The Song of Bernadette (1943) on Netflix
Approved19432h 36mBiographyDramaMystery
In 1858 Lourdes, fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous sees a lady dressed in white in the Massabielle grotto. Civil and church authorities question her story as it spreads through Lourdes.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.6/108,525 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
Bernadette Soubirous, fourteen, lives with her family in poverty in Lourdes, France, where her teacher, Sister Vauzou, shames her at school for her slow progress in her studies, which her asthma has caused. One afternoon she fetches firewood with her sister Marie and their friend Jeanne and waits at the Massabielle grotto, where a breeze and shifting light draw her eye and she sees a beautiful lady in white who holds a pearl rosary. Marie tells their mother, and word of it reaches the whole town. Her Aunt Bernarde believes her, though her parents do not. Bernadette keeps visiting the grotto because the lady asked her to, while civil authorities interrogate her and Abbé Dominique Peyramale refuses to get involved.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Song of Bernadette (1943)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Igor Stravinsky was informally approached to write the score and began music for the "Apparition of the Virgin" scene on February 15, 1943, but the studio never gave him a contract; Alfred Newman took over and won an Oscar, and Stravinsky reused his music in the second movement of his Symphony in Three Movements.
- The film invents a romance between Bernadette Soubirous and her real-life friend Antoine Nicolau, who vows to stay unmarried when she enters the convent; no such relationship is documented. It also shows Imperial Prosecutor Vital Dutour (Vincent Price) as anti-religious, though the real Dutour was a devout Catholic who thought Bernadette was hallucinating.
- The film's portrayal of Sister Marie Therese Vauzou is inaccurate: there is no evidence that Vauzou was Bernadette's elementary school teacher, or that the two met at all before Bernadette entered the convent.
