100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #21: The Trouble with Angels (1966)

Directed by Ida Lupino. Written by Blanche Hanalis and Jane Trahey. Starring Haley Mills, Rosalind Russell, June Harding.

Mary hath chosen the better part, and it shall not be taken away from her.

-Luke 10:42

At first blush, The Trouble with Angels seems little different from other mid-1960s family fare, the likes of which the Walt Disney Company was pushing out at an astonishing rate. Indeed, it stars frequent Disney ingénue Haley Mills (The Parent Trap, Pollyanna) as Mary Clancy, a mischief-loving teenager out to wreak havoc in a Catholic girls’ school with her friend Rachel Devery (June Harding). One might expect such a movie to have a message that could be boiled down to “adults just don’t understand”; these kids aren’t misbehaving, they’re just misunderstood. If the nuns would just allow their dreams and creativity to flower, they could be anything they wanted to be. Typical (and, I would argue, problematic) Disney messaging from Mary Poppins to Elemental.

But The Trouble with Angels is not a Disney movie. Instead, we get a film that appreciates tradition and virtue; shows that although these children’s actions may be explained by their family backgrounds, that does not excuse their thoughtlessness and vice; and most of all, provides a profound look at the beauty and joy of consecrated religious life. The Trouble with Angels manages to be all this while remaining a light-hearted, fun comedy that the whole family can enjoy.

*spoilers ahead*

The film begins with Mary and Rachel arriving for their first term at St. Francis School for Girls, a boarding school run by an order of nuns led by Mother Superior (Rosalind Russell). Up until this point, Mary has been the ward of her globe-trotting, philandering Uncle George and Rachel has attended New Trends, a “progressive school” (shudder shudder). Never having a real adult role model or supervision in her life, Mary dresses to look quite older than she is, smokes cigarettes frequently, and is determined to shirk as much work as possible while at school. Her strong personality attracts followers including Rachel, who is much more sheltered, awkward, and willing to follow Mary’s lead into almost any trouble. As they pull up to the school, located in a gorgeous building designed to look like a castle, the girls know they are heading into an environment much different than the neglectfully free one they have lived most of their lives in. “It’s positively medieval!” exclaims Mary. “All it’s missing is the dragon,” agrees Rachel.

Hard cut to Mother Superior. Mother seems, at first, to be a no-nonsense disciplinarian, the natural foil to Mary and Rachel’s free-spiritedness. She is constantly uncovering and attempting to correct their pranks and vices, frequently assigning the two delinquents dishwashing duty or extra prayers in the chapel. The girls much prefer the more openly kind Sr. Ligouri, a joyful math teacher who uses analogies to horse racing and helps lighten their penances sometimes. However, as the film goes on the girls and the audience start to see a new side to Mother Superior. Her absolute joy in the beauty of God and his creation, her truly kind and caring nature towards the girls in her charge, her quick wit and competitive nature all become clearer and clearer as the movie goes on.

The girls eventually warm up to her, not to the point of becoming intimate (she is, after all, still assigning them pot duty) but coming to understand and admire the life she leads. Unlike a Disney film, where the adult authority figure will, by the end, soften up and allow the children the freedom to do whatever they like, Mother Superior does not change much at all in this film. What changes is the girls’ (and thereby, the audience’s) perception of her. Rosalind Russell plays this character magnificently, showing off the wit, charm, and comedic timing of her most famous role, His Girl Friday, while at the same time radiating motherly warmth, joy, and love, even when at her most exasperated. This element alone raises The Trouble with Angels above most family comedies and makes it a worthy family classic to watch and rewatch many times together.

However, what truly elevates this film is its portrayal of the beauty and nobility of consecrated religious life. At the beginning of the film, the girls simply do not understand the nuns’ way of life. They seem to think that the world has passed these women by, that the religious life is a last resort for them. However, as the film goes on the heroism of these women is gradually revealed. One of the nuns hid Jewish children in Nazi Germany, and went to a concentration camp for it; one nun, a remarkably beautiful woman, is travelling to minister to a leper colony in the Philippines; Mother Superior, far from the religious life being her last resort, could have had a lucrative career in the Paris fashion industry, but in her own words: “I found something better.” The little moments of joy and beauty in the nuns’ lives are portrayed without fanfare but with a quiet nobility that is often missing in more contemporary portrayals. 1966 is in the middle of a real tipping point in American cinema’s portrayal of Catholicism, and The Trouble with Angels is one of the last movies in an era of truly positive mainstream portrayals of religious life in American cinema.

Our perception of the nuns’ vocation changes alongside Mary Clancy’s. She sees loneliness and suffering in the secular world she is familiar with, and joy and peace in the religious life she is now observing. Mary’s growth is enormous throughout the film and as her perception of Mother Superior and the rest of the nuns changes their life becomes more and more attractive to her. By the end of the film, to the shock of her friend Rachel, Mary actually joins the order, choosing to stay at St. Francis and give up the glamorous worldly life she had been leading. To some, this choice may seem shocking or a ludicrous waste of a young woman’s life; however, given the peace, beauty, and joy of the religious life as seen in this film, Mary’s choice seems very reasonable indeed.

Mary hath chosen the better part, and it shall not be taken away from her.