6.9/10. The struggle between the old and the new is, oddly enough, a very old one. That’s what’s striking about *Going My Way* from the vantage point of seven decades later. Father O’Malley, when deployed to gently ease Father Fitzgibbons out after forty years at the pulpit, finds himself pulled between two generations. On the one hand, he has Father Fitzgibbons, who is initially quite officious and set in his ways, whom he needs to bring into the modern day. On the other hand, he has the rambunctious neighborhood boys and the young Carol, who he feels compelled to show the merit in older ideas.

The result is a film that pitches toward some sort of balance. Uncharitably, it could be characterized as the generation in its prime arguing that both the older and younger generations should be more like them. But in a gentler fashion, it can be taken to mean as a broader commentary on the idea that there is, inevitably, friction between people born in different times, used to different things, but that when these different generations talk to one another, learn about one another, both sides, no matter what age, can see the merits in their elders or in the new way of doing things.

What’s also interesting about the film is how little it feels like a film as we know it today. In large part, *Going My Way* feels like television. Most of the film is shot in a fashion that’s not exactly like a three-camera sitcom, but which feels similarly static much of time, with sets that feel more like the backdrop for a play than a living, breathing place. By the same token, much of the story is as episodic as it is serialized. While all the stories are tied to the larger ecosystem of the church that Father O’Malley serves in, it feels more like a series of vignettes about the trials and travails of O’Malley and a number of other characters in and about the church than it does one bigger story. In fact, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge to chop the film up and turn into a six-episode season of television.

But it also feels, for lack of a better term, like a 1940’s version of MTV. I’m not complaining, necessarily. One of the absolute highlights of the film is the opportunity to see Risë Stevens performing Carmen, and it wouldn’t be a Bing Crosby film if he didn’t do a little singing. But what’s interesting is that the film isn’t really a musical in any meaningful sense. The songs don’t represent the characters’ thoughts or feelings, and only connect thematically in a very broad sort of way. Instead, the film simply just takes breaks from the action to present a musical interlude now and then. Interspersed with the narrative are these brief respites for a musical showcase.

Again, that’s not a dig. It’s just an interesting thing to see in a time where film was still filling the role that television would later assume for the general population, giving it a series of smaller, easily consumed stories, and glimpses of musical performances they might never see in person. The film functions differently than what we would expect today, and the ways it differs speaks to the movie-going needs of the time in which it was made.

And I think that’s what *Going My Way* works best for me as – something of a time capsule. It offers an interesting view of the church, of romantic relationships, of even the music industry, and the way that they were all viewed as in a certain period of flux, of changing norms, that people felt the need to memorialize and examine at the time. It’s a testament (no pun intended) to the fact that the endless handwringing about generational clash itself goes back generations, in all walks and areas of life, and the cyclical nature of it gives us reason to have perspective when facing the same thing in the modern day.

That comes through particularly in Carol’s story. When she comes into the parish, there’s a sense that Father O’Malley wants to help her and Father Fitzgibbons fears her as a troublemaker, someone who ran away from home to become a star. And there’s a strain cultural disapprobation at the idea that she’s shacked up with Ted Haines Jr., getting what amounts to a free apartment with the implication that the pair are doing more than playing house.

What’s interesting is that the story puts Father O’Malley as both the champion of empathy and understanding that Father Fitzgibbons might not be so amendable to, but also a bastion of decency and decorum that Carol and Ted are flouting a bit. When Carol sings her song in a sort of peppy, sexy fashion, Father O’Malley encourages her to really feel the lyrics and the music of it, to appreciate the depth and emotion of it. There’s a subtle parallel to his drop-in on Carol and Ted after getting word that they’ve been cohabitating. He not so quietly suggests that they take what they’re doing a little more seriously, that they appreciate it and think about it in a little more committed fashion.

That culminates in Ted Haines Sr. dropping by and finding the two of them together, aghast at what he discovers and lamenting the idea that Junior intends to live off of Carol (which is totally different than when Mom helped gave Ted Sr. a start!) only to discover that the pair have gotten married and Ted Jr. has enlisted. There’s scores of thinkpieces that could be written about that scene alone, but it’s striking in how it presents the message that the younger generations aren’t such hedonists are layabouts, but almost quaint in the narrative choice to makes to demonstrate that idea.

The other side of the coin, and the backbone of the film, is Father O’Malley’s relationship with Father Fitzgibbons. Apart from the relatively unexciting plot mechanics of O’Malley trying to write a song with the boys’ choir to help save the church, the connection forged between the two of them gives the movie its ballast. The tale itself is an old one, of the old man being pushed out, and the younger man who wants to make good and bring in the new without tossing out what came before, but the performances from the two of them are well-done, and have a solid emotional force that sells O’Malley’s kindness and Fitzgibbons’s arc over the course of the film.

The final scene in the film represents the apex of that kindness, where Father O’Malley sends for the mother that Father Fitzgibbons left back in the old country for forty years, always hoping to have the funds to go visit. The shock and emotional heft of their embrace after so long is affecting, even amid the goofiness and schmaltz that permeates the film. *Going My Way* is a movie that wrestles with that eternal generational struggle, and finds that the older things we hold onto, and the newer things that challenge are assumptions about how things ought to be, have their strong points and are worth holding onto.