Leo McCarey's Going My Way (1944)

Going My Way, a movie some think of as corny and sappy, has one of the most elegant and moving scenes I have seen in any film. Father O'Malley (played by Bing Crosby) has recently been assigned to a New York parish and passes by the Metropolitan Opera one day, where he runs into his former lover, played by Rise Stevens.  He is wearing his coat, so Stevens does not know he is a priest and she complains about how he had stopped writing to her.  He takes off his coat and she sees his clerical collar, suddenly realizing what happened.  They chat for a moment and then she goes on stage to sing, beautifully and erotically, "L'amore est un oiseau rebelle," from Carmen, while O'Malley watches from the wings and then departs.  McCarey plays this scene without much comment or reflection, allowing the audience to realize the emotions both O'Malley and Stevens are going through.

There is also a subplot of a girl O'Malley rescues from the streets who then becomes the wife of the son of the church's landlord; the landlord disapproves until he sees his son in uniform, one of the few references to the war then going on.  Crosby shows the girl how to sing and how to get across her song with emotions rather than physical gestures, just as McCarey allows the strong emotions of the film to emerge without much fuss or rhetoric. O'Malley helps the couple with a life he himself rejected, for the priesthood

I have heard stories of mothers and grandmothers sending their sons to see Going My Way, in the hope it would kindle interest in the priesthood.  Interestingly, there is almost nothing about Roman Catholic beliefs or doctrine in the film.  Father O'Malley is part of the new guard -- teaching singing and baseball to the kids, negotiating with the landlord -- against the old guard of Father Fitzgibbon, played by Barry Fitzgerald. O'Malley sings, plays baseball and golf, and makes friends with the kids and everyone else in the parish, while Fitzgibbon is more interested in whether someone goes to mass and keeping the elderly happy.

McCarey's style is a complicated mixture of the romantic and the comic, almost always viewed with compassion.  Going My Way is anecdotal, funny and moving, ending with O'Malley going on to another parish after bringing Fitzgibbon's mother over from Ireland as a Christmas surprise.