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Summary: Life, the way you thought and the way it unfolds
Review: Moving, the film stirred me to look out and beyond, as "the nun" is an example of how ones life may be- not always going the way we pictured, yet you pursue the meaning of Life. Thoughtful and dramatic.
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Summary: transformation
Review: The end of this movie contains the most important visual representation of an individual's transformation in all film history. Well, maybe not, it is second only to the ending of Kubrick's 2001.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The entire movie, I thought she was going to marry the doctor in Congo, and then she doesn't! The end was much too solemn. The conclusion wasn't powerful either; it was very abrupt. Here's how I think the ending should have gone: Gabriel leaves the convent with a smile on her face and sails for the Congo. When she arrives, she finds the doctor converted. They're overwhelmingly glad to see each other, and they have a beautiful wedding. OR, as an alternate ending, Gabriel can marry Gene. Either way, I'll be satisfied.
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Summary: The Nun's Story is a moving film
Review: The Nun's Story could be the best motion picture Audrey Hepburn has ever starred in. Sister Luke lives the life of humility and self sacrifice. She struggles daily to reconcile her feelings that she was never meant to be a nun. After years of diligent service she is rewarded by being sent to the Congo. Her life changing experiences in the Congo prove to be a turning point in her life.
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Summary: A True Story Told Beautifully
Review: The Nun's Story is the true story of Marie-Louise Habets, who entered a convent in Belgium in 1927 and was laicized in the middle of the Second World War. She undergoes the strict spiritual formation of a nun, spends years in missionary work, has a nearly-miraculous cure from TB in the Congo, only to find that she cannot reconcile her religious obligations to her sense of medical duty, and her Christian requirement to love her enemy with an atavistic loathing of the Nazis. It needs to be emphasized that the story takes place in a different cultural and temporal milieu than today's. For one thing, the idea of bringing the "benighted savages" of the Congo to Christ as a way of "improving" them has now become very outmoded, as has the whole idea of colonialism.
Times, and the Catholic Church, have changed a good deal since Sister Luke became a religious. Only the most reclusive, contemplative orders today insist on the kind of spiritual exercises described in the book. Vatican II changed a lot. Correspondingly the number of young women entering convents has dropped dramatically. At the time the film was made, the Vatican was quite hostile to it, and yet the film is highly spiritual, and Sister Luke's struggles are actually a marvellous exposition of the true Christian and highly spiritual personality.
Some have written that they would have liked a "happier" ending, with Sister Luke marrying Dr. Fortunati, or "rediscovering" her faith. In the event, in reality, neither happened. Ms. Habets was discovered by the author of "The Nun's Story" in a displaced persons' camp, where she was nursing the inmates, and the two women lived together thereafter--Ms. Hulme, the author, eventually converting to Catholicism. That indicates to me that "Sister Luke" never lost her faith in God, but only in the way the convent insisted one approach Him. In my opinion, she was a highly religious person.
I think the film is faithful to the book, if not as detailed. Audrey Hepburn always thought it was one of her best films--although she is reported to have said that she should have insisted, to show the passage of time, that her hair have some grey in it when she left the convent.
I'm Jewish, but this film has always been very inspiring to me, maybe because I'm a nurse as well, and understand the vocational aspect of my profession.
Audrey Hepburn is supported by an excellent cast of fine British repertory actors. I wish the film would come out in DVD.
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Summary: Gripping, beautifully rendered.
Review: The restrictive life of a young cloistered nun is portrayed well here. Audrey does her utmost. All performances are top-notch. Who would miss with Fred Zinneman leading the pack?
I heard they called it "I jump over the wall," when filming it.
Where is the DVD? I want to see this movie full screen and cleaned up.
I disagree with the other viewer who felt negatively about the film because it did not "praise" the Catholic Church. In this day and age, there is not much to praise about the Church (why is it some refuse to see things this way?), and for its time, "The Nun's Story" is revelatory.
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Summary: The Nun's Story is Hepburn's greatest performance
Review: The trials and hardships of a struggling nun are depicted superbly as Sister Luke struggles with the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. It's must viewing for anyone who grew up Catholic, being educated by religious women.
