Belgium, 1930. Audrey Hepburn, daughter of a famous surgeon (Jagger), joins a convent, undergoes a rigorous training in humiliation, becomes a star pupil at the school for tropical medicine, is sent to what was then called the Belgian Congo where she becomes an indispensable surgical assistant, has an emotional but strictly Platonic brush with the demanding and non-believing doctor (Finch), is sent back to Belgium against her wishes, and resigns from the order.
Several scenes seemed especially instructive. First, the whole business of going through boot camp at the nunnery was an excellent example of initiation rituals as they're found around the world. I won't go into details but being given a new name is a common feature of these rites of passage. Gabrielle van der Mal becomes Sister Luke. In our society we have confirmation names, Hebrew names, and nicknames given during service in the Marine Corps.
Second, Hepburn is doing first rate work at the school for tropical medicine. She's intelligent, a nurse, and the daughter of a surgeon. But she's breaking some of the rules as well. She doesn't show enough HUMILIATION, so her superior asks her to fail the final exam as evidence that she's rid herself of the sin of false pride. Let's put it this way -- she's supposed to deprive the community of a skilled nurse with a specialty in tropical medicine to prove her subordination to the church.
As capitalism developed, is it any wonder that Reformed Churches arose? The sociologist Max Weber made a convincing argument that it was the overthrow of Catholicism, with its vows of poverty and its denunciation of usury, that made capitalism possible. Not that one cause the other, but that they were concordant in their values. If Catholicism taught that being poor was a virtue, Protestantism taught that industry, thrift, and community work was in the service of God.
That's a short and incomplete description of my point but please don't argue with me about it. I know what I'm talking about. I've been poor all my life.
This is an exceptional movie in many ways. Audrey Hepburn is quite good as Sister Luke. She was always beautiful in a fey way, never sexy, and it fits the role perfectly because you hardly see anything except her facial features, and they're very expressive. She does a fine job.
Peter Finch is good too but it's a common role -- the roguish male who challenges the suppressed female to come out of her shell. Viz., Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine in "Suspicion." Franz Waxman's score is carefully done. In a scene in which an almost unrecognizably young Coleen Dewhurst, as a madwoman, attacks Hepburn, the score is anything but bombastic, only plucked strings. Elsewhere the score is modest and appropriate to the occasion. We hear "ora pro nobis" which, when I was a kid at mass, I always heard as "O, Ropra, No Bis," because, not having had Latin, I couldn't identify junctures.
Something has to be said about the cast too. What a lot of winners, including Dame Peggy Ashcroft who went from the wife of the suspicious farmer in "The 39 Steps" to the elderly Mrs. Moore in David Lean's "A Passage to India." And the art direction and set dressing. Nothing was every so clean as the nunnery through which Hepburn passes. Every surface is polished, immaculate, so to speak. Every piece of cloth is spotless and freshly pressed. The barracks in MY boot camp were never so clean.
Aside from its rather obvious display of the cultish aspects of belonging to an order, it's a fine film, very tastefully directed by Fred Zinnemann -- so tasteful in fact that it's almost impossible to imagine its being made in today's Hollywood.
Several scenes seemed especially instructive. First, the whole business of going through boot camp at the nunnery was an excellent example of initiation rituals as they're found around the world. I won't go into details but being given a new name is a common feature of these rites of passage. Gabrielle van der Mal becomes Sister Luke. In our society we have confirmation names, Hebrew names, and nicknames given during service in the Marine Corps.
Second, Hepburn is doing first rate work at the school for tropical medicine. She's intelligent, a nurse, and the daughter of a surgeon. But she's breaking some of the rules as well. She doesn't show enough HUMILIATION, so her superior asks her to fail the final exam as evidence that she's rid herself of the sin of false pride. Let's put it this way -- she's supposed to deprive the community of a skilled nurse with a specialty in tropical medicine to prove her subordination to the church.
As capitalism developed, is it any wonder that Reformed Churches arose? The sociologist Max Weber made a convincing argument that it was the overthrow of Catholicism, with its vows of poverty and its denunciation of usury, that made capitalism possible. Not that one cause the other, but that they were concordant in their values. If Catholicism taught that being poor was a virtue, Protestantism taught that industry, thrift, and community work was in the service of God.
That's a short and incomplete description of my point but please don't argue with me about it. I know what I'm talking about. I've been poor all my life.
This is an exceptional movie in many ways. Audrey Hepburn is quite good as Sister Luke. She was always beautiful in a fey way, never sexy, and it fits the role perfectly because you hardly see anything except her facial features, and they're very expressive. She does a fine job.
Peter Finch is good too but it's a common role -- the roguish male who challenges the suppressed female to come out of her shell. Viz., Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine in "Suspicion." Franz Waxman's score is carefully done. In a scene in which an almost unrecognizably young Coleen Dewhurst, as a madwoman, attacks Hepburn, the score is anything but bombastic, only plucked strings. Elsewhere the score is modest and appropriate to the occasion. We hear "ora pro nobis" which, when I was a kid at mass, I always heard as "O, Ropra, No Bis," because, not having had Latin, I couldn't identify junctures.
Something has to be said about the cast too. What a lot of winners, including Dame Peggy Ashcroft who went from the wife of the suspicious farmer in "The 39 Steps" to the elderly Mrs. Moore in David Lean's "A Passage to India." And the art direction and set dressing. Nothing was every so clean as the nunnery through which Hepburn passes. Every surface is polished, immaculate, so to speak. Every piece of cloth is spotless and freshly pressed. The barracks in MY boot camp were never so clean.
Aside from its rather obvious display of the cultish aspects of belonging to an order, it's a fine film, very tastefully directed by Fred Zinnemann -- so tasteful in fact that it's almost impossible to imagine its being made in today's Hollywood.