Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story

An evangelical biography of the firebrand reporter, feminist and philanthropist Dorothy Day (Kelly, persuasive): in 1933, following her conversion, she co-founded The Catholic Worker with Peter Maurin (Sheen), an eccentric philosopher. The film opens in Greenwich Village, 1917, where Dorothy boozes with anarchists, communists and Eugene O'Neill, and argues journalistic priorities at The Call. But as the opening credit ('A Paulist Picture') and the end-list of 'thank-yous' (including the Conrad Hilton Foundation) testify, the makers are more interested in her later mission to bring Christ into the lives of the poorest and most dejected of New York's Lower East Side. The first hour, 1917-33, rushes through too much placard-waving social history, rendered in nicely composed but familiar umbra washes. The second deals at tedious length with Day's conflicting commitment to the poor, her daughter and the paper.