CBS Chicago Vault: Protests at 1986 Chicago premiere of Godard's controversial film, "Hail Mary" over nudity

You don't hear about French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's controversial film "Hail Mary" these days, and its content as described in reviews sounds tame compared to what comes onto our phone screens now.

But when "Hail Mary" opened 40 years ago Saturday in Chicago, it drew a throng of angry protesters who considered the film with its full-frontal nudity an affront to their faith. Similar protests were held in other cities around the country and beyond, and Pope John Paul II even condemned the film.

"Hail Mary" retells the story of the Nativity with the action moved to 1980s Switzerland. As recounted by Vincent Canby in the New York Times, Godard said "Hail Mary" was not really about the Virgin Mary, but rather about "a young woman named Mary who, at a certain moment in her life, finds herself part of an exceptional event that she would never have wished for herself." Canby called this "disingenuous."

The teenage Mary, played by Myriem Roussel, works in her father's gas station and plays basketball in her spare time. Her boyfriend, Joseph, is a taxi driver.

Critically, Mary is also a virgin — and an angel named Gabriel arrives by plane to inform her she's pregnant, Canby wrote.

Mary knows that "the hand of God" is upon her as she visits a gynecologist who confirms her virgin pregnancy.

As for Mary's nude scenes, critic Fernando F. Croce of Slant Magazine characterized them as tame — and infused with a spiritual element — in a review 20 years after the film's release.

"'Hail Mary' is limpid, serene, and, for all the pubic hair on display, glowingly chaste. The copious doses of female nudity, the main factor in raising the ire of protesters, are in fact central to Godard's incantation of the intangible," Croce wrote. "'Does the soul have a body?' [Mary] asks her gynecologist, and it is by focusing on their bodies and surfaces that the director can extract the characters' soulful essences into the open."

Many people of faith did not see it that way at all. On the night of Friday, April 4, 1986, more than 300 protesters turned out in front of Facets Multimedia, at 1517 W. Fullerton Ave. Dorothy Tucker was on the scene for Channel 2 News.

Inside Facets, a sold-out crowd turned out to watch the film. Outside, the protesters sang hymns and chanted prayers and held signs and images of the Virgin Mary.

"It's an improv movie with a scripture concept, and we feel that the scriptures have been distorted and there's a misleading type of perspective from the so-called art perspective," said Fr. Kusmas Karavellas of Chicago's Greek Orthodox Archdiocese.

Protester Ilene Dolehide told Tucker that she had not seen the movie and had every intention of keeping it that way.

"I don't take arsenic. I know it's poison," said Dolehide. "So why should I got in and give them my money?"

Facets staffers said after announcing the cinema was screening "Hail Mary," they received 1,000 negative telephone calls and at least six bomb threats.

Meanwhile at Holy Name Cathedral, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin led a prayer service for a packed congregation.

Similar protests had been going on for nearly a year since the film premiered in Europe.

In April 1985, Pope John Paul II condemned "Hail Mary" as a film that "deeply wounds the religious sentiments of believers," according to a published report.

The following month, a protester threw a pie in Godard's face at the Cannes Film Festival. Protests were seen in France, Italy, and other countries around Europe, and the film was even banned in some French cities, according to a UPI report.

At the premiere of "Hail Mary" in Spain nearly a year earlier in June 1985, about 1,000 Catholic demonstrators turned out with rosary beads — and riot squads had to be deployed around the theater where the movie was screened as fans of the film clashed with protesters, according to UPI.

In October 1985, "Hail Mary" premiered in New York, and at least 2,500 protesters swarmed Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, calling the film "blasphemy."

The following month, similar protests were held as the film premiered in Los Angeles.

In January 1986, a screening of "Hail Mary" at the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor was delayed by a bomb threat, according to a contemporary news report.

But many defended the film, including the staff at Facets.

"This is a very simple and a very touching film," Nicole Dreiske of Facets said at the time. "It is not a film that in any way threatens the beliefs associated with the Catholic doctrine."

Those who spoke to CBS Chicago after seeing the film did not share the strong feelings of those protesting, or of the film's defenders, for that matter. Facets patron Chris Block called "Hail Mary" "moderately incoherent," while Doug Livingston called it "rather boring."

When asked by anchorman Bill Kurtis if "Hail Mary" was worth all the fuss, CBS Chicago movie critic Gene Siskel said it was not, and agreed that a lot of people might find it boring.

"However, I was actually moved by it in a strange way," Siskel said.

Siskel said the film filled him with "awe, which is the very fact of birth."

"I think that that's what this director is doing. He's saying that every birth is miraculous, and that there is some God in all of us," said Siskel, who was an expectant father at the time. "Now those may not be traditional church doctrine feelings, but they can fill you with awe, and I was moved by that."

Siskel also took issue with the fact that protesters were coming out against movies before they even opened.

"You know what that means. They haven't seen the picture," Siskel said. "Well, if you want to go through the world with your eyes closed, you can do it. If you don't want to be offended, keep your eyes closed and walk through it. See the movie, or don't see the movie. I think the cardinal did a wonderful thing — pray. Don't pay for the movie. Pray."

Godard, who was known as the "enfant terrible" of French New Wave cinema, died in September 2022 at the age of 91.

"Hail Mary" can be streamed on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and other streaming services.