before there was Sister Act

... there was Lilies of the Field.

It features the performance which won Sidney Poitier his only competitive Oscar - before they called him Mr. Tibbs. He plays a wandering handyman who gets suckered into helping a bunch of German nuns stuck in the middle of Arizona.

Is this what passed for independent film back in 1963? On a social consciousness scale of 1 to 10 - Dr. Strangelove being ten and The Sound of Music being a big fat zero - this harmless piece of fluff rates about an "aw, shucks". The young Poitier is pleasant enough, but watching this flick is not necessary for spiritual fulfillment.