Flying Padre is a 1951

1951 in film

The year 1951 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* Sweden - May Britt is scouted by Italian film-makers Carlo Ponti and Mario Soldati-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:...

 short subject

Short subject

A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...

 black-and-white documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

. It is the second picture directed by Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...

, after Day of the Fight

Day of the Fight

Day of the Fight is a 1951 American short subject documentary film shot in black-and-white and also the first picture directed by Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick financed the film himself, and it is based on an earlier photo feature he had done as a photographer for Look magazine in 1949...

. The film is nine minutes long.

Story

The subject of Flying Padre is a Catholic

Catholic

The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

 priest

Priest

A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

 in rural New Mexico

New Mexico

New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

, Father Fred Stadtmuller. Because his 400-square mile parish

Parish

A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...

 is so large, he uses a Piper Cub airplane (named the "Spirit of St. Joseph") to travel from one isolated settlement to another. The film shows him providing spiritual guidance, giving sermons at funerals, and serving as an impromptu air ambulance

Air ambulance

An air ambulance is an aircraft used for emergency medical assistance in situations where either a traditional ambulance cannot reach the scene easily or quickly enough, or the patient needs to be transported over a distance or terrain that makes air transportation the most practical transport....

 by flying a sick child and his mother to hospital.

Production

After Kubrick sold his first short film, the self-financed Day of the Fight

Day of the Fight

Day of the Fight is a 1951 American short subject documentary film shot in black-and-white and also the first picture directed by Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick financed the film himself, and it is based on an earlier photo feature he had done as a photographer for Look magazine in 1949...

, to RKO in 1951 for $4000 (pocketing a $100 profit), the company advanced the 23-year-old filmmaker money to make a documentary short for their Pathe Screenliner series. Flying Padre was the result.

In an interview in 1969, Kubrick referred to Flying Padre as "silly".

The film is narrated by CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 announcer Bob Hite

Bob Hite (announcer)

Bob Hite, Sr. was an American radio and television announcer, voice-over artist, and news anchor.Hite began his announcing career in the 1930s at WXYZ in Detroit, Michigan...

.

External links

• Flying Padre at Kubrick: Master Filmmaker
• Flying Padre at Kubrick Multimedia Film Guide
• Flying Padre (Translated from French to English by Google)
• The Kubrick Site