Cabrini (#524)

I apologize in advance for the words I write about this movie.  Thanks to my failing eyesight and worsening hearing problem, coupled with a movie that was filmed in dark places mostly, had difficult to read subtitles and half of the dialogue in Italian, I think I probably missed a lot of important information during its two and a half hour duration.  Despite all that, I thought CABRINI was a very good biopic, or docudrama or based-on-a-true-story (or whatever they want to call it). It is obviously the story of Francesca Cabrini, an Italian-born nun who is charged by the pope to go to America and help the poor children and immigrants.  Mother Cabrini and the few nuns who accompany her arrive in New York City to find the Italian immigrant population living in the ghetto-like community of Five Points, hated and vilified by everyone, including other immigrant minorities.  Cursed as “dago,” ”wop“ and worse, she gets no support from the Archbishop and even less from her fellow-Italian immigrants, but continues to try to care for the children, of whom she says, “the rats have it better.”  Her plight and efforts are supported by a newspaper reporter, and finally, her superiors offer her land owned by the Jesuits north of the city.  She is feisty and persistent and faces obstacle after obstacle, foremost among them, the mayor of New York City.  She prevails through all of this despite a fatal illness and eventually creates the finest hospital in the city and goes on to establish a worldwide network of hospitals, supposedly the largest charitable and most successful organization in the world.  It was well-acted and well filmed and I was shocked to see in the credits that David Morse played the archbishop and John Lithgow, the mayor, neither of whom I recognized thanks to my eyesight and the dark settings.  I was pleased to see that 91% of critics and 98% of audiences gave this one a thumbs up.