A traveling handyman (Sidney Poitier) becomes the answer to the prayers of nuns who wish to build a chapel in the desert.The general idea of this film, a traveling handyman who helps nuns build a church despite not being Catholic, is alright. Not great, but alright. What really elevates it is the casting of Sidney Poitier. He could read a phone book and it would be an amazing performance. So although this is not his best-known film, it is still remembered today because of his presence.A sequel, "Christmas Lilies of the Field", was made in 1979 for television in which Homer Smith (now played by Billy Dee Williams), returns and is "convinced" to build a kindergarten for a group of orphans and runaways whom the sisters have taken in. Now, I don't know anything about this and suspect it is terrible. But Williams has been an under-appreciated actor, so maybe I should seek it out.

Homer Smith (Sidney Poitier) stops at a convent in the Arizona desert to get some water for his car on his way to the west coast and find some work. Mother Maria (Lilia Skala) leads four other Germanic Catholic nuns. They think he's been sent by God. With low funds, he decides to work a day for money. She sends him up to fix the roof. He does two days' work but when he tries to get paid, Mother Maria quotes the Bible, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." The nuns have no money and Homer is convinced to do more work. Eventually, he builds a chapel for the nuns and their poor Mexican migrant worshipers.This is what faith-based movies should aim for. It is compelling. It is funny. Homer and Mother Maria are a funny comedy duo. At its core, this is powerful message of faith and goodness. Poitier wins the Oscar, the first competitive award for an African-American.

I saw LotF when it was first released when I was just 11 years old and I loved it then. Over the past 50 years I've seen it about once every 10 years or so, including just now. Each time it seems to get better and better, the mark of a true classic film. The performances, the story, the production, all are first rate. Others have commented on the remarkable exchange, when Smith's boss calls him "Boy" and Smith handles it by tossing it right back at him. Interestingly enough, this exchange is mirrored later in the film when Smith angrily calls Mother Maria "Hitler." It was a careless remark on his part, but her pain was evident. But did she call her attorney and sue? No, she handled it exactly like he did, when he was being bossy on the chapel construction site, she threw the Hitler word right back at him - with a smile. Well done!A film for the ages, and for all ages (and faiths). See it again.

Before the serious part of the Review, this film contains probably the first on-camera use of "whatever," so prevalent among today's "mean girls," spoken by the Mother Superior.•• Not only is the cinematography B&W beautiful, showing the dunderheaded Instagram narcissists of today as Zuckerburgs using the internet to find girls, and the Poitier performance Oscar-worthy - deserved - for its perfect pitch of old-southern- black'ery that never quite breaches cliché' and a black man with modern aspirations, it serves as a a Crystal Ball vision 50-years forward to what we have today politically - with the clash of Euro-Black-Latino integration and a black man leading the amalgam. Add to that the uneasy Baptist-Catholic traditions, the agnostic, the entitled white "hey boah (boy)" business owner, latinos looking for work in the building trades, etc., and we see exactly what exists today, with a black man actually providing the leadership, if somewhat unwillingly at first, prodded by a zealot. In a sense, one sees all that's "bad" about America thrown into a filmed pot (plot) in the arid Southwest to combine to make the finest Louisiana gumbo one can imagine - the genius of the American Experiment for all its contentious nonsense and prefab prejudice. The film even presages the rise of Austrian nuns 2-years later as an entertainment motif in "The Sound of Music." And yet, for its themes, it emerges in the milieu of "It's A Wonderful Life," "Miracle on 34th Street," and "White Christmas" somehow. It's title? From the Bible, Matthew 6.Amazing. A must-see for true film'ophiles. An under-sung classic.