The Bishop's Wife

A few days ago I watched "The Bishop's Wife" with Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven (available on YouTube here, not that I haven't had the DVD for a long time).
It's my all time favorite Christmas movie and has been since I was small. I think movies that I have loved for so many years always give me an extra fuzzy feeling, and to be honest, I don't think I would even have to watch them because they are so familiar that I can just play them in my head. The real thing is still better, though ;-)

Public domain via Wikipedia

Actually, there was quite an unpleasant incident in my life this year that got me down so badly that the only way to comfort me at the time was to watch "The Bishop's Wife" - in August.

Of course I have my favorite scenes, the trimming of the tree - which I used for my quote of the week exactly twelve years ago, by the way - and the skating, the sermon, but I'm always looking forward most to the boys choir, they sing so beautifully and I love the song, too. I also like the way how they come in one by one, summoned by a wave of Dudley's hand, looking at him like they wonder what's happening here.

Wait, I just noticed I totally took for granted that you know the movie, sorry.
This is the story.
Bishop Henry Brougham is struggling to raise funds to build a big cathedral. He prays for divine guidance and is sent an angel. Dudley is not quite helping him the way he would want him to, though. Officially posing as the bishop's assistant, he begins to change the lives of the people around the bishop, his wife Julia and daughter Debbie who have to suffer from his obsession with the cathedral, his staff, an old friend, the wealthy parishioner who is trying to push Henry into making the cathedral a monument to her late husband, even the taxi driver giving them a ride to the choir rehearsal.
Henry begins to feel how everything seems to be slipping away from him and senses that Dudley is falling in love with Julia. He finally realizes what is really important. This is when Dudley's task is done and he is called back even if he regrets it.
The next day everyone has forgotten he ever was there and you see him standing in the street looking at the people going into the church where Henry delivers the sermon Dudley wrote.

If you know the movie, however, do you also know the book it is based on?
It's a novella by Robert Nathan from 1928 and it's not quite like the movie.
In fact, you will find a lot of people who prefer the movie to the book, me included. Usually it's the other way round, but I think it also depends on what you first fall in love with. I knew the movie since I was a child, but got the book many years later and got a big surprise.

If the book stood by itself, it might have been an interesting read, about a marriage in which the wife has come to terms to live without any passion and much intimacy, whose only comfort is to have a daughter she can care for, while her husband, the bishop, is only thinking about raising funds for a big cathedral and about the purity a lack of which he thinks can be seen in the country. He's looking for a new archdeacon and asks for an angel to help him.
Enter Michael, the angel, who preferred spending time with poets instead of clergymen, who is shocked about the moral decay of modern times, who likes to philosophize, who is more than willing to help the bishop in his plans for the cathedral ... and who falls in love with the bishop's wife in a very non-spiritual way and awakens feelings in her that she thought she had locked away.
When they kiss, however, it is Julia who pulls away.
In the end, she resigns to a life with a man who won't be able to give her the love she's craving and decides she wants to have another child to find happiness.

My problem is that I don't really like any of the characters, not even the daughter. I miss the charm and humor and, yeah, the warm fuzzy feeling in the book.
That's not the book's fault, it obviously wasn't written to be a charming Christmas story, but I'm pretty amazed how someone could have read the story and said: "Hey, let's turn this into a heartwarming Christmas movie!" I for sure didn't find it in there. There was no happy ending for anyone and the thought of the Broughams just going on like that in their "pure" life would be sad if I could make myself to care more about them.
After thumbing through it again - I couldn't get myself to read it completely a second time - I  wondered why I even kept it and decided it will go to the public book cabinet. Maybe someone will pick it up and appreciate it more than I do.

I know this is hardly a review as I left out so much, but if you are interested in finding out more, you can find a readthrough here.