I consider Fred Zinnemann a bit underrated. Sure, he had his honors in life, but how often do even film buffs mention the director of High Noon, From Here to Eternity, and A Man for All Seasons? I don't recognize many more of his titles, but they tend to have IMDb ratings in the sevens. Throw in Oscar nominations plus a young Audrey Hepburn and I'm there.
The story begins in late '20s Bruges when Gaby (Hepburn) begins convent life as "Sister Luke." By the '30s, her bumpy road has led her to Belgian Congo, where she serves as a nurse and hopes to convert some natives along the way, despite brash nonbeliever Dr. Fortunati (Peter Finch). But she always considers herself more disciplined in medicine than in faith, and the latter especially gets put to the test when Germany invades her homeland....
At 2 hours and 29 minutes, the film feels like it could easily have been cut in half. I think it's half over before Sister Luke leaves Belgium, and the main thing we learn in the first half is that being a nun, at least in her order during that era, is tough. Interesting things do happen in that time, but they have little to no bearing on the rest of the story. You could start watching when she's arriving at the Congolese community and have no trouble following along. Not that I advise as much unless you either are pressed for time or have already lost patience.
Ages ago, I thought about joining a monastery, probably a Franciscan one. If this abbey is any indication, I might not have made the grade if I tried. The path from postulant to novice to professed sister, while not as harsh as a stereotypical boot camp, requires one to do without a lot of things the rest of us take for granted, like mirrors and small talk. Any deviation calls for notes in a notebook and sometimes a more public confession than other Catholics practice. Sister Luke deems herself the weakest trainee with regard to humility, because whenever she makes progress in following rules, she feels good about it for a moment. I'm undecided on whether this extremism helps them become better Christians. Or better people.
Ironically, as slow as the pacing sounds (the final shot being the worst offender in my opinion), I repeatedly wished that the story had spent more time on things, if only to increase our sympathy with Sister Luke. For example, when she gets transferred to a mental hospital, we get a glimpse of the antiquated unpleasantness, but it's over much sooner than I expected. Pretty much whenever a character indicated the passage of time, I thought, "Already?"
I'd also have welcomed more devotion to ethical dilemmas. The strongest one in my memory occurs when the Mother Superior suggests that Sister Luke exercise humility by taking a dive in the medical exam. Another senior nun later tells her that that was bad advice, presumably because it not only creates an unnecessary delay in nursing practice but basically amounts to lying. Of course, we can't expect much headiness from '50s Hollywood.
Speaking of which, you may well have apprehensions about the depiction of 19th-century Congolese natives. Well, to me, it doesn't look too shabby, partly because it was filmed on location -- even the leper colony. There's no trace of White guilt, but neither does it seem to blow Black primitiveness out of proportion. It helps that this isn't the very start of the colony, so the missionaries have had a while to form a rapport with the natives. I could believe that this aspect is basically authentic...or far from it. Maybe it's just as well that the picture didn't linger here long either.
Dr. Fortunati may be the most intriguing secondary character, if only because he talks most freely. He starts out hard to like, not least with his open bigotry, but he does a great job in surgery and recognizes a valuable assistant when he has one. There is implied sexual tension between him and Sister Luke, but it doesn't exactly go anywhere.
I suspect that the Kathryn Hulme novel does a much better job of covering all the bases, except for the sexual tension. Realistically, I was never going to read that book, so I went for the next best thing. The film is good enough not to be a stain on the record of anyone involved. You just need to prepare for the long yet somewhat vacant haul.
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