Based largely upon real life evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, the play Bless you Sister, and Sinclair Lewis' controversial and oft-banned 1927 novel Elmer Gantry, THE MIRACLE WOMAN is a scathing takedown of then-contemporary Christianity – in particular, tent revivals. The film is anchored by Capra's brilliant go-to cinematographer, Joseph Walker, and Barbara Stanwyck's fierce performance as Florence Fallon, a preacher’s daughter turned huckster who runs a racket congregation exploiting small town believers following her father’s untimely death.

Considered often to be Frank Capra's first masterpiece, THE MIRACLE WOMAN would be the second of collaborations between he and Stanwyck. A blisteringly angry film with not a wasted second, yet fiercely ballasted with Capra's career-long obsessions of love, community, and respect, and a loud, bold mission statement flying directly in the viewer's face: one should never place God, or any other individual, above all else.