Jennifer Jones shines in her Best Actress Oscar-winning role (and screen debut, no less!) about the French peasant girl who sees a miraculous vision of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes in 1858. Based on the titular novel by Franz Werfel, the movie examines Bernadette's many tribulations -- from life with her impoverished family and her difficulties at school to the derision her visions elicit and her affliction with bone-marrow cancer. 1

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