Unrated | 1 h 26 min | Drama | 1951
Ignatius of Loyola was a 16th-century soldier who, before a battle, ruined his leg; surgeries left one leg shorter, enforcing a lifelong limp. During his painful recovery, he waged a spiritual battle with his worldly self.
Douglas Sirk’s film, “The First Legion,” is about priests in a Jesuit seminary whose battle is also spiritual. Sirk uses the symbols of ineffective legs to study two roads, or transitions. One, from faith to doubt. Another, from doubt to faith. His point? No matter how many times we walk the former, and we will, because life can be hard, we must keep walking the latter….