THE CURÉ OF ARS, TV Movie production story

 

EWTN’s TV Movie

THE CURÉ OF ARS

An Adventure in Catholic Film Production

It’s always a special event in the life of a director when he is commissioned to work on a new film, so you can imagine my excitement when the email came through from my executive producer, John Elson that Doug Keck has signed off a TV movie to be made about the Curé of Ars. My brief from EWTN was to make a biopic on the life of St John Vianney that shows him as the true hero he is, a film that could inspire young men to come forward and try their vocation to the priesthood.

Jean-Marie Baptist Vianney

In some quarters, there is a tendency to regard St. John Vianney as just a fierce hellfire and brimstone preacher who attacked local dances and taverns, had them closed down, forbade people from working on a Sunday, was very strict and forbidding, and who was probably under the influence of Jansenism.  However, this is far from the true story of this fascinating saint. As I researched the life of St. Jean-Marie Baptised Vianney, a different picture emerged: one of a very deeply caring priest who was exceptionally devout but at the same time had a great sense of humour and was very humble. These, among his many qualities, were essential keys to understanding him. This is how Billy Gurney, the actor who played St John Vianney in the film, would portray him as a holy man who would not take himself too seriously and yet take the priesthood very seriously. To help realize Vianney’s story, I had the American West Coast screenwriter Trina Smolen as co-writer.

Vianney sees the dissipation in Ars for the first time

In 1818 St John Vianney first arrived in Ars, a village of 240 souls; the place was, like so many French villages of the post-Revolution and Napoleonic Wars era, destitute. The church had been abandoned during the Revolution and was falling into decay. The people were impoverished, and their only solace was drinking and dancing; this led the men to spend their meagre wages in the taverns, often leaving their families starving. 

Dancing in Ars

Young men and women attended wild dances that Vianney described as events that would shame the pagans, leading to children being born out of wedlock, causing more misery and mouths to feed. Many children, especially little girls, were abandoned in the countryside. Vianney set to work to save Ars and its people; however, he met with stiff resistance, especially from the innkeepers and those who benefited from cheap labour in the fields. But slowly, little by little, he won the people back to the Catholic faith; he confronted the innkeepers and preached strong sermons; a sick society needs powerful medicine. The devil knew that the Curé of Ars was one of his most formidable adversaries on earth and tried to scare St John Vianney off. However, Vianney knew that whenever the devil, or the Grappin, as Vianney would call him, was angry, a major sinner would convert.  

Recreating the haunting scene was fun, with plates, candles, and chairs flying around the room. However, it took Ross Yeandle, our cinematographer, colourist, and VFX specialist, the best part of a week in post-production to paint out the wires and blowing machine digitally.

Perhaps one of St John Vianney's most formidable weapons in bringing the people back to the faith were his sermons, which were always deeply compelling and spiritual and often focused on the Blessed Sacrament. Vianney was a very sacramental priest and became a great confessor; in later life, he would spend over sixteen hours a day in the Confessional. He could read people's souls when necessary and help people confess their sins. There were also many miracles attributed to him; however, when Blessed Pauline Jericho gave him a relic of St Philomena, and from then on, he modestly attributed these miracles to her.

Production Phase - Cast and Crew – Brining the story of the Cure of Ars to life

An important task of any filmmaker is to put in place the right personnel for the production, find locations, etc. Early in the development phase, I contacted the Sanctuary at Ars to introduce myself. They were invaluable and offered the use of Vianney’s actual rooms and his pulpit as locations. There are a large group of re-enactors that often perform pageants to celebrate the life of St John Vianney in Ars under the directorship of Marie-Cecile du Manoir, and this, together with authentic costumes and local Ars extras, made filming actually in Ars very attractive. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, but how would we get the English cast and crew together with equipment, costumes, and props across the English Channel and on to Eastern France? Flying or going by train turned out to be prohibitively expensive. The only solution was to buy a second-hand 19-seat mini-bus and put racks for luggage on the roof. David Slater, the father of the actress who played Pauline Jericot, adapted the bus; the idea would be to re-sell the bus at the end of filming. There was a new crew to work with, and I was surprised by the amount of interest there was in this production; we needed a Director of Photography, and we were delighted to sign on the vastly experienced Ross Yeandle, who had worked on many feature films over the last thirty years. 

The mini-but that took the Actors and Crew from
England to Ars and back together with
equipment, props, costumes.

