It stars Jennifer Jones in the title role, which portrays the story of Bernadette Soubirous, who reportedly experienced eighteen visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary from February to July 1858 and was canonized in 1933.

Distracted by a strange breeze and a change in the light, Bernadette sees a beautiful lady clad in white, standing on a rock niche.

Bernadette, continues to repeatedly visit the grotto as requested by the lady, accompanied by other citizens of Lourdes.

While Abbé Dominique Peyramale refuses to get involved; civil authorities threateningly interrogate Bernadette, but she confounds them with her simplicity and stands behind her story.

When The Emperor’s infant son is cured of his illness by water from Lourdes, the Empress demands that the grotto be reopened.

Believing it unsuitable for her to live an ordinary life, Peyramale persuades Bernadette to join the Sisters of Charity of Nevers.

On her deathbed, Bernadette sends for Peyramale and confesses her feelings of unworthiness while sorrowfully maintaining that she may never see the lady again.

There is no evidence that Sister Vazou was Bernadette’s elementary school teacher or that they met prior to the time that Bernanette entered the convent.

The film combines the characters of Vital Dutour and the man of letters Hyacinthe de La Fite, who appears in the novel and believes he has cancer of the larynx.

In the film, it is Dutour who is dying of cancer of the larynx at the end, and who goes to the Lourdes shrine, kneels at the gates to the grotto and says, "Pray for me, Bernadette."

[8] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times gave the movie a mostly negative review, praising the acting, especially Jones's, but regretting the movie's "tedious and repetitious" narrative, its emphasis on "images that lack visual mobility" and "dialectic discourse that will clutter and fatigue the average mind," and the decision to make Bernadette's "lady" visible to viewers.