The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936)

The film begins in the celestial realms, with three superhuman entities—gods, or perhaps, angels (one of them played by a young, highly-made-up, shirtless George Sanders in an early role)—regarding the planet Earth. Despairing of these “animals” that one of them continues to care about, the other two dare him to conduct an experiment to see if such lesser creatures can handle the kind of power over reality that might let them deserve to reach the stars. As the experiment’s only limit, the Celestials will allow no control over a person’s free will, as decreed by their Master (possibly God). Choosing a human subject at random—though, necessarily, an ordinary if not downright foolish British subject—they bestow miraculous powers just short of their own upon one George Fotheringay, an English middle-class haberdasher’s assistant.

Fotheringay enters the Long Dragon Pub and begins arguing with his friends about miracles and the impossibility of them. During this argument he calls upon his “will” to force a change and inadvertently causes a miracle: he makes an oil lamp turn upside down, without anyone touching it and with the flame burning steadily downwards rather than righting itself. He soon runs out of his miracle-sustaining willpower and is thrown out of the pub for spilling oil on the floor and causing a commotion.