The Cross and the Switchblade (1970) Runtime 106 minutes
Director: Don Murray:
Cast: Pat Boone, Erik Estrada, Jacqueline Giroux, Dino De Filippi, Alex Colon, Jo-Ann Robinson, Gil Frazier.
The movie is drawn from the bestselling memoir of David Wilkerson, the founder of Teen Challenge, and founding pastor of the interdenominational Times Square Church in New York City. The plot set in the late 1950s New York centers on the conversion of Nicky Cruz, a young gangster through Wilkerson’s intervention. Fresh from the seminary in Pennsylvania, David Wilkerson arrives in the sleazy townships of Brooklyn and Harlem with an evangelization mission among the juvenile delinquents in the city. It is a dark world of teen violence drunkenness, drugs and sexual anarchy in the inner city schools and tenements. Delinquent youngsters formed street gangs and engaged in regular feuds armed gang battles. Without financial support, and risking violence and possible murder David boldly takes the Word of God to these youngsters while living in the street inside an old automobile. When he tries to intercede with the police for a seven member teen gang named the Egyptian Kings in custody he is discouraged. During the gang’s trial, the pastor requests the court for permission to speak with the under-trials, but is denied. The episode became news, and to his advantage. A black street girl named Bo connects him with the gangs living in sleazy homes. Wilkerson gets the support of a local pastor and his family attached to a street chapel. Mau Mau is the most powerful gang in town, led by a man named Israel and Nicky Cruz, a Puerto Rican. Their rivals are Black Bishops. Wilkerson’s initial attempts to preach God’s love of are met with cynical rejection. Undaunted, he encounters Nicky to speak the same message, only to be met with mockery and threat. Nicky even slaps the pastor and threatens to cut him up; David replies that if he were cut to a thousand pieces, each piece would declare God’s love for Nicky. Nicky sends his girlfriend Rosa to murder Wilkerson. But Rosa’s encounter with the pastor and his loving family leads to her conversion. She is cured of drug addiction. This only makes Nicky angrier. The defining moment is when Nicky’s attempt to punish a gang member for their rout in a gang rumble with the rival gang results in the boy’s death. Nicky is overwhelmed by guilt. David wins over the police to convene a revival meeting for the gangs. Nicky joins hands with his rivals to disrupt the meeting. However, during the meeting David wins them over, speaking about the love of Jesus, telling them that the gutsiest word in English is the word ‘Love.’ He challenges them to show the guts to be different. The once domineering gang leader is converted. He would go on to become a pastor with the same mission as David. Together they opened the Teen Challenge center in New York devoted to bringing Christ’s love to the troubled youth operating from the non-denominational Times Square Church in New York City which flowered out into an international ministry later.
Prof. Gigy Joseph Koottummel was Head of the Department of English SB College, Changanacherry. After three decades of teaching English Language and Literature he worked as Principal of a College. He did his doctoral work on Narratology. He is a sought after writer, translator, columnist and actor-director of Shakespeare productions.
