The last minutes of "Lilies of the Field" are convincingly recreated here with Billy Dee Williams stepping in for Sidney Poitier and doing a convincing job. Maria Schell takes over the Lilia Skala role of the Mother Superior, and is equally as passive aggressive in a way that is sometimes frustrating and other times hysterically funny. But she is easily manipulated too on the rare occasion, especially by the children she truly loves and by Williams' Homer who also knows how to keep her in line when she goes too far.
The simple story of the first film goes into Frank a territory by introducing an officious social worker played by say Hauser who is obviously written in to give Williams a potential love interest. She does a good job, but for the first half of the film is rather stark and darkly unlikable. She is out to find foster homes for the orphans that the Mother Superior has taken in. Among the orphans are a pregnant teenage girl (who looks a bit older than that) whom a local do-gooder (Jean Jenkins) coldly judges, removing her financial backing for building a dormitory for the orphans and a proper school.
The mother superior's heart is in the right place, and while her coldness toward Smith when he threatens to leave is obviously a ploy, her motives are sincere and she's easy to forgive for stringing everybody along to get her own way. "She's not rich. She's very poor", Schell wisely comments on Jenkins' character, and that's when you see what is behind the way she deals with issues. It's easy to see why she's able to through the help of some divine intervention change the minds of those who stand in the way of her reaching her goals.
Part of the problem with this is that the action goes out of the missionary that the nuns had built, opening it up to a world of red tape thanks to the presence of Hauser's boss (Bob Hastings), a hysterically nervous beaureaucrat who provides ridiculous explanations of refusal when Mother Maria attempts to get further funding. These plot twists are frequently maddening, and that takes away the charm that was prevalent in the first movie. The Christmas element comes in with the goal of Mother Maria to have all the construction done on the school and dormitory as well as the addition of bells before the holidays. Mother Maria does seem beaten when she is ordered to return to her original order back in Austria, but her secret prayers do seem to have power with the almighty whom she refers to humorously as the holy smoke.
Still, the cast does a great job with the material they have, and the children are adorable. Their support of a little natives orphan taken away by her tribe is touching. Another funny elements has Homer able to deal with the lack of funds by getting a local construction supply dealer drunk in an effort to get additional supplies, but ultimately so much stands in the way of the Mother Superiors efforts to keep the orphans with her and the school being completed. Ultimately, it's the Native Americans who end up lending a hand to help resolve everything in a positive way. Some derogatory terms to the natives by the Mexican-American construction company team shows a bit of the social bigotry of the area in which this takes place. So much to like here with some nice twists, but there's a lot of frustration along the way.
The simple story of the first film goes into Frank a territory by introducing an officious social worker played by say Hauser who is obviously written in to give Williams a potential love interest. She does a good job, but for the first half of the film is rather stark and darkly unlikable. She is out to find foster homes for the orphans that the Mother Superior has taken in. Among the orphans are a pregnant teenage girl (who looks a bit older than that) whom a local do-gooder (Jean Jenkins) coldly judges, removing her financial backing for building a dormitory for the orphans and a proper school.
The mother superior's heart is in the right place, and while her coldness toward Smith when he threatens to leave is obviously a ploy, her motives are sincere and she's easy to forgive for stringing everybody along to get her own way. "She's not rich. She's very poor", Schell wisely comments on Jenkins' character, and that's when you see what is behind the way she deals with issues. It's easy to see why she's able to through the help of some divine intervention change the minds of those who stand in the way of her reaching her goals.
Part of the problem with this is that the action goes out of the missionary that the nuns had built, opening it up to a world of red tape thanks to the presence of Hauser's boss (Bob Hastings), a hysterically nervous beaureaucrat who provides ridiculous explanations of refusal when Mother Maria attempts to get further funding. These plot twists are frequently maddening, and that takes away the charm that was prevalent in the first movie. The Christmas element comes in with the goal of Mother Maria to have all the construction done on the school and dormitory as well as the addition of bells before the holidays. Mother Maria does seem beaten when she is ordered to return to her original order back in Austria, but her secret prayers do seem to have power with the almighty whom she refers to humorously as the holy smoke.
Still, the cast does a great job with the material they have, and the children are adorable. Their support of a little natives orphan taken away by her tribe is touching. Another funny elements has Homer able to deal with the lack of funds by getting a local construction supply dealer drunk in an effort to get additional supplies, but ultimately so much stands in the way of the Mother Superiors efforts to keep the orphans with her and the school being completed. Ultimately, it's the Native Americans who end up lending a hand to help resolve everything in a positive way. Some derogatory terms to the natives by the Mexican-American construction company team shows a bit of the social bigotry of the area in which this takes place. So much to like here with some nice twists, but there's a lot of frustration along the way.
