Friday night we watched the first movie of the year for my family’s 2017 Friday Night Film Club (FNFC). The feature presentation was a 1948 John Ford western, The Three Godfathers, starring John Wayne. A film reviewer for World Magazine named this as one of his favorite Christmas movies, so I thought we’s give it a try. Brown Bear Daughter tried, but she only made it through about three-fourths of the movie. I think she missed the best part. She said that she doesn’t like westerns and that this one in particular was “boring.” I found it a bit hokey and both over and under-acted at times, but essentially solid with some good and memorable scenes. The movie included lots of Biblical allusions and emphasized Christian themes of redemption, mercy, and restorative justice.

The basic plot is that a trio of bank robbers from Texas are on the run from the local sheriff and his posse in Arizona when they encounter a dying mother who asks them to be joint godfathers to her newborn infant. The three desperadoes try to care for the baby after the mother dies, and they also continue to run from justice–across desert, mountains, and salt flats, an unmerciful and unrelentingly harsh terrain that tries both their endurance and their souls.

In a movie with such a plot made nowadays the three outlaws would be both worse and better than they are in The Three Godfathers. They would probably be more violent and more blood-stained in any modern movie, and at the same time, they might be portrayed as modern-day Robin Hoods who deserve to get away with their ill-gotten gains. In this story, the three thieves are plain old bank robbers, dishonest and out to take what they can get, but they only escape with a small bag of cash while shooting off their guns into the air. They definitely pay for their sins. One of the three robbers, “the kid”, is shot in the shoulder, and he has an especially hard time making it through the desert.

Nevertheless, caring for the baby awakens the outlaws to their responsibilities to God and to their fellowmen, and they end up following instructions from the Bible and sacrificing themselves for the child. I thought it was a good movie, especially the last part, the part my daughter missed, where everything comes to a head in a dramatic rescue played to perfection by The Duke himself.

The movie was filmed in Death Valley, California, although the setting is supposed to be Arizona. The story is loosely analogous to the story of the wise men in the Bible who traveled across country to find and worship the baby Jesus. If you happen to watch it, let me know what you think.

This coming Friday’s movie for our Friday Night Movie Club will be The King’s Speech (2010), the story of Bertie, or King George VI of Great Britain and his ascension to the British throne.