Daniel Petrie Sr.'s Resurrection, from 1980, is a nice, yet somewhat forgettable and cliched, picture about a faith healer that garnered Ellen Burstyn her fourth Academy Award nomination. Without her efforts, the film would seem slight and underdrawn. Still, the film has a couple of outstanding scenes: Richard Farnsworth showing Burstyn his two headed snake and Sam Shepard seducing her over bowls of Beefaroni.
An unadorned realist, the Canadian born Petrie was a fairly anonymous director who bounced between television and films. His forte was his handling of actors. Indeed, his best work may have been within the boxlike confines of TV movies such as Eleanor and Franklin and Sybil. His film work is largely undistinguished with the exception of Resurrection and Lifeguard, which features exemplary performances by Sam Elliott, Anne Archer, and Kathleen Quinlan. Petrie spawned two writer/directors in Daniel Petrie Jr. (Toy Soldiers) and Donald Petrie (Mystic Pizza). If there is a real auteur behind Resurrection, it may be Lewis John Carlino whose scripts often featured taciturn, testosterone damaged males; especially here and in the Carlino directed The Great Santini.
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