Journey Into Light

Sterling Hayden makes a strong impression in this severely dated story about a man's loss of faith, and his reclamation. For a 1951 major studio release, it plays like a Depression Era programmer, although sanitized due to post-early '30s industry censorship.

When his alcoholic wife Peggy Webber commits suicide, Hayden the reverend rebels and thinking God doesn't exist and men of the cloth are hypocrites, he quickly becomes a bum, with director Stuart Heisler depicting a quaint, stereotyped milieu of the Lower Depths filled with bums and flophouses. He's befriended by a charlatain (warm and fuzzy Thomas Mitchell) who's a petty criminal lording over the bums, but at the halfway point, the movie takes a corny turn as New World Mission preacher Ludwig Donath takes Sterling under his wing and he soon falls in love with Donath's blind daughter Viveca Lindfors. The movie turns overly sentimental at this point en route to a contrived, convenient happy ending.

Hayden is quite convincing as a bitter, self-pitying guy with a chip on his shoulder, but turning him into a romantic do-gooder hero is completely unbelievable. Lindfors' acting chops punch across her ultra-sympathetic character.

A shabby story from skid row about bums and fallen women and sanctimonious slum missions where Sterling Hayden repeatedly falls down into the gutter and stays there, turns out to be a universally interesting and overwhelmingly good story. There are moments in this film that you will remember forever.

He is not a fallen priest. It's not his fault that his wife after two stillborns turns alcoholic and ruins his life and position to crown it all with a bloody suicide, which turns him naturally enough not only away from God but against God, so that he associates with the bottom layer of society, with Thomas Mitchell in a perfect role for him as an honest con man, as the desperate man has nothing else to do.

The most touching and human scene of all, among the many in this deeply human film, is when the preacher can't lead the service as Viveca Lindfors, his daughter who saves the show, is in coma at the hospital, so Sterling has no choice but to stand up as leading preacher himself for the first time since his wife committed suicide. He does it reluctantly and with great hesitation, he almost stumbles up at the pulpet, but then something happens in the congregation. Dirty old men, beggars, loafers and what not are all touched by the moment of crisis at the critical condition of the girl they all love, so they all, in various ways, fall down to prayer, one bum leading the heart-rending reaction.

But there are many moments like this. Some moods in this film remind you of Chaplin's "City Lights" and other such extremely poetical films, for this is cinematic poetry caught and set in realism. Vittorio de Sica couldn't have done it better. You will never forget this film.

Journey into Light was the best movie I have ever seen. The title fits perfectly. This is as good a movie as I have ever seen. The story of a minister and his fall and rise from grace. I can think of no more to say. The actor, Sterling Hayden, played the part as it should be played.

I have been searching since the late 50's for it. If it is on tape who do I contact to get it made. I > will appreciate any help you can give me

This independent production could easily be taken for one of those semi-professional cinematic Sunday school sermons intended for church halls were it not for the menacing presence of Sterling Hayden in the lead and the contradictory visual stimuli of Elwood Bredell's crisp, unsparing documentary-style photography of skid row (Weegee, no less, was a technical consultant on the film), yet populated by an extraordinary collection of familiar Hollywood faces ranging from H.B.Warner to former Keystone Kop Hank Mann. (John Berkes, who is a standout as the piano-playing Racky, died shortly after the production wrapped.)

After feeling that both God and his congregation have forsaken him by abandoning his alcoholic wife to a miserable fate, the Reverend Hayden angrily rejects both, tears off his dog collar and spends a remarkable amount of the film's relatively short running time scraping ignominiously along the lower depths of Los Angeles while vehemently badmouthing God at every opportunity. This being Hollywood during the early fifties, surely he's eventually going to regain his faith and it will all end upliftingly? It sure takes him a long time, and comes suspiciously abruptly!

When Pastor Sterling Hayden's wife kills herself, he loses all faith in G*d, abandons his comfortable suburban parish and winds up on the Bowery. He's mentored by sly Thomas Mitchell, who collects commissions from every bum. He thinks he sees great possibilities in Hayden .... by his standards. But when kindly Ludwig Donath and his blind daughter, Viveca Lindfors, rescue him and give him a job as janitor at their mission, he drifts into an armed truce with G*d.

Hayden grumbles his way through the role, with most of the interest being provided by the bums, including H. B. Warner, Jane Darwell, Paul Guilfoyle, Billie Bird, and O. Z. Whitehead. For a trained cleric, Hayden keeps making theologically unsound arguments in a very unpleasant way. However we can be certain that under the direction of Stuart Heisler, things will turn out as ordained.