5 Churches Featured in Movies That You Should Visit This Summer
Julie Andrews (left) plays a nun-in-training at a Salzburg convent who decides to marry a father of the seven children, where she’s worked as a nanny, before fleeing the Nazis in the musical “The Sound of Music.” Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox.
NEW YORK — The 93rd edition of the Academy Awards will take place Sunday and it will be a night where a who’s who of Tinseltown’s finest will honor those who stood out in film over the past year.
But movies are about more than just actors and memorable storylines. For many movies, the locations where they are shot serve a real purpose. It can set a mood like nothing can — except possibly a great soundtrack — and is often remembered by audiences just as much as those men and women who starred in the film.
Movies about religion and faith are nothing new to Hollywood. Some of the biggest, both at the box office and in our collective culture, are “The Passion of the Christ”, an Easter film about Jesus’ final days, or “The Exorcist,” which highlights the power of evil and the plight of two priests on a quest to help a possessed girl.
Nonetheless, sometimes the biggest protagonists were churches themselves. Yes, houses of worship that were used as a setting or inspiration in a series of memorable movies over the decades. For example, the infamous baptism scene at the end of “The Godfather” was filmed inside Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, built in 1809, in New York City. The exteriors were filmed at the Church of St. Joachim and St. Anne in the Pleasant Plains section of Staten Island, also in New York.
As the pandemic subsides and travel becomes easier thanks to massive vaccination efforts, here are five lesser-known churches you can visit this summer that were featured in major Hollywood flicks:
1. St. Peter’s Basilica (“Angels and Demons”)
Arguably the most famous church on the planet, St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City is where the pope can be seen giving Mass. It’s also known for its Renaissance architecture built on the site where Roman Catholic tradition holds is the burial site of Saint Peter, an apostle of Jesus and the first Bishop of Rome. It’s the reason why so many popes are also buried there.
The basilica is also a major part of Ron Howard’s 2009 mystery thriller “Angels and Demons” featuring Tom Hanks in the role of scholar Robert Langdon. Howard was not officially granted permission to film there after the movie’s prequel “The DaVinci Code,” written by Dan Brown, caused outrage among many Catholics for its flawed theology and assertions. Howard, nonetheless, wanted to film at the Vatican.
The production team descended upon the Vatican, posing as tourists with hidden cameras, were able to film in the basilica without permission. They then used the footage to create replicas that mirrored the real thing and shot the scenes at Sony’s studios. In addition, the Royal Palace of Caserta Palace, near Naples, Italy, doubled for the inside of the Vatican.
2. Trinity United Methodist Church (“Home Alone”)
The 1990 film “Home Alone” featuring a little boy named Kevin McCallister (played by Macauley Culkin) has become a Christmas staple. Generations of fans have enjoyed the now-classic movie about how Kevin is inadvertently left home alone by his family in their suburban Chicago home while they fly off to Paris for the holidays. They only realize mid-flight that they left him home alone.
This film actually features two churches. The scene where Kevin is seen at church actually involves two locations: The church exteriors, and its nativity scene, were shot at Trinity United Methodist Church in Wilmette, Ill., while the interiors at Grace Episcopal Church just 13 miles away in Oak Park (more of them further down). It’s not clear what faith tradition the McCallister’s are, but Kevin does the sign of the cross, like in the Roman Catholic tradition, before having his solo Christmas Eve dinner right after he booby-trapped his massive home to thwart off two crooks.
3. Grace Episcopal Church
Inside Grace Episcopal Church, visitors will be greeted by ornate design and beautiful stained-glass windows. In addition, a sign greeting visitors tells them all about their “Home Alone” connection. The sign, in part, reads: “Kevin found beautiful music. He found a friend; he helped a friend. He found sanctuary. He found peace.”
4. La Vergne United Methodist Church (“The Graduate”)
The 1967 comedy “The Graduate” tells the story of an aimless recent college graduate Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) involved in a tabu love triangle with an older woman named Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), who successfully seduces him, and her daughter Elaine.
The movie, which won an Oscar for Best Director Mike Nichols, featured a modern church, located in La Vergne, Calif., in a now-famous wedding scene. In it, Braddock pounds on the church balcony window and the newly-married Elaine (Katharine Ross) dumps her husband at the altar to run off with him.
Hoffman has admitted that he felt uneasy about the scene since the church’s minister at the time watched with a scowl on his face. Producer Lawrence Turman, after the church resisted, pleaded that the script, while sexually provocative, “deals with the very issues the church itself should be dealing with in today’s world.” Since then, the church — built in 1961 — has come to embrace its role in the film.
5. Nonnberg Abbey (“The Sound of Music”)
No list of churches would be complete without including a film that won multiple Oscars. “The Sound of Music,” the 1965 musical about an Austrian family that flees the Nazis. The family’s nanny Maria (Julie Andrews) who leaves a convent to eventually marry the family’s patriarch, retired naval officer Captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) and serve as a surrogate mother to his seven children (who also have, it turns out, a knack for singing).
Over the years, the film, among one of the highest grossing in Hollywood history and a winner of five Academy Awards, features scenes shot in the Austrian Alps. In Salzburg, where most of the film was shot, Maria is a nun-in-training (also known as a novitiate) at Nonnberg, which was founded in the eighth century as a Benedictine abbey. St. John’s Chapel inside the abbey is open to the public.
The building is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s just one of the many wonderful sacred locations that have become part of many films we love.
Clemente Lisi is a senior editor and regular contributor to Religion Unplugged. He is the former deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and teaches journalism at The King’s College in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.