Veiled Desires: Intimate Portrayals of Nuns in Postwar Anglo-American Film
Veiled Desires: Intimate Portrayals of Nuns in Postwar Anglo-American Film
MAUREEN SABINE
Copyright Date: 2013
Published by: Fordham University Press
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r
Pages: 320
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13wzx0r
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Book Info
Veiled Desires: Intimate Portrayals of Nuns in Postwar Anglo-American Film
Book Description:

A provocative, interdisciplinary study of nuns on the big screen, from The Bells of St. Mary's (1945) to Doubt (2008), that shines fresh light on the cinematic nun as a woman and a religious in the twentieth century. Ingrid Bergman's engaging screen performance as Sister Mary Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary's made the film nun a star and her character a shining standard of comparison. She represented the religious life as the happy and rewarding choice of a modern woman who had a "complete understanding" of both erotic and spiritual desire. How did this vibrant and mature nun figure come to be viewed as girlish and naive? Why have she and her cinematic sisters in postwar popular film so often been stereotyped or selectively analyzed, so seldom been seen as women and religious? In Veiled Desires--a unique full-length, in-depth study of nuns in film--Maureen Sabine explores these questions in a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study covering more than sixty years of cinema. She looks at an impressive breadth of films in which the nun features as an ardent lead character, including The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), Black Narcissus (1947), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Sea Wife (1957), The Nun's Story (1959), The Sound of Music (1965), Change of Habit (1969), In This House of Brede (1975), Agnes of God (1985), Dead Man Walking (1995), and Doubt (2008). Veiled Desires considers how the beautiful and charismatic stars who play chaste nuns, from Ingrid Bergman and Audrey Hepburn to Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep, call attention to desires that the veil concealed and the habit was thought to stifle. In a theologically and psychoanalytically informed argument, Sabine responds to the critics who have pigeonholed the film nun as the obedient daughter and religious handmaiden of a patriarchal church, and the respectful audience who revered her as an icon of spiritual perfection. She provides a framework for a more complex and holistic picture of nuns on screen by showing how the films dramatize these women's Christian call to serve, sacrifice, and dedicate themselves to God, and their erotic desire for intimacy, agency, achievement, and fulfillment.

eISBN: 978-0-8232-5167-4
Subjects: Religion
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r.1
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r.2
  3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (pp. ix-xii)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r.3
  4. INTRODUCTION
    INTRODUCTION (pp. 1-17)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r.4

    If anyone has suffered from typecasting, it is the cinematic nun. Enveloped in a religious veil and habit that show her only in part and are barriers to imagining her as a whole person, she has been vulnerable to stereotypes that complete the visual process of fragmenting her on-screen.¹ Whether these stereotypes trivialize, sentimentalize, or sanctify her, represent her seriously or sensationally, the result is the same.² She has seldom been seen as a totality of mind-body-heart-spirit, rarely been the subject of comprehensive inter-disciplinary analysis, and never been the subject of full-length study. Instead, the screen nun has often become...

  5. 1 SELFLESS DESIRES: SACRIFICIAL AND SELF-FULFILLING SERVICE TO OTHERS IN CASABLANCA (1942), THE BELLS OF ST. MARY’S (1945), AND THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS (1958)
    1 SELFLESS DESIRES: SACRIFICIAL AND SELF-FULFILLING SERVICE TO OTHERS IN CASABLANCA (1942), THE BELLS OF ST. MARY’S (1945), AND THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS (1958) (pp. 18-58)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r.5

    When Ingrid Bergman appeared on-screen as Sister Mary Benedict inThe Bells of St. Mary’s, she was already a major film celebrity, but she made the film nun herself a star who “light(s) up dark lives … with luminous Hollywood beauty” (Loudon 1993: 16). The movie reviewers in 1945 felt that Bergman succeeded in representing the Catholic nun to a modern audience as an attractive, appealing, and admirable figure. Yet by the end of the century, actual nuns had come to take a dim view of her film performance as Sister Benedict and to lament her role in typecasting them...

  6. 2 SEXUAL DESIRES: REPRESSION AND SUBLIMATION IN BLACK NARCISSUS (1947), HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON (1957), AND SEA WIFE (1957)
    2 SEXUAL DESIRES: REPRESSION AND SUBLIMATION IN BLACK NARCISSUS (1947), HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON (1957), AND SEA WIFE (1957) (pp. 59-108)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r.6

    Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 filmBlack Narcissusdramatized the vocational crises of five Anglican sisters who struggle to establish a missionary foothold in the Himalayas, and the tragedy that unfolds when the neurotic Sister Ruth disintegrates under the strain, forsakes her vows, and runs amok. The shocking finale ofBlack Narcissusand the over-the-top performance of Kathleen Byron as the deranged Sister Ruth have left a powerful impression on film viewers.¹ That said, they have diverted attention from an important feature of the film: its examination of the psychosexual pressures of the religious life, an examination, which, I...

