Jan 11 movie: The Nun's Story. I ended up getting sucked in and watching the whole thing, which I should have known would happen. I'm fascinated with movies about nuns, probably because of the complete lack of religious upbringing in my life except for four years in a Catholic high school. Audrey Hepburn plays a young Belgian nun who works in the Congo as a nurse and wrestles with doubts about her calling. The interesting thing, I think, is the lack of black and white morality (a rarity in old movies about nuns). The convent system is made to seem kindly and loving, if sometimes misguided, but leaving it is clearly the right decision for her. A sharp contrast to Song of Bernadette, where Jennifer Jones glows with beatific light while being tormented by the sadistic mistress of novices. On the other hand, Song of Bernadette has Vincent Price as a sceptical magistrate, which is always a big plus.
Jan 12 movie: The Toy Wife. This movie was awful and I wouldn't have watched the whole thing if I hadn't been too tired after work to get off my ass. It's about a selfish brat named Frou-Frou, in antebellum Louisiana, who marries the man her sister loves, then runs off with another man, who dies in a duel with the husband, and the husband is such a bastard about the whole thing that the sister falls out of love with him, then Frou-Frou gets tuberculosis and dies. But they all forgive each other on her deathbed so it's okay. As an added bonus there were more hideous stereotypes of african slaves than you can shake a stick at. The Toy Wife was kind of like the Bette Davis classic Jezebel except completely wretched.
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