Lilies of the Field

Lilies of the Field, a 1963 film adapted from the 1962 novel with the same name by William Edmund Barrett, starring Sidney Poitier, Lilia Skala, Stanley Adams, and Dan Frazer, was adapted by James Poe from the novel. It was produced and directed by Ralph Nelson. The title comes from Matthew 6:27-33 a portion of the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament and its parallel scripture from Luke 12:27-30. It also features an early film score by prolific composer Jerry Goldsmith. It tells the story of an African American itinerant worker who encounters a group of East German nuns, who believe he... has been sent to them by God to build them a new chapel. Homer Smith is an itinerant handyman/jack-of-all-trades who stops at a farm in the Arizona desert to obtain some water for his car. There he sees several women working on a fence, very ineptly. The women, who speak very little English, introduce themselves as German, Austrian and Hungarian nuns. The mother superior, the leader of the nuns, persuades him to do a small roofing repair. He stays overnight, assuming that he will be paid in the morning.
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