I saw this decades ago – then read the book. Hepburn’s “Sister Luke” is convincing – a powerful performance. Very emotional treatment – takes you inside a hidden world. Beautiful.
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This film was for an old friend. I don’t like, but he said it was very good.
Loosely based on the life Marie Louise-Habets, THE NUN’S STORY by Kathryn Hulme was a best-selling novel of 1956, but it drew little interest from the film industry until director Fred Zinnemann brought the project to Audrey Hepburn’s attention. The result was a bidding war for the project with Warner Bro.s the winner, and although the studio feared the subject would be too esoteric for most audiences, THE NUN’S STORY not only picked up numerous Academy Award nominations, it was among the most financially successful films of 1959–and one of Audrey Hepburn’s greatest box office successes.
The story concerns Gabrielle van der Mal, the daughter of a noted Belgian surgeon, who enters a convent with what she believes to be a true calling from God and in the hope that her medical experience and skills will be of use to the church. Now known as Sister Luke, she is xcited by an assignment to the Belgian Congo, she is disappointed when she finds her assignment is to a European hospital instead of a native hospital. With passing time–and under the possibly negative influence of Dr. Fortunati (Peter Finch)–she begins to place her calling as a nurse before her calling to the church, and as such she begins to question whether she had a true calling as a nun. While in the Congo she contracts tuberculosis, and although she recovers she is returned to Beglium, where she finds her place in the convent increasingly unteneble, and with the onset of World War II she finds she cannot maintain the neutrality the church demands. Significantly torn, she elects to leave the convent, and in a powerfully evocative scene does this, walking away into an unknown future and an unknown fate.
Although some may find it a bit too long, THE NUN’S STORY is among the most visually beautiful films of its era, filmed on location in the Congo and in Europe, flawlessly costumed, perfectly filmed. The direction is subtle, and each performance shines in a truly memorable cast that includes Peggy Ashcroft, Patricia Collinge, Colleen Dewhurst, Mildred Dunnock, Edith Evans, Dean Jagger, Barbara O’Neill, and Beatrice Straight–as well as the aforementioned Peter Finch, who adds a certain sexual tension to the mix. But the focus is on Audrey Hepburn, and if any film proves that Hepburn was not just an actress but an artist, it is THE NUN’S STORY. She so beautifully captures Sister Luke’s spiritual tug of war. At the film’s conclusion one feels that Sister Luke has demanded too much of herself, and–unable to acheive spiritual perfection–has almost deliberately faultered into a more worldly point of view. What ever the interpretation made, THE NUN’S STORY is brilliant, start to finish, and not to be missed. Strongly recommended.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
This is a classic film you could watch over and over again. You see Audrey Hepburn in a different light.
Quite possibly “The Nun’s Story” is the best film about organized religion to come out of Hollywood, in the this case a nun in the Roman Catholic Church. It neither proselytizes nor judges; Sister Luke’s spiritual journey unwinds as it happened, allowing the audience to form their own conclusions. This is based on the true-life story of an actual former Belgian nun Marie-Louise Habets, who became friends with author Kathryn Hulme when they were both working together in a charitable organization for displaced persons in the wake of World War II. Ms. Hulme novelized what Ms. Habets had told her about her life, but the basic facts are true, in the beautifully written best seller “The Nun’s Story.” Even though, the book had been a blockbuster in sales, and the talented and successful director Fred Zinnemann had bought the screen rights, at first no Hollywood studio would touch it, the rationale being who wants to see a film about how to become a nun? This changed when Audrey Hepburn, agreed to play Sister Luke, suddenly every studio wanted the property, with Warner Brothers winning the prize. What a difference having one of the biggest stars in movies on board will do!
The film details with compassion and a sense of wonder, the story of Sister Luke, born Gabrielle Van der Mal, the daughter of an eminent surgeon, who is herself gifted in medicine, but mistakes her vocation for the religious order of nursing nuns she joins. The movie is book ended with her first and last days in the religious life. In between, we see the rigorous process a young woman used to undergo in the novitiate, the stepping-stones beginning as postulant, then novice, before taking final vows as a professed nun. This is most likely a time capsule because I don’t believe most Roman Catholic orders of nuns these days would go through such a tough, exacting, exhaustive training. As the Superior General of the order, Reverend Mother Emmanuel (Dame Edith Evans) warns Gabrielle’s class of postulants, ” Dear Children, It is not easy to be a nun…in a way it is a life against nature.” As we view the sometimes-severe, repressive tasks and rules designed to remove the candidates from the outer world into a closer spiritual communion with Christ, we marvel at the sheer courage, strength, discipline and determination of those who complete their novitiate and become professed nuns. Despite her misgivings that she in not perfected in the Holy Rule of her order, Gabrielle is professed in her vows, and is now rechristened Sister Luke. Her religious life after her profession, will take her first to a mental sanitarium in her native Belgium, where she is almost killed by a deranged patient. She realizes her ambition to be sent to the Belgian Congo where she assists in surgery to a brilliant agnostic doctor in a hospital run by her order. Just prior to the outbreak of World War II, she is sent back to Belgium, for what is supposed to be a temporary stay, but the war interferes, and she is posted to a hospital on the Dutch border for the duration. The one obstacle that continues from her beginning as a postulant and threads through her religious life is total obedience to what is perceived to be the will of God as exemplified by the Holy Rule of her order. Ultimately this is to be her fatal flaw in her life as a nun, she cannot blindly obey without question, and this will ultimately defeat her, and cause to leave the order but not the Church.
