Waylaid by a flood of biblical proportions on the way to her hanging, brittle Ann Blyth (and guards) gets stuck at a convent hospital isolated by the storm & knee-deep in displaced locals. Angry at her fate in the world, even at the delay in her end, she goes from caustic contempt to hopeful humility as Claudette Colbert’s Sister Mary (fabulous here) takes time off from crisis nursing duties to break rules sacred & profane on a mission to prove the girl is innocent of her brother’s murder. Fortunately, she’s been convicted on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence, a tissue of plot contrivances from playwright Charlotte Hastings to set up a rickety whodunit with Catholic trappings.* Toss in doubt-filled fiancé; doctor & neurotic wife; strict Mother Superior; dotty comic-relief cook; resentful civilian nurse and shake well. Ludicrous as it all sounds, director Douglas Sirk & glamor cinematographer William Daniels (shoring up his rarely used noir credentials) make quite the stylish show of things. Turn off the right side of your brain and enjoy.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: How directors & cinematographers love Nuns in Habit! Especially in serried ranks assembled. A wet dream of rhythmic staging & composition. (Even austere Robert Bresson couldn’t resist the mix of nuns & murder: LES ANGES DU PÉCHÉ/’43.) As for their behavior . . . ? Here, Colbert is willfully stubborn, proud to a fault, disobedient and always right, yet manages to lay all the credit on God. Even when Mother Superior does something as appalling as destroying exculpatory evidence to make her point.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The play, a three-week flop on B’way under the title THE HIGH GROUND, had a cast that included Marian Seldes, Ruth McDevitt & Patricia Hitchcock.
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