Lilies of the Field

Delivery Time: 7 to 15 Working Days Format: DVD

Featuring an Academy AwardÂ(r)-winning performance by Poitier*, and nominated** for four additional OscarsÂ(r), including Best Picture, Lilies of the Field is a funny, sentimental, charming and uplifting film (The Hollywood Reporter). Homer Smith (Sidney Poitier), an itinerant handyman, is driving through the Arizona desert when he meets five impoverished nuns. Stopping to fix their leaky farmhouse roof, Homer discovers that not only will the Mother Superior not pay him for the job, but she also wants him to build their chapelfor free! Hesitant at first, Homer soon finds himself single-handedly raising the chapel and the financing. But although hewill not receive a monetary reward, Homer knows that when his work is done, he'll leave that dusty desert town a much better place than when he found it. *1963: Actor **1963: Supporting Actress (Skala), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography (B&W)
Sidney Poitier won an Oscar for this endearing movie about a handyman who thinks he's just passing through a little town in New Mexico, and ends up staying awhile to build a chapel for a cluster of German-speaking nuns. The renowned actor is highly entertaining in his combative exchanges with Lilia Skala, playing a Mother Superior who survived Hitler and makes no bones about bullying the goodhearted, itinerant worker into doing more and more for her. The film has an ambling, easygoing style with several memorable moments, not least of all is Poitier leading his holy hostesses through verses of the gospel song "Amen." Lilies is directed by the late Ralph Nelson, a pioneering director of live television who also made a number of popular feature films with notable performances (Jackie Gleason in Requiem for a Heavyweight, Cary Grant in Father Goose, Cliff Robertson in Charly) in the 1960s and 1970s. --Tom Keogh