Toast & Kent's Xmas (2025) Advent Calendar - Day 15: The Bishop's Wife

 1948, d. Henry Koster - amazonprime

What exactly is The Bishop's Wife? Is it a romance about a love triangle? A faith-based Christmas story? An exploration of changing class and status? A comedy? A drama? 

Yes, to all of these, and yet, not really any of these at all. It's a story that doesn't quite know what it wants to be or what it wants to say, only just that it wants to say it.

Dudley (Carey Grant) is an angel who appears suddenly on the poorer side of town. He helps a blind man cross the road, stopping traffic as he does. He stops a runaway pram from getting run-over. He's a kind man with a beautiful face who knows everyone's name as if they were old acquaintances. 

He has appeared on Earth to help Bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven), whose promotion to Bishop, in no small part thanks to wealthy dowager Mrs. Hamilton, has left him sort of at her mercy. His promotion has elevated him not just in ecclesiastical status, but also social, having moved across town to a different class of parishioners. Henry's wife, Julia (Loretta Young) may have moved with him, but she hasn't left the old neighbourhood out of her heart.

Henry's key objective is the building of a new church, one which isn't going to happen on its own dime. It will take much cow-towing and conceding to the wishes and demands of Mrs. Hamilton, whose designs are to seen the new facility be a shrine to her late husband moreso than to God.

Henry has lost himself in his advancement, and Dudley is there to attempt to show him the way back, to remind him of what really matters in both life and divinity, but Henry won't go willingly. Dudley inserts himself into Henry's world as his assistant, much to the delight of the female staff about the abode, being up front with Henry about who he is and why he is there...but the Bishop just can't believe it even when Dudley shows him signs (at one point he thinks him a demon).

So the angle Dudley takes is to spend time with the Mrs. and their daughter, showing them the attention and appreciation that's been lacking from the man of the house. Dining, dancing, skating, shopping, visiting old friends and old favourite places, Dudley shows Julia the world she's been missing, the life Henry's been neglecting, and it begins to upset Henry, pride and envy. Sins!

While it should be the wake up call he needs, it's not, really. It's only through Dudley's intervention with Mrs. Hamilton that she sees the selfishness and error in her ways, instead deciding to devote her money and attention to social issues instead of vainglorious pursuits. This frees Henry into making the only choice he can, to return to his old parish, to return to the people that need him most and miss him. And it allows Dudley to depart, but not first without a proclamation to Julia, a hint towards temptation (is he a devil?) but she resists and flees to her husband. Dudley smiles, and departs, to be forgotten, as at the end of any of his jobs...it's not about glory, but about doing good, and leaving a lasting effect on the people he touched.

For a 1940's film that centres around an angel and a bishop, The Bishop's Wife, is surprisingly not a film very concerned with religion. It's oddly contemporary in the way it uses the roles and the iconography and such for its own designs without really trumpeting faith or thumping the Bible much at all. Dudley might as well be an alien helping a corporate VP lost in his promotion for all this movie really cares about Christianity, and that suits me just fine having a total lack of conviction myself.

The problem with the film is it lacks focus. It doesn't know whose point of view to tell the story from. It's not Dudley, or Julia, or Henry, nor anyone else. It's named The Bishop's Wife so you would think Julia would be at the centre of the story, but she's not really. It was Henry who called for God's help, and Dudley was sent, but Henry spends most of the movie uncuriously wishing Dudley away, and not accepting his help, guidance or lessons. The rekindling of Henry and Julia is a subtle one, no great moment of revelation so much as both of them seeing Dudley as a temptation that would get in the way of their marriage and both realizing that is not what they want.

But Dudley's "wooing" of Julia never seems in earnest. It never truly seems like Dudley is ever actually in love with her. He loves her, like he seems to love everyone, and so the moment where he leans in for the kiss feels like a test for her, not a legit moment of Dudley seeking something else for himself.

For that matter, Julia isn't much of a temptation. There's little in the role that Loretta Young is playing that gives her much agency or vibrancy or vivaciousness. Beyond being pretty, she does so little to draw Dudley to her. Never is there a moment where there is something that is convincingly alluring to an angel who seems to have legitimately seen it all (Dudley's history spans thousands of years, apparently).

And if the whole point of the movie is for Dudley to help Henry, to show him the life he's been missing, the life he should be leading, the film never effectively gives us that progression for Henry. When Henry comes around, it's seemingly not of his own volition or awareness, and there's no grand heart-swell of Henry rekindling with Julia or finding the joy of parenthood. It's way too subtle and understated, in part Niven's incredibly reserved performance, and in part a script that didn't clearly plan its path efficiently or effectively.

Cary Grant is at his most congenial in this film, and he carries it on his back far more than he should have to, given how clear the pathway is for the story to walk on its own.