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THE STAIRCASE (CBS, April 5): A strong silent stranger rides into town, performs his good deed against overwhelming
odds, then rides off into the wilderness to become a legend. This ancient western plot works again with a novel twist in The
Staircase, a new TV movie based on the origins of that famous wooden spiral staircase in the Sisters of Loretto Chapel
in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Somehow, when the nuns had their school and mission chapel built in 1873-78, the carpenters neglected to provide stairs
to the choir loft. The small but elegant gothic chapel, modeled on the Saint-Châpelle in Paris, was stunning, but no affordable
architectural solution for the omission could be devised.
According to the story, the nuns’ doughty superior Mother Magdelene decided to leave the matter to God. On the last
day of a novena to St. Joseph, a gray-haired man on a donkey came to the convent with a tool box and volunteered to design
and build the stairway. After the work was finished, he left as mysteriously as he had arrived.
The staircase that nobody knew how to build remains solid and a work of beauty more than 120 years after its completion.
It’s an object of admiration for generations of builders and architects. (The chapel today is incorporated into a Santa
Fe hotel.)
In this movie version of the story, produced by Peabody winner Craig Anderson (The Piano Lesson), Joad the carpenter
(William Petersen) seems not to be an angel or St. Joseph. He’s the classic western loner, not shooting bad guys but
doing random acts of kindness. He has gifts for nonviolence and for catching fish.
He almost pays the price for his good deed. Some corrupt businessmen (David Clennon, Justin Louis), themselves responsible
for the original faulty design, scheme to get him shot or jailed. He defeats them, in a rare television coup, with compassion
and understanding.
Not just any actor could bring off this Christian Shane. Petersen has long been admired for reliably saving roles
in not-quite-famous movies (Manhunter, Amazing Grace and Chuck, Return to Lonesome Dove). But this tribute
to the legendary staircase really belongs to film veteran Barbara Hershey. She brings beauty and complexity to the fictionalized
role of dying Mother Madalyn, who hopes the completed chapel will give meaning to her life.
The character is heroic, with an over-the-top death scene, but Hershey makes her real and accessible. Much of her recent
work has excelled (Portrait of a Lady, Abraham).
Diane Ladd is quite serviceable, cast against type as Mother Madalyn’s conservative but devoted second-in-command,
and the other sisters offer a minimal but picturesque background. The script tries to do too much—even a tamer-than-likely
Geronimo puts in a benign appearance.
In the end, the show works for skeptics but also remains open to the supernatural and miraculous. We’ll never know
the origins of this improbably sturdy and beautiful staircase. (We’re inspired to check it out the next time we’re
in Santa Fe.) But the story reminds us in cynical times of the power of prayer and of the potential for good.
Und hier ein etwas ironischer Text, der aber ganz lustig ist.
Southcoast Today
Tear-jerking conventions fill formulaic film, 'The Staircase'
Here's a TV movie formula. Take a dash of "Touched by an Angel," add a touch
of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," and mix that with the vintage movie magic of "Lilies of the Field" and "The Bells of St. Mary's,"
and you've got "The Staircase" (9 p.m., Sunday, CBS, TV-G).
Barbara Hershey is Mother Madalyn, an Irish Mother Superior
with a brogue thicker than a barrel of corned beef. Did we mention she was dying? And beautiful? And headstrong in a spunky,
flirty way?
With the scared and subservient Sister Margaret (Diane Ladd) by her side, Mother Madalyn has inspired
the building of a beautiful chapel in the dusty 19th-century town of Santa Fe, N.M. But the contractors forgot to build a
staircase to the choir loft! Was this stupidity, graft, or destiny? The feisty Mother Madalyn wants nothing so much as to
hear the heavenly choir before she's born aloft to heaven, so it's a race against time to build the stairs.
Into
this situation rides a mystic, silent cowboy artist named Joad (William Petersen). Did we mention he was drop-dead handsome?
Or that he and the good Mother develop a Bing Crosby-Ingrid Bergman-style friendship? Without references, nails or many tools,
the miracle man Joad fashions a gorgeous wooden spiral staircase. Does the good Mother survive to see it? It would be a sin
to give the ending away!
For all of its tear-jerking conventions, "The Staircase" is based on a true story, and the
real staircase still stands in Santa Fe, drawing thousands of visitors every year.
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