Souls in Conflict

'Conflict Of Souls' has three story threads about typically English characters who find God after attending a Billy Graham mission at Haringay in 1954. It tries hard but keeps stopping to preach and the actors all look like they would rather be doing something else and apart from stock shots and one scene in a churchyard, the whole thing is rather studio-bound. The script is poor and the situations a little too contrived. (Everyone reads the newspaper headlines about Billy Graham aloud in order that a conversation about God can begin.) And the Christians who become converted do so a little too easily and don't ask any questions or understand their motives and they are all a little too twee. Billy Graham is featured delivering a dynamite sermon and you can feel his passion and feeling for his subject – but that makes the other characters look even wimpier than they are. If I were a Christian I would want to shout it from the rooftops like Billy Graham and tell everyone about the benefits I felt from being Christian – instead the converts in this film all drift around all moon-faced, not helped by the garish colour photography, and say they don't really understand, but then I suppose it is meant for an audience who are already worshippers and just want a feeling of comfort. "Wiretapper" took a better approach and "Two A Penny" had Cliff Richard and Dora Bryan, but it does provide a look at a kind of England that no longer exists.