The Nun's Story Reviews

Respectfull, deep, unsdertanding of the fight inside a nun, her preide, her desires, her ingenuity. Hélas, Hepburn wins over the nun.

The Nun’s Story was reportedly Audrey Hepburn’s favorite amongst the films she had made. It is easy to see why, not only does she deliver a performance of tremendous strength, delicate beauty and emotional complexity, but it’s one of the most honest depictions of true religious faith that I have seen. It positions that doing good and helping others sometimes means rejecting the dogma that bogs down religion and prevents them from getting into the trenches. That God and spiritual faith and righteousness are not found in the churches, and that they alone are not the only paths to living a moral and charitable life, but that these choices can be made from within. Sometimes an act of rebellion is the most perfect statement of faith. I make no secret about rejecting organized religion and seeking a more humanistic approach to life, and this story of a nun who leaves the convent because she cannot remain neutral in the onset of World War II is a tender and sensitive portrait of those ideals.

Directed by Fred Zinnemann, the maestro behind such classics as High Noon and From Here to Eternity, seemed to revel in stories about people engaging in situations and periods of time where their character and beliefs are tested, where heroism can be as different as standing up to wild west outlaws or your conscience dictating your fate. But instead of engaging in ham-fisted and overly melodramatic scenes to express these emotions he scaled back and turned down the drama. He was sensitive and quiet, empathetic to their choices and consequences. His choice to end the film with only the sound of Hepburn’s footsteps as she walks off into the Belgian streets during the earliest stages of WWII is as perfect and glorious a sequence as the ending of City Lights. His decision to not editorialize the moment with happy or sad music speaks to his empathetic treatment of his characters.

He could also frame and film movement wonderfully. Yes, we all think of the waves crashing on the beach and embracing lovers in From Here to Eternity, but what about the way he showcases how the nun’s go about their daily existence? The movement within them is composed and filmed like a classical dance piece. The movie does experience problems with pacing, as it does tend to lag in spots. Do we really need to meet so many different nuns and follow her through so many different jobs? I think the mental institution section could have been trimmed here and there and not much would have been lost. I suppose for people unconcerned with theological questions, crisis’s of faith and identity, and the inner turmoil to do what is right over what is expected this could be a real bore. There are no action sequences and it is relatively free of comedy. But there’s so much meat to sink your teeth into, so much glorious photography and those wondrous performances!

Audrey Hepburn is an actress and screen presence that I have always admired and enjoyed. There’s a certain fragility and quirky intelligence behind her eyes that adds a spark to her performances. She also possessed class, elegance, sophistication and wit – things which can’t be taught. And The Nun’s Story should silence anyone who doubts her prowess as an actress. She delivers a rich, fluent and complicated performance without the aide of aging makeup, costume changes and hair styles. The entire performance is interior and given by her face and large warm eyes.

The nun’s habit works as a frame for her exquisite instrument. She could project the passage of time and her character’s crisis's with a change in her body carriage and a look behind her eyes. That is acting at its finest. And something very interesting for Hepburn fans – in several movies we see her characters cut their hair from a long and luxurious cut to a pixie cut as a way to showcase their maturity from girlhood into womanhood. In essence, they have symbolically shed their innocence and virginal platitudes with their hair and have reemerged as sophisticated women. The Nun’s Story does an interesting twist to that device. Yes, her character gets her hair cut, but instead of a symbolical cutting to showcase that she is growing into her womanhood, she is cutting her hair to remain pure and virginal. She is cutting her hair to grow into a kind of chaste existence which her character might not have had before. And, at the end, when she removes her nun’s uniform, we see that her hair is still short but longer than it was before. Her character is growing her hair out as a way of embracing her womanhood and liberation.

While it is really Hepburn’s show, she is given able support from a cast that includes Academy Award winners Beatrice Straight, Peggy Ashcroft and Peter Finch, amongst numerous others. Finch in particular is given a rich character to portray and gives a great performance. He’s a doctor in the Belgian Congo and Hepburn is assigned to work as his aide. He loves that she is smart and shows a real interest in science, she has a natural apt for it. He’s also strongly sexually attracted to her. And she to him, and it is his magnetic sexuality and agnostic antagonism which bring out her character’s moral quandary. Her character was already experiencing these, and had been since joining, and he just helps her see that sometimes God and a life of good works and faith isn’t always housed in a building of stone. He rejects religious viewpoints, but he possesses a deep spirituality. Finch nails every nuance in his limited screen time.