Plot
Father Charles "Chuck" O'Malley (Bing Crosby), the unconventional priest from Going My Way, continues his work for the Catholic Church. This time he is assigned to St. Mary's, a run-down New York City inner-city Catholic school on the verge of being condemned. O'Malley feels the school should be closed and the children sent to another school with modern facilities, but the sisters feel that God will provide for them. They put their hopes in Horace P. Bogardus (Henry Travers), a businessman who has built a modern building next door to the school and which they hope he will donate to them. Father O'Malley and the dedicated but stubborn Sister Mary Benedict (Ingrid Bergman) have to work together to save the school, though their different views and methods often lead to good-natured disagreements. Towards the end, however, Sister Benedict contracts tuberculosis, and is transferred without being told this. She assumes the transfer is because of her disagreements with O'Malley. In the end, O'Malley informs her that she has tuberculosis, and that is the reason she is being sent away. She then leaves willingly and happily.
Read more about this topic: The Bells Of St. Mary's
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)