocation of East Germany is accurate. (I can honestly say. Mary and I know.) But the dragged-out murder scene, in which the director was trying to prove a point, borders on the sadistic. And the Lila Kedrova diversion is truly tiresome. Let me say, though, that Torn Curtain has a moral center, and the long-shot scene of Julie Andrews and Paul Newman on the hill, midway through the movie, proves it.

June 28, 2:15 am, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

This is Alfred Hitchcock’s first version of this story, the second one, from 1956 and starring Doris Day and Jimmy Stewart, being superior. Nevertheless, see this one, mainly for Peter Lorre’s performance as a diabolical spy, and especially for the scene in the “Science of Mind” (Christian Science-ish) church. That scene is a memorable masterpiece.

June 28, 3:45 am, Frenzy (1972)

You know, the worst movie Hammer Studios ever made was also their last (i.e., before they stopped for a long time). It was the complete antithesis, in tone and denouement, of every value embodied in almost every one of their prior productions, including even Vampire Circus. Now this movie, Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy, is similar to that. It runs counter to every moral and religious value that the auteur’s other films embody to greater or lesser extent. Frenzy is a completely obnoxious movie. (Don’t know how they got him to sign off on it. Must have had to do with Anna Massey …)

June 29, 8:00 pm, A Place in the Sun (1951)

This George Stevens movie is outstanding. It is taken from a Theodore Dreiser novel that is in fact pretty anti-Christian, but A Place in the Sun mitigates that element somewhat. See it, tho’ it won’t change your life.

June 30, 6:00 am, Music for Millions (1944)

This is the best movie of the bunch, for TCM and Mbird at the end of June. Give it a little time, at first; and don’t let Jimmy Durante — whose persona and songs have not stood the test of time — throw you off. Music for Millions is an explicitly Christian Hollywood movie, made in direct relation to the Second World War. And the ending! For me, the ending is one for the ages. Or, to quote Rod Serling and Keenan Wynn, “One for the Angels!” LUV U.

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