In May 2024, we all assembled in a car park near Gatwick Airport and boarded what turned out to be our faithful old but cramped bus, headed for the channel tunnel and Le Shuttle, the freight train that would take us under the channel to France. Many of us were on the road for at least twenty hours. We arrived late in Ars and had dinner at the Providence. Being late for our meals would be a common occurrence, however, the sisters who looked after the Providence never complained and were always very helpful. The Providence is a pilgrim’s hospice, originally set up by St John Vianney himself as a girls school and orphanage. Pilgrims to Ars can stay there at a reasonable rate. EWTN had sent us Betty Pilco-Perez, a French speaker as our script coordinator and slate/clapperboard operator and it was good to meet up her again. French actress, Camille du Manoir was to be the first assistant director and production coordinator. She was invaluable in helping to convey my notes to up eighty French extras we had on set on occasions.

It was an unsettled Summer in Eastern France; however, providentially, we only had rain during one afternoon of filming, and we managed to move this scene, the dance, into a barn. We needed to make two trips to Ars and film when the bulk of the actors and extras in Ars were available. In total, we filmed twelve days in Ars, France, and four in Cornwall, England, at the Carmelite Convent at Lanherne in St Morgan.

Ross Yeandle the DoP with film camera

Post Production

 After the sixteen days of filming, which took place over five weeks, we moved into Post-production. This final phase can take the longest in any film production, which was the case for us. We also had a docudrama version to complete. The docudrama version, called St John Vianney - Confessor of Souls, is a shorter version of the film with added expert interviews. I worked remotely with the editor, Mike Pike, only meeting up twice over the editing program, and this all went remarkably smoothly.

With crew filming on location in France

Ross also colour-graded the film; although it was shot digitally, he shot some footage with an actual film camera, as the film gives him a more historical feel to the colour, and he adjusted the digital colour accordingly. Once again, Adam Tucker produced an excellent score; as usual, we discussed the various themes, agreed that a folkie feel would suit, and worked on two songs together. I wrote the lyrics that Adam set to music, a remarkable feat in its own right. I suggest the feel of French composer Georges Bizet’s L’Arlesienne suit would be a good starting point for some of the music. Adam produced an excellent original piece of music using this as a springboard. 

The Curé of Ars TV movie is a co-production between EWTN and St Michael the Archangel Productions. We would like to say a very big thank you to the members of CUT and the Crusade of Prayer who are also part of StMA Productions for their help in prayer and also financially to bring the production to a successful completion.

The Cure of Ars TV movie will be broadcast on May 31st, the one-hundredth anniversary of St John Vianney’s canonization, at 8 pm ET in North America and 2 pm British Time in Europe. There is also an encore at 9 pm British Time in Europe on June 1st.

Stefano Mazzeo

Director/Producer/Screenwriter – The Cure of Ars.

24th Prayer Crusade

 

24th Prayer Crusade

For the conclave

 

  

That the Cardinals my elect a holy Pope

 

 

  

The daily prayer of a Prayer Crusader

O glorious St ...(insert your saint here)... pray for us

And for those in the public sphere
Especially those influenced by Satan's lies
May the Lord touch their hearts and bring them to repent.

And walk upon the path of truth and temperance.

O Subjects of the heavenly realm pray also for all led astray.

Pray especially that the Conclave that the Cardinals will

elect a holy Pope

And pray for me, a sinner

 

Our Father

Hail Mary

Glory Be

St. Michael, the archangel, defend us in the day of battle, be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the Devil,

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host.

By the power of God

Thrust down to hell Satan and all wicked Spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us

 

 

The Media's Conclave

 

The Media and the Conclave.

The media of all colours are interested in this Conclave like no other before. All the Main Stream Media outlets have been spewing out pages and pages of information and comment, this is great exposure for the Church, especially after the record numbers converting to the Catholic Church, well since the end of Vatican Two anyway. However, it is clear that they don’t want an orthodox Cardinal to become pope and will probably give him more negative press than they gave Benedict when he was elected. Do you remember the ‘Panzer Pope’ epithet, often used by the secular press after Benedict’s election as Pope? That was in 2005. Any conservative Pope that emerges on the loggia, probably later this week, will have to brace himself for a continual onslaught of thinly veiled abuse, sarcasm, even foul language in some areas of the media and entertainment industry, especially on You Tube.

