Midway through “Cabrini,” the new movie about Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini and her fiercely determined mission to help New York City’s desperately poor Italian immigrants, there is a tense verbal exchange between the city’s Mayor Gould and Michael Corrigan, its Archbishop.
Corrigan has acknowledged that Mother Cabrini is an intellectually and emotionally strong woman of deep faith who refuses to take no for an answer. He is willing to help her shelter, feed, and clothe the impoverished children of Italian descent at her orphanage, but he has requested that she stay within some guidelines, including not disturbing the city’s general population, especially not pestering them for money.
Mayor Gould (John Lithgow in superb villain mode) is angry at the Archbishop (an excellent David Morse as a reasonable compromiser) and belittles his manhood. Gould’s rant is seething: “So you let a woman push you around. An Italian woman. Is that how you run your church? I’ve got the whole Upper West Side climbing down my throat. They look out their window and what do they see? A wave of brown-skinned filth parading up their streets with a nun as their Pied Piper.”
We’ve gotten to this point because the audacious Cabrini, wonderfully and realistically acted by Cristiana Dell’Anna, was given the chance to carry out charitable works of mercy in New York by Pope Leo XIII. She has insisted that he tell her himself why she can’t be a missionary for the Catholic Church in Asia. The Pope, sweetly played by Italian acting legend Giancarlo Giannini, decides that if she’s so insistent on helping the poor, she will be allowed take some other nuns to New York and help Italian immigrants there. She has been doing charity work in the Lombardy region of northern Italy.
Upon arriving on March 31, 1889 in the wretched Five Points neighborhood of Manhattan, the 39-year-old Cabrini, who had founded her own order in Italy – the Missionary Sisters Of The Sacred Heart Of Jesus – is shocked by what confronts her. The slum is a teeming, dehumanizing cesspool. Every Italian is considered the lowest of the low. Prejudice by the city’s government, including the police, and its white citizens is as rampant as the appalling poverty. Italian immigrants are treated no better than the rats that scurry above ground. In fact, there are orphans who literally live and die below the surface of the crowded streets. If, that is, a menial job as exploited child labor doesn’t kill them first. It’s cheaper and more profitable to pay children with no parents to do a full day’s work.
Many of the Italians in Five Points are willing to work hard, none more so than Mother Cabrini and her team of nuns. The inspirational film, directed by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde and written by Rod Barr, is a chronicle of her mission to open an orphanage and a hospital, and then continue to spread her view of how to treat humanity, especially those who suffer the worst. For much of her time in New York, she was ill. She boldly faced down anti-Italian bigotry and bravely defeated the violence directed against her.
Monteverde and Barr don’t pull any punches regarding what Cabrini overcame in her desire to help others. The odds of surviving Five Points were long. Seemingly insurmountable barriers for advancement were everywhere. We know she loved people. We also recognize that her spiritually is welcoming, not oppressive.
Eventually, Cabrini created charitable institutions throughout the world. The movie focuses on her experiences in New York City, but we are advised that she became one of the smartest and toughest entrepreneurs of the 19th-century. Through sheer willpower, unbridled courage, a loving sense of compassion, and remarkable business skills, the influential Cabrini built an international presence dubbed an “empire of hope.” Numerous establishment figures who invariably went up against her could not hold her back from doing what she set out to do.
As told in the well-made, crisply edited, and superbly acted film, which has expressively beautiful cinematography by Gorka Gomez Andreu, Mother Cabrini’s influence is staggering. Her achievements as a woman in an era that preferred not to elevate females too highly are a bright dose of reality. She became a citizen of her adopted country and was the first saint from the United States.
“Cabrini” was filmed primarily in Buffalo, with production designer Carlos Lagunas utilizing the city’s famed architecture brilliantly. Dozens of locations faced the cameras. The impressive art direction is by C. J. Simpson (supervisor) and Eric Whitney. The Common Council Chambers in Buffalo City Hall fills in for the Italian Senate. The Archbishop’s office is the music room in the American Red Cross building on Delaware Avenue.
Can downtown Buffalo’s Main Street core be Manhattan in the 1890s? Wait until you see it. The astonishing evocation of the vast seething Five Points district was erected in South Buffalo. Landscapes near the Niagara River around Niagara Falls are used for some scenes. Rome, Italy saw cameras for some minimal moments.
“Cabrini” is the best-looking film of the many that have been made in Buffalo. Local artist David Butler, who has worked on a number of area productions, was part of the set decorating team headed by Stephanie Q. Bowen. Butler told me that as the credited Buyer, he “basically treasure-hunted for everything in a scene: lamps, candles, chairs.” Butler continued, saying that he “made paper flowers, things for store windows, children’s toys, jars of period candy, all specific to the era. I loved it. It’s a great way to learn history, too. The biggest part of the film, for me, is that all of the construction, the scene painting – including fake city streets, were all created by local talent.”
Without question, “Cabrini” is the first great movie of 2024. There are few things quite like the power of an Italian opera (“Pagliacci” is heard) to create a mood and help build a bridge to a successful film. “Cabrini” succeeds on every level.