The Great Heart is a 1938 short film (11 minutes).
It's about the life of Father Damien
, the 19th century priest who ministered to the residents/prisoners on the Hawaiian leper colony of Molokai, until he caught leprosy himself, eventually dying of the illness aged only 49. Father Damien, an idealistic young Catholic priest, arrives in the Kingdom of Hawaii to minister to the natives. Becoming aware of the leper colony on Molokai, Father Damien goes to minister to the residents, something that even most priests won't due because leprosy is believed to be highly contagious, which is why the leper colony exists in the first place. (Later research would show that it isn't.)
Father Damien continues to minister to the lepers on Molokai, who live in filth and squalor. When the Hawaiian government closes off access to the colony Father Damien elects to stay there and continue to improve the lives of the lepers, helping them build clean, neat homes instead of crumbling shacks, leading Catholic services, stamping out alcoholism. However, tragedy strikes when Father Damien himself is infected with leprosy.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – History:
- It's said that Father Damien "changed the world's viewpoint on lepers." In fact the leper colony on Molokai continued to be quarantined for another eighty years after his death, with residents not allowed off the island until 1969.
- It's implied that the whole island was a leper colony. In fact the leper colony was on one peninsula, isolated from the rest of Molokai by a high mountain range.
- Badass Preacher: Father Damien of Molokai, working his ass off, selflessly serving the people of the leper colony right up until he sickens and dies of the disease.
- Biopic: A short one about the life and ministry of Father Damien of Molokai.
- The Faceless: None of the faces of the lepers are shown. This is probably to save money on makeup, but also functions as Nothing Is Scarier.
- Flipping the Table: The lepers of Molokai have only one escape from their misery: a homemade still. Father Damien wrecks their still, flips the table over in the sad little hut where the lepers go to get drunk, then burns the whole hut down.
- Good Shepherd: Father Damien, who ministers to his people, and also builds a whole community, with tidy houses and clean streets and a fresh water supply.
- Mighty Whitey: Latter-day historians have noted that narratives of Father Damien tend to act like he did everything by himself, and that's certainly true of this film. A young Damien wonders at the "savage" traditions of the Hawaiians. He finds the colony of Molokai to be a "horrid place of degradation", and, seemingly all by himself, works to build a better, cleaner colony. While the Molokai colony was by all accounts pretty bad and Father Damien did work hard to improve it, the lepers also helped themselves.
- Narrator: As with many biographical/documentary short films of this era, there is no dialogue, but instead a narrator telling the whole story as the film plays.
- Nothing Is Scarier: As a horrified Father Damien looks on his first leper in Hawaii, the narrator says "there is no face". Almost none of the lepers in the movie show their faces.
- Oh, Crap!: After 11 years on Molokai Father Damien realizes that he has contracted leprosy when he looks down at his foot bath and realizes he has badly scalded his foot in too-hot water...and he had to look down because he's lost feeling in his foot, a sure sign of the onset of leprosy. (This actually happened.)
- Starts with Their Funeral: Or rather, the return of Father Damien's body to Belgium in 1936.