I saw the Conclave film recently as it is a huge secular comment on the election of a pope, and it was bad. I was expecting at least a well acted film with a strong plot and cinematography, alas even these elements did not stand up. This film’s main job was to push the ‘message,’ as some You Tube commentators call it. From the outset it was clear that this film would be crafted in a certain secular way, it’s not a religious film there is very little faith on display and Wikipedia describes it as a political thriller. Its attempts to manipulate the narrative was transparent to anyone who has seen it all before, but perhaps this film could not be forgiven for descending into pure pantomime with the frontrunner for the Traditionalist/conservative wing, Cardinal Tedesco, being depicted as a nasty bombastic racist. In the end after suffering a lot of nasty intrigue, (and a terrorist explosion) the Cardinals picked the only ‘nice’ guy there, who took Innocent as his papal name, and turned out to me a genetic woman!

Pray for the next Pope that he will be a faithful servant of the Church and Jesus Christ, and not be more interest in looking good to the secular media.

By Prayer Crusader St Philomena

Catholic revival taking place

Good News for Easter

It is perhaps sometimes a little disconcerting to Christians why we have to be so negative about some aspects of the Modern world and modern life; why can’t we just love all the time, live and let live, etc?

However, the true path to Christ is the one he took Himself, the path that led to Calvary, for Jesus was not hung on the cross because he said live and let live; but was crucified because He harangued the Pharisees, called them hypocrites and whited sepulchres because he taught the truth. Today, we have our versions of Pharisees; they could be virtue-signalling politician or actors, producers, TV presenters, filmmakers, and even some leaders in the Church. They could the Alphabet People who on one hand cry victimhood whilst on the other spout all sorts of nasty verbiage to attack and pull down anyone who stands up them. They don’t like the truth and will say, “What is truth,” echoing Pontius Pilate.

But let’s finish this Easter post with some good news, first the UK Supreme Court has ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. With the judges saying that the “concept of sex is binary.” And the second piece of good news this Easter is that a massive Catholic revival is taking place. There are reports all over the press that what is being dubbed as the Quiet Catholic Revival (couldn’t find anything on the BBC of course). The National Catholic Register has a report that the revival is Lay-Driven, Mostly by Young Men, but news is filtering in from everywhere that there is a Catholic revival taking place. Archbishop Mark O’Toole reported that in his diocese of Cardiff-Menerva has seen a 100-percent increase in conversions compared to 2024. The Archdioceses of Southwark has 450 converts and Westminster Cathedral will baptise over 500 at the Easter Vigil.

As everyone knows, at CUT we also make films, and as the modern secular film industry is failing with record lows in cinema attendance, mainly due to huge Hollywood flops like the latest woke live-action version of Snow White, the time is right for us and is the ideal opportunity to bring to the world of cinema and TV good faithful Catholic films, modern society is crying out for good authentic movies. Don’t forget to support our latest film inactive and pledge to the film project.

Please join us, become Prayer Crusader and help us make faithful Catholic films with St Michael the Archangel Productions.

Join the UK’s Catholic film production company - St Michael the Archangel Productions

clearvisioncatholics@gmail.com

The BBC an Islamic TV station?

 

The BBC is accused of Islamic Propaganda for using the Language of Fundamentalism

We have written many posts on how the main stream media has been ignoring the plight of Christians who are being persecuted and murdered by Islamic extremists throughout the world. We highlighted in our recent post Mainstream Media ignoring the persecution of Christians that in Nigeria alone over 50,000 Christian were brutally murdered in the last 14 years by Islamist militants. And we wonder why this is not news? Could it be that the Legacy media have been so thoroughly infiltrated by Islamises and Islamic thought that they will rarely comment Islamic oppression of Christians.

            One of the biggest offenders on the lack of Islamic terror reporting is the BBC and their bias towards Islam has become all too apparent these last few weeks, as Lent has coincided with Ramadan. The BBC has virtually ignored Lent and had special programming for Ramadan. It appears that with the constant referring to Iftars and Eid celebrations this year the BBC has created and entirely uncritical “hype” around Islam turning it into a chic trend. Now this is very dangerous if we consider what the BBC and their contemporaries have done for the Alphabet People and the acceptance and subsequent converts to that life style. (Perhaps no one has mentioned to the BBC that the Religion of Peace people throw the Alphabet People off roofs).

            The latest BBC bout Islamic propaganda arouse when they published an article using a term that Muslim extremist use for converts by calling them ‘reverts’, therefore, asserting that everyone is a Muslim already when they are born and therefore people don’t ‘convert’, to Islam they ‘revert’ to it. This we understand is not a main stream view, however it is used by the large Muslim fundamentalist factions – and now also by the BBC.

The Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, a former security minister, said the use of the term was “sectarianism” and that it had “no place on the BBC". Tugendhat, has a master’s degree in Islamic studies from Cambridge University. “Calling converts ‘reverts’ is ideology, not fact,” he said. “It’s claiming we’re all ‘originally’ Muslim and those who convert are rediscovering their faith. That’s Islamist propaganda and has no place on the BBC.”

            This is just one of the many reasons why we campaign that Catholics and everyone of good faith should give up the TV, stop paying the licence fee, and why we want the BBC to be abolished.

By Prayer Crusader St Philomena

Netflix's Adolescence and misrepresentation

 

Adolescence

And the Manosphere

Why is the Government involved in this fictional TV series?

Netflix’s Adolescent 

Adolescence is a Nexflix TV series about a young adolescent boy who kills a young girl because he has been radicalised by right-wing online social media platforms. From the description of the programme, one would think that it is a timely and important intervention by this streaming service to warn about online indoctrination. However, in reality, Adolescence is a work of social engineering that twists the narrative away from what’s actually happening. Is it, in fact, a reversal of the truth?

Streaming services like Netflix etc, often produce a lot of nasty stuff. However, we all know that there have been attacks on young girls by males, young and old, recently, and they are more than often from the immigrant community. However, this programme has a young white boy as the murdering antagonist, the premise of the programme is that far-right extremist social media sites are radicalising young white boys, there have been questions asked in Parliament (obviously planted), the Prime Minister has met with the producers and has said that the government will order this programme to be shown in all schools! If this is not Agitprop of the worst kind, then I don’t know what it is.

The boy is from a white married family (the place least likely to produce this type of behaviour) however, the producers admit the programme is based on Hassan Sentamu and his murder of a 15-year girl. And it gets even more dishonest for while the show was being made last summer Axel Rudakabana went on his stabbing spree in Southport, killing three little girls. At the time, we were told the perpetrator was Welsh. However, news soon got out who the real perpetrator was. This mismanagement and dishonesty led to a riot.

Could Adolescent have been made to push an agenda? One, that the white mesosphere is laced with toxic masculinity and therefore needs to be in some way neutered, shut down, and silenced. Two, that the government wants to legislate against social media outlets who are just conservative blogs and podcasters who are telling the truth that the Legacy media are not reporting and covering up?

By Prayer Crusader St Philomena

Is The Western World Controlled by the Radical Left?

 

The Pyramid of Influence

There is a tendency to believe that once a country has a Right of Centre, or Conservative in the UK, or Republican in the USA that we do in fact have a Right Wing/Conservative government and that they are in fact conservative in all areas of policy. However, is this in fact not the case , and is this actually impossible in a modern Western society? If, for example, a politician actually states that he is opposed to any of the modern “liberal” trends he will be roundly denounced by virtually all except the most conservative social media podcaster. If we take a look the reaction to J D Vance’s Munich speech. Almost every single media outlet with the exception of the Telegraph denounced him. Therefore, all politicians, actors, writers, academics and broadcasters, in fact all celebrates, anyone in the public eye will find it virtually impossible to proclaim traditional family values without being attacked. There are only degrees at which the media outlets will engage in these attacks. For example the far radical left (which are actually considered main stream) The independent, The Guardian The BBC, Channel Four etc will actually engage in the hounding and “shaming” of anyone they consider to have views or have spoken out for traditional values.

Modern “liberal” core values run through all levels society, and every strata within these levels, be it the human resources department of a company, to all the media outlets in every platform, for these govern everything. Now the Churches especially the protestant churches, even the Catholic Church are struggling to remain on an orthodox course.

Therefore, the premise of this blog post is that the “liberal” elite lead the people, this elite have put in place certain teachings the percolate down from these few “liberal” players who have managed to achieve positions of influence over the decades, and there is now a pyramided of influence. Virtually all the people at the top 5% of the pyramid of influence are of a social justice culturally Marxist persuasion, and most of the people in the lower echelons of the pyramid follow the elite.

The people most likely to oppose and see through the culturally left leaning media, human resources, academic and political elite etc are committed Christians of a traditional persuasion; and therefore they most likely to be a target of the elite and their followers. Their followers are the poor influenced souls that the likes of you and I meet every day.