The Nun’s Story Review (1959) (Throwback Thursday #11)
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Writer: Robert Anderson (screenplay), based on the novel by Kathryn Hulme
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Peter Finch, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Dean Jagger
Release Date: June 18, 1959
It’s been over two months, but I’m finally getting Throwback Thursday movie reviews back on track. For this return edition, I think it’s time to double up and also return to an Ultimate Rewatch Hub that has lain dormant since the top five films were reviewed back in early May.
The Nun’s Story is part of my ongoing Audrey Hepburn rewatch series, and while it didn’t crack the top five, I’d call it 5-b without hesitation. It’s one of those films that sits just outside the conversation and probably shouldn’t. If you consider yourself a fan of Hepburn and you haven’t seen this one, you’ve got a gap in your viewing history that needs to be filled.
Fred Zinnemann directs, and this is the kind of film that reminds you what a director with complete command of his material looks like. Zinnemann was coming off High Noon and From Here to Eternity, and he brings the same patient, controlled filmmaking to this one. Nothing is rushed. Nothing is overdone. The film runs over two and a half hours and earns every minute of it.
Audrey plays Gabrielle van der Mal, the daughter of a prominent Belgian surgeon who gives up her comfortable, privileged life to enter a convent and become a nun. She takes the name Sister Luke and what follows is an extraordinarily detailed look at what that life actually demands. The discipline. The obedience. The complete surrender of individual will to the order. Gabrielle is a woman of considerable intelligence and ability, and the film is largely about the tension between who she is and what the life of a nun requires her to be.
That tension is the engine of the whole thing. Gabrielle isn’t bad at being a nun. In a lot of ways she’s exceptional at it. She’s a gifted nurse, devoted to her patients, and she throws herself into the work with everything she has. The problem is that she keeps running up against the walls of obedience in ways that someone less driven might not. She’s too good, too capable, too independent in her thinking, and the order keeps finding ways to humble her and redirect that energy. Watching her navigate it is fascinating, and Hepburn carries every bit of it without a false note.
The film is split roughly into two halves. The first takes place in Belgium, covering Gabrielle’s entry into the convent, her training, and the grueling psychological process of becoming Sister Luke. It’s slower and more interior than what follows, but it’s essential. By the time the film moves to the Belgian Congo for the second half, you understand exactly who Sister Luke is and what she’s fighting against inside herself.
The Congo sequences are where Peter Finch comes in as Dr. Fortunati, a brilliant, openly cynical surgeon who has no interest in pretending the spiritual dimension of Sister Luke’s work means anything to him, but who recognizes her talent immediately and respects it completely. Finch is excellent. He brings a dry, world-weary intelligence to the role, and his scenes with Hepburn have a charge to them that the film handles carefully. There’s nothing inappropriate about their relationship, but there’s an acknowledgment on both sides that in a different life things might have been different, and Zinnemann never has to spell that out because both actors are too good to need it spelled out.
The final act brings World War II into the picture. Gabrielle’s father is killed by the Nazis, and what follows is the film’s most honest reckoning with what it actually costs to be a nun in a world that keeps demanding you have an opinion. The neutrality required of her order starts to feel not like humility but like complicity, and the film doesn’t flinch from what that means for a woman who has already spent years fighting her own nature in service of her vows.
The ending is quiet and devastating in the best way without melodrama or a fancy speech. Just a woman making a decision that the entire film has been building toward, and Hepburn communicating everything in a handful of shots without a word of dialogue. It’s the kind of acting that makes you realize how rarely you actually see it.
The Nun’s Story is a beautiful film. It’s patient and serious and treats its subject matter with genuine respect rather than using the convent setting as a backdrop for something easier. Audrey Hepburn was Oscar nominated for this one and should have won. It’s a performance that deserves to be mentioned alongside her best work and too often gets passed over in favor of Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Roman Holiday. This one is right there with those and in some ways more demanding than either.
If you want the best version of it, track down the Blu-ray. It looks gorgeous in high definition, and this is a film that rewards the care. That said, it’s currently streaming for free on Tubi, which means you have no excuse not to at least start it tonight.
The Nun’s Story gets a four out of five: COMMENDABLE.
If you enjoyed this one, check out my reviews of The Children’s Hour (1961) and Charade (1963) from the Audrey Hepburn rewatch series, or visit the full Audrey Hepburn Rewatch Hub to see everything we’ve covered. You can also browse the full Throwback Thursday archives by clicking here.
Agree, disagree, or think I got it completely wrong? Say so in the comments.
