O Vale da Redenção

A former drinker and womanizer, returned from the Civil War, comes home as a newly converted preacher. He takes up residence in the old parsonage with a high spirited young girl and begins rebuilding the church. He finds a lot of trouble along the way, mostly from the local store owner who resents the new preacher because he fought for the north. Lots of action and drama made for a very good picture and Joanne Woodward as the rambunctious Lissy stole the show. She had me laughing all the way through. 4 stars.

This is the very first time I viewed this film and it held my interest from the very beginning of the film to the very end. Van Heflin, (Luke Fargo) plays the role of a Civil War soldier who returns to his home town and is very well known for his past with wine, women and song. Luke takes it upon himself to become a minister and set up a church which had been burned down to the ground. The rectory was still standing but a wild young girl was living in the house and was using a shot gun mainly at Luke's head and did not want him anywhere near her home as she called it. This wild young gal's name is Lissy, (Joanne Woodward) who never takes a bath and is a typical tom boy so to speak. There is a bad dude in town named Yancey Huggins, (Raymond Burr) who hates Luke and does everything in his power to destroy Luke's chances of building a church and accuses Luke of living with a girl under age and things not be fitting a man of the cloth. There is lots of laughs and some very dramatic scenes which makes this film a great family film and very worth your while to view this picture from 1955.

Most movies garner your interest in the beginning. You are intrigued and wonder how things will work out. That is the easy part. The difficult part is how to solve the puzzle, put the pieces together in an entertaining and clever way. Therefore, the conclusions of most movies fall apart.

"Count Three and Pray" reversed this. The first half-hour was maddening slow, boring, clichéd and predictable. It was also unrealistic as would-be preacher Heflin went about building a church building and congregation from scratch -- what with no money, friends and a hostile community. I was ready to fast-forward to the end, but didn't.

The last half-hour was marvelous, though. It moved along quickly. The problems and solutions were unexpected and clever. It was heart-warming, believable and even somewhat religious. Gave me a good feeling. I recommend this to single adults and entire families.

Count Three And Pray finds Van Heflin one weary Union veteran from the Civil War, tired of all the killing he's seen and participated in. When a parson from the town he's from in the west is killed at Vicksburg, Heflin decides right then and there he's received a calling to take his place.

Before the war Heflin was quite the roughneck character, a gambling, fighting, and loving man if there ever was one. A lot of folks in the town just don't quite think he's changed. Some like town boss Raymond Burr are out to prove it in any way possible. Some like saloon owner and town madam Jean Willes have different ideas about getting Heflin back to his old ways.

If that isn't enough Van's got two other problems. One is a young orphan type girl, a budding Calamity Jane in Joanne Woodward who's decided to just move into the parsonage that Heflin's set up shop in and won't leave. Not good for a righteous preacher to be cohabitating with a girl just this side of minority.

But secondly Van's forgot that he has to get himself ordained somewhere. Minor little detail, but still one of those things folks can be sticklers about.

Count Three And Pray is a good western that sadly has the potential to be something far better. The cast is uniformly good and this was Joanne Woodward's big screen debut. She was quite lucky she didn't get herself typecast in roles like these.

A whole lot of issues are not resolved in Count Three And Pray and the ending is not quite satisfactory for me. Still it's a well made and very earnest film that seems to have been crafted by some skilled people.

A quiet, character-driven western with an interesting religious element and Joanne Woodwood cute as a button in her debut as a feisty tomboy wearing trousers far too big for her who takes pride in her ability to "skin a squirrel with her teeth".

Saturnine menace is meanwhile supplied by Raymond Burr as a very heavy heavy.