(Senior Warden’s Corner article submission for Emmanuel Episcopal Church May Newsletter)
One of my favorite old-time movies is “Angels with Dirty Faces” with James Cagney and Pat O’Brien. Cagney is Rocky Sullivan, a career criminal, and O’Brien as Jerry Connoly, is a Catholic Priest.
The movie starts with Sullivan and Connolly as boyhood best friends born and raised in poverty in the streets of New York. One day, they both decide to go to the train yards and heist some pens to sell. The police discover them in the act and a chase prevails, but since Sullivan cannot run as fast as his friend Connolly, he is captured by the police and sent to reform school. From that point on, Sullivan (Rocky) enters a world where he is surrounded by criminals and begins his own life of crime.
After several criminal acts, Rocky goes to prison and once he is released, he returns to his old neighborhood where he visits his old friend Jerry, who is now a Priest.
The brother-like bond between them still exists and Rocky decides to help Jerry with a gang of boys he is trying to steer away from a life of crime. Rocky obliges in his own way, but the boys are enamored by Rocky’s life of crime, tough persona, and his ability to leave poverty behind.
Towards the end of the movie, Rocky is once again in jail but now convicted of murder. He is sentenced to death and on the day of his execution, Father Jerry visits his longtime friend for the last time. Father Jerry asks Rocky to do one last thing for him, to protect the gang of boys from a life of crime, and that is once he is in the execution room, Rocky would plead for his life, showing fear, and turning “yellow” so he would no longer be the gang’s role model. Rocky immediately says no, that his toughness is the last thing he had and would not give it up. Father Jerry is persistent and tells him to have a heart for the boys. Rocky replies that he lost his heart years ago once he first went to jail.
Father Jerry walks Rocky to the execution room, still stoic, still hard and bids his friend good-bye. But once Rocky enters the room, he begins to cry and scream, pleading for his life, grabbing onto the radiator so not to be seated in the chair. Father Jerry prays as he cries himself, thanking Rocky for this humility, grace and concern for the boys as his Act of Redemption, sacrificing his defiant character.
The movie ends with Father Jerry visiting the boys at their “hangout”. They asked Father Jerry if what was printed in the papers were true – did Rocky actually turn “yellow”. Father quietly responded that all of it is true. He then tells the boys, “Let’s go pray for a boy who couldn’t run as fast as I could”.
That last line always stood with me. Just one act, one incident, forged a life of mishaps. Many times, we define a person by just one incident. It becomes their label, their definition. When friends and family are not yielding, that person continues in that fashion. A movie that is based in love and friendship, reminds us of Paul’s writing in Corinthians that “Love does not keep a record of wrongs”. I am also reminded of when Jesus is asked by Peter how many times he should forgive someone who sins, Jesus responds “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times”; determining not a set number of times, but an infinite one.
Viewers of the movie question whether Rocky’s terror at the end was genuine or whether he deliberately sacrificed his reputation to save the boys from idolizing crime. James Cagney later said the interpretation should be left to the viewers. I believe it was Rocky’s last show of grace, saving others in his last moments.
Redemption and forgiveness, gotta love it.
Leave a Reply