“Satan Never Sleeps”––An Early Life Lesson
Part of my childhood education came from film. Cinema. Motion pictures. Movies. Whatever you call it.
I remember going to the drive-in before my dad and sister had died, saying, “Daddy, take me to the snake-bar.” And the next morning I awoke confused as to how I got in my own bed when I didn’t even remember falling asleep before the movie ended.
Mom and Me
When it was just Mom and me, we continued going to the drive-in movie. I loved those Friday nights when I got to move to the front seat instead of sit in the backseat. My mother made me ride in the backseat wherever she drove, out of fear for my safety.
Fear was a big factor in my childhood.
Most of the movies I remember portrayed adult problems. Movies like “The Days of Wine and Roses” (a story about alcoholism); ”The Apartment” (a story about the bosses’ serial adultery that takes place in an employee’s apartment); ”Two Women” (a story about a mother and her daughter in war-torn Italy). Each of these films won Academy Awards, which elevated both the actors who portrayed roles and the stories the films captured.
Maybe a dose of other people’s problems enlarged my mother’s perspective on life, somehow helping my mom cope with her own sorrows. I went along for the ride.
Meanwhile, on television, I watched Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver––all family shows showing a different kind of family life than the one I lived. These fabrications added to my confusion.
Movies marked me. Movies added to my informal education. Yet I failed to distinguish truth from fiction, reality from imagination, and lacked understanding that every movie leaves out far more than 2 hours of story-telling can consolidate.
A movie frames and projects images while real life extends far beyond the screen’s edges.
What do movie-goers hope to see reflected in films?
Viewers hope that filmmakers will show audiences something about real life that can contribute to understanding themselves as well as other people in other situations. Whether movies show similar or dissimilar lives and contexts, movies can illuminate and educate beyond personal experience.
One such movie that affected me was based on a book written by Pearl S. Buck, who had earlier won a Pulitzer for her novel The Good Earth. Later, Pearl Buck was the first woman awarded the Nobel prize for literature.
The title of the film Satan Never Sleeps has stayed with me as a kind of overarching explanation for all the evils in the world.
The movie tells a story of 2 Catholic priests as missionaries and a young Chinese girl who each endure Communist tyranny when the government changed hands in China.
Evil wore a face that fit the narrative of the times, corresponding to the prevailing political fears felt around the world. Ravaging tormentors, injustice, loss and trauma descended on the Chinese people as the Communist government sought to subjugate the populace.
Movie-goers could still remember WWII and the dehumanizing atrocities that stained the pages of history.
People can only grasp the nature of evil as it affects individuals. To hear of millions who died does not move anyone in the same way that the death of one person does.
Movies like Saving Private Ryan or Schindler’s List or Unbroken accentuate the sacredness of life. These movies make us care by zooming in on those affected by war, so that as viewers we can recognize personal sacrifices and mourn the loss of life.
Hollywood writers employ their pens to tell stories that people can relate to their own life. Movies should make us feel.
Movie Stars and Their Place in the Heavens
In this 1962 film Satan Never Sleeps, big name movie stars filled the screen. Clifton Webb, William Holden, and France Nuyen (a newcomer) starred.[1] My mother’s second husband did work at France Nuyen’s house in Hollywood when Nuyen and Robert Culp (I Spy TV series) were married. Both signed autographed pictures to give to then star-struck me.
The names and faces of stars change, but public fascination with Hollywood celebrity continues. Magazines at the grocery checkouts capture the faces and stories of the current stars in the celestial realm who portray roles on film. Like the names of those in the movies I noted, faces and names of contemporary stars will fade too.
Call it entertainment, movies that terrify audiences make box office hits. But the movies that affect audiences long after viewing are the ones that expose and confront our fears.
“The remarkable thing about God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.”
Oswald chambers
While the Bible teaches that an unseen enemy (“your adversary the devil”) stalks the hours of every day––a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour [2]––the Bible also says that God never slumbers nor sleeps.
Psalm 121
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.
All these years later, I bring to movie-watching discernment I lacked as a child. Viewed with biblical insight, movies continue to enhance my education.
[1] Satan Never Sleeps, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056447/
[2] 1 Peter 5:8