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Summary: Excellent depiction of faith and conflict
Review: The underlying themes of this film, most unfortunately, can be missed today, when the young cannot remember anything like the sort of nuns depicted (though, admittedly, presented here in a style melodramatic for any age), and the "life against nature" could be taken as having elements that would not have been considered when it was produced. As well, and as any Amazon list mania visitor can see, Audrey Hepburn is "favourite actress" of so many that the viewer can become too wrapped up in it's being a film featuring her that the overall messages become blurred. The main character, Sister Luke, is brilliantly portrayed by Audrey Hepburn, who captures, in expression particularly, the intense struggle of one whose dedication is enormous, but (to borrow the words of Dr Fortunati) cannot "fit the mould." In an era when nuns were not to admit, even to themselves, that professional achievement played any part in their choice of convent life, yet where (it is apparent) one who was not a nun had no chance for such positions as nursing supervisor in the Congo, the conflict depicted is absorbingly intense. Sister Luke is a brilliant and extremely devoted nurse, yet, while her faith is clear, she obviously is one who is accepting the (for her, extraordinary) burdens of vowed life for the sake of the nursing opportunities. From the beginning, the young nun who expresses her personal motto as "all or nothing" is in conflict with the obedience demanded by her Order's Rule, and specific practise of which, as some of the conversations, particularly those with the Abbess, bring forth, seem much at odds with the demands of the apostolic work (for example, having to observe silence when one is working a night shift in a hospital.) The viewer can see the sense of Sister Luke's position, and Audrey Hepburn's depiction of Sister Luke as gradually deteriorating with the inner conflict is superb. It is notable that Sister Luke, despite having achieved her desired goal of the Congo assignment, and being in a far less rigid atmosphere than elsewhere, feels the struggle most keenly after facing that there is no point where, as she'd hoped, obedience becomes natural. The depiction of convent life may not be far from the practise of some Orders in that era, but the action does cross the border into sheer melodrama. Where the same scenes exist in the book (which was based on a true story), some of them make less sense in the film version because details the reader would have known are eliminated. For example, in the original, Sister Luke is assigned to the mental sanitorium because she is the only Sister in transit with a diploma in psychiatric nursing, where the film, with its dramatic music as she receives word of the transfer, makes it appear that she is sent there as punishment for disobeying the ludicrous suggestion that she "fail her exams to shows humility." As well, with no reference to the experience in psychiatric nursing, the film's Sister Luke seems a naive young nurse left all alone in the ward with the dangerous patients, and whose opening the "Archangel's" padded cell was an act of misguided ignorance. Her castigating herself for her pride and disobedience seems cruel in the film, where, in the book, the dangerous "heroism" is indeed proud and reckless, since she had the background to know the possible consequences. The scenery, in both the Belgian and Congo sequences, is splendidly captured and has a powerful impact. One unexpectedly poignant feature is in seeing the depiction of the last years of the Belgian Congo, when both church and state were apparently strong. When Sister Luke's professor of tropical medicines speaks of how the Congo she would see in 1930 was far different from what he found 20 years earlier, one is reminded of how the security the colonials imagined they had then would be destroyed within a few decades. Overall, the outstanding cast and powerful cinematography (an example of the latter being the actions of Gabrielle's removing her jewellery on her entrance days, then leaving her ring and crucifix before she exits the convent), and a musical score which can occasionally be obtrusive but is generally effective, combine to give an excellent depiction of conflict - and of how, on any level, cherished ideals can be shattered, whether for an individual, a church congregation, or a nation.
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Summary: STIRRING FILM
Review: THIS FILM IS A TRUE STORY....IN FACT, THE REAL SISTER LUKE, WHOSE NAME WAS MARIE-LOUISE HABETS NURSED AUDREY HEPBURN THROUGH A SERIES OF ILLNESSES. KATHRYN HULME, WHO WROTE THE BOOK, IN REAL LIFE WAS IN CHARGE OF THE UNDERGROUND NURSING STAFF TO WHICH SISTER LUKE WENT TO AFTER SHE LEFT THE CONVENT.....THE ACTING WAS GREAT AND KEPT ME MESMERIZED... THE FILM IS BASED ON ACTULAL EVENTS THAT THE REAL SISTER LUKE EXPERIENCED DURINT HER TIME IN THE CONVENT...... WHEN I WATCHED IT. I FORGOT THAT I WAS WATCHING A MOVIE..............IT IS LIKE LOOKING INTO ANOTHER PERSON'S SOUL.... THERE IS A GOOD BIOGRAPHY OF AUDREY WHERE FURTHER DETAILS CAN BE READ.......ALSO, YOU SHOULD READ THE NUN'S STORY....IT WOULD BE WELL WORTH YOUR WHILE.
Rating:
Summary: Not edifying at all...
Review: This film, in my estimation, belittles religious life and the value of obedience. It is not a worthwhile piece for Catholics to view. Perhaps non-Catholics will find it entertaining, as they will not be offended by the insult.
The value of obedience is in offering one's free will to God, on the irrefutable premise that He can do more with this offering than any actions that we choose ourself. This weakly conceived film utterly misses the point of religious life.
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