A film about seeing and believing. Frank Capra wedges a scathing critique of divinity-for-dollars into a Depression-era melodrama about a female evangelist (Barbara Stanwyck) who fleeces the faithful in spectacular religious sideshows. When she falls in love with a blind songwriter (blinded in WWI after "joining the army to see the world"), it is he who performs the miracle: she sees the light. Capra's crowds are a haunting array of fools worshipping false idols; but if his longshots reveal a nation of sheep, his close-ups expose his ironic compassion. Who better understands the lure of the spectacle than a movie-maker? Bitter Capra criticism outweighs the Capra-corn of this early thirties oddity that links language with power in a very timely way. Biblical sayings and slogans that riddle the walls of the evangelical offices ("Smile, this is a happy church") are belied by the presence of cripples who are paid by the staged miracle cure. The reticent blind man resorts to a humorous ventriloquism routine to speak his truest truths, and teaches a jaded Stanwyck to write to him in makeshift braille--a new language that, unlike the Bible, is unsullied by popular misuse. But if language and spectacle are no longer to be trusted, then perhaps The Miracle Woman is a film that self-destructs at its own fiery climax! (JB)