I have a friend and fellow graduate of a one-time missionary school held in an Orthodox Monastery in California. This friend reminded me of an old movie list that he has recently decided to resurrect for the salvation of his own soul and those of his immediate circle in memory of the former Abbot who authored the list, Fr. Herman Podmoshensky. I offer the list here in memory of the same Abbot, whose love and selfless devotion birthed in so many of us the need to feed our own souls along with our spirits.
May this list of old time favorites help spark your memory of a time when Hollywood was less besotted with entertainment that merely titillated but never transformed, a time when Tinseltown had a moral backbone and a heart of gold.
Saint Paisius Missionary School Must See Movie List
Wuthering Heights
Les Miserables
Sea Wolf
Call of the Wild
Young Tom Edison
Edison the Man
Angel on My Shoulder
The Bishop’s Wife
1942
San Fransisco, 1938
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Song of Bernadette
Seargent York
Devil at Four O’clock
Song to Remember
Red Danube
Mancharian Candadate
Picture of Dorian Grey
The Heiress
A Christmas Carol, 1951, Alastair Sim Moby Dick
Great Expectations
Oliver Twist
David Copperfield
Tale of Two Cities
Martin Chuzzlewit
Captain Courageous
Tom Brown’s School Days
To Each His Own
It’s a Wonderful Life
That Hamilton Lady
Hamlet, Mel Gibson
Boy’s Town
Men of Boy’s Town
Camille, Greta Garbo
Anna Karenena, Garbo
Little Women, 1933, 1948
Fighting Father Brown
Meet John Doe
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
You Can’t Take It With You
Pride and Prejudice
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Johnny Belinda
Operas:
Othelo
Boris Gudinov
Eugene Onegin
Khovanschina
Like Mendicant Monks... 
Only one gin? Why not two gins? Eugene either needs to jump in and to get both feet wet, or to go back to being a teetotaler…
Haha. Eugene pronounces his last name “O-NYE-GIN” and I am sure he drinks far more than two gins, whenever he drinks gin and not vodka.
I know. 😀 The joke never gets old, and the spelling needs to be fixed, as Dostoyevsky’s name has been fixed from “Dostoevsky”. 😉
Well… folks can either fix the English transliterated spelling, or they can just learn how to pronounce the Cyrillic alphabet which was a) designed for the sounds, and b) has far less spelling variants than English does.
I was reminded of this just this morning with my son’s phonics lesson in which he was to list words that all had the long u sound, but were spelled ew, u-e, ue and two other ways that I cannot recall at the moment. In the words of my former Chinese neighbor, “This crazy for the people.”
Love the list, but would also loved to have seen more exquisite operas… and the sublime music which is the whole point !!!!
Nice list, plan adopting for family movie night. Btw, answered you over on the yahoo group for CNY. Enjoying your blog. Thanks.
Yeah! Glad this is inspiring a family movie night for you. Movies need to be used as a communal teaching experience for kids and not simply as a way to babysit the kids: https://mendicantmonks.org/2013/09/22/murdering-our-children/. Glad you enjoy the blog.