No other actress could have portrayed Sister Luke as well as Audrey Hepburn. She is simply magnificent, not a wrong note is struck. This performance was the realization of the acting promise shown in her earlier films, it is her finest, truest portrait, in which she becomes an actress of the first rank. There is no coasting here on her considerable charm, she must deliver the goods; she does and then some. The Givenchy outfits are replaced by the austere, simple black and white habits in which she looks just as breathtaking, the inner beauty shining through. The soul of Sister Luke is illuminated on her countenance through the peaks and valleys that document her religious life; her torturous, heart wrenching inner struggle with her vocation in the last portion of the film is etched in the pain of the dark circled eyes in the thin, wan face. Both her son Sean Ferrer, and her companion Rob Wolders have said this film holds a special place in their hearts as the character had many similarities to Ms. Hepburn. Interesting to note how much the actual Marie-Louise Habets and Audrey Hepburn had in common, both Belgian born, both worked for the resistance in World War II, Ms. Habets had nursed Ms. Hepburn through a back injury sustained on her next film, and finally and most importantly both did exemplary charitable work for the African natives. This breakthrough performance so totally different from anything she’d attempted before should have won Ms. Hepburn her second Oscar, it didn’t, although she did receive a nomination and deservedly won her second NY Film Critics Award as Best Actress and a British Academy Award for Best Actress.
An ensemble of renowned actresses augment and support her, in addition to Dame Edith Evans as the regal Reverend Mother Emmanuel, there is Dame Peggy Ashcroft as Mother Mathilde, Sister’s Luke’s superior in the Congo, and in lesser roles Mildred Dunnock, Beatrice Straight, Patricia Collinge, Margaret Phillips, Barbara O’Neil, Ruth White and in a small but harrowing cameo Colleen Dewhurst in her motion picture debut. Peter Finch gives a vital, forceful performance as Doctor Fortunati, the Congo surgeon, who will not let his fierce admiration for Sister Luke prevent him from trying to make her to face the truth about her fitness to be the nun her order expects her to be. As Doctor Van der Mal, Sister Luke’s father, Dean Jagger brings poignancy and an unspoken yearning in losing this favorite child with her gift for medicine, so like him in many ways, to the convent.
Director Fred Zinnemann does an extraordinary job handling a controversial situation the story of a nun leaving the convent with superb tact and delicacy. He had mentioned in an interview about this film that the struggle of the individual with his conscience was always a subject that continued to attract him, he would continue his cinematic variations on this theme with “A Man for All Seasons” and “Julia”. The screenplay by dramatist Robert Anderson, is literate and eloquent, one of the best-realized adaptations of a famous novel, completely capturing it’s essence. Franz Waxman’s musical score is powerful and majestic complementing the action on the screen, but appropriately silent in the final absorbing minutes, a first for a Warner’s Brothers film! The cinematographer Franz Planer uses a somber palette of subdued, muted shades for the scenes in Belgium, primarily blacks, whites, grays and pale blues, when the story shifts to Africa, the vivid, blazing, tropical colors bursting onscreen are almost overwhelming to the viewer. All of these factors blend together perfectly to create a soaring work of film art. What’s gratifying to report is that apparently at the time, film audiences DID want to see a film about becoming a nun, since this was the top grossing Warner Brother’s film of 1959, and was rewarded with eight Oscar nominations,including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Screenplay. After viewing this film, if you haven’t already go back and read the original book, it will add to your appreciation.
For the final word, let’s hear from the woman who inspired it all, Marie-Louise Habets, who made these comments after the third time she had viewed the film. “I’m never going to see it again, because if I do I’m going to run right back to the convent…I could just sit there and cry my eyes out, not with regret or anything, but because of the beauty of it.”