  7. 3 SUBJECTIVE DESIRES: THE ROLE OF THE CATHOLIC FAMILY ROMANCE IN THE NUN’S STORY (1959)
    3 SUBJECTIVE DESIRES: THE ROLE OF THE CATHOLIC FAMILY ROMANCE IN THE NUN’S STORY (1959) (pp. 109-160)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r.7

    When Audrey Hepburn appeared on-screen in 1959, looking immaculate in a black-and-white habit, the nun was still a figure veiled in mystique. This mystique derived its power from the traditional religious view that she “binds herself toa state of perfection, which requires a striving toward holiness that is … life-long” (Donovan and Wusinich 2008: 39). InThe Nun’s Story, film director Fred Zinnemann showed his respect for the heroic entrants, endurance runners, and dropouts in the arduous spiritual marathon to become perfect as “your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). He appreciated the ancient beauty of this ideal and...

  8. 4 SONOROUS DESIRES: SWEET, SPIRITED, AND STIRRING VOICES IN THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965) AND CHANGE OF HABIT (1969)
    4 SONOROUS DESIRES: SWEET, SPIRITED, AND STIRRING VOICES IN THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965) AND CHANGE OF HABIT (1969) (pp. 161-204)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r.8

    The Nun’s Storycomes to an end in solemn silence, a silence heavy with Sister Luke’s sadness and regret at failing to become “the perfect nun … obedient in all things unto death.” When she leaves the convent, she does not close the door behind her. Technically, this allowed the camera, which stays behind inside the cloister, to watch her cross the threshold and walk down the alleyway into the unknown. This wide open door is a metaphor for Zinnemann’s open-mindedness as a film director and a final ironic reiteration of why the hidden life of a nun first captured...

  9. 5 SACRED DESIRES: PASSION AND PATHOLOGY IN IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE (1975) AND AGNES OF GOD (1985)
    5 SACRED DESIRES: PASSION AND PATHOLOGY IN IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE (1975) AND AGNES OF GOD (1985) (pp. 205-250)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r.9

    Reflecting on the effect that the Second Vatican Council had on American Catholic nuns in the 1960s, distinguished Benedictine leader and religious writer Sister Joan Chittister remarked that this decade of unprecedented change and renewal “was wonderful and it was terrible. It started with hope and excitement and ended in a lot of bitterness and difficulty for a long time.” Chittister had joined a community with the characteristics that Maria projects so unforgettably inThe Sound of Music—“high energy, high love” and “a lot of joy” (Rogers 1996: 295–6). She became a postulant in the early fifties at...

  10. 6 SPIRITUAL DESIRES: SIN, SUFFERING, DEATH, AND SALVATION IN DEAD MAN WALKING (1995)
    6 SPIRITUAL DESIRES: SIN, SUFFERING, DEATH, AND SALVATION IN DEAD MAN WALKING (1995) (pp. 251-274)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r.10

    In the five previous chapters, I have explored the range and complexity of the desires that nuns unveil on-screen and shown how these subvert one view of religious life voiced by Sister Luke, that “a nun is not a person who wishes or desires.” While traditional nuns regard the selfless surrender to God in agape as their supreme purpose, they paradoxically allude to the desires associated with eros when they acknowledge that “this letting go” of the self can awaken “the deepest yearnings of the human heart” (Donovan and Wusinich 2009: 28). Indeed, they draw attention to a phenomenon that...

  11. CONCLUSION: SUSPECT DESIRES: THE END OF A RELIGIOUS ILLUSION IN DOUBT (2008)?
    CONCLUSION: SUSPECT DESIRES: THE END OF A RELIGIOUS ILLUSION IN DOUBT (2008)? (pp. 275-302)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r.11

    When I originally conceived this study, I envisagedDead Man Walkingas “the light at the end of the road” for the representational journey that women religious take in postwar popular film. It would have been satisfying to conclude on an uplifting note with a film that means so much to contemporary nuns and that honors their continuing work of making Christ’s compassionate presence felt in a troubled world. The intense and life-changing events inDead Man Walkingtake place at Easter, the supreme Christian celebration, when the God-man who humbled himself on the Cross rose from the dead, and...

  12. WORKS CITED
    WORKS CITED (pp. 303-326)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r.12
  13. INDEX
    INDEX (pp. 327-340)
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13wzx0r.13
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