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Heaven Knows, Mr Allison1957 US Dir John Huston Cast Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum IMDb |
With a plot that could easily play as trite (Marine and nun are stranded together on a deserted island, fighting their attraction to one another and the stray Jap) and a sense of humor that borders on the absurd (the turtle hunt; putting a line like “They don’t seem to beat their guns on very hopeful poop, do they?” in Deborah Kerr’s mouth), this could have verged on the unbearable. But with such seasoned veterans involved, and with this playing as a greatest hits package (Huston’s African Queen meets Kerr’s Black Narcissus crossed with From Here to Eternity meets… every role Mitchum ever played), it fundamentally works. By stages a war film, a black comedy and a halting romance, it is at least throughout an effective character and relationship piece for its two stars, and mismatched though they are (in terms of both their characters’ backgrounds and the actors’ types) their growing and restricted relationship is generally believable and compelling. Although at times they seem to speak different languages altogether, they share a sense of duty, fidelity and self-sacrificing purpose; even if the ends and means of those drives diverge wildly at times, their devotion fosters a kind of mutual respect and the possibility of something deeper. Huston does justice to his beautiful and wild landscapes with energetic direction and appropriately majestic use of his surroundings, effectively narrowing his focus in Mitchum & Kerr’s more intimate moments with some nice counterpoints and reserved interplay. If this all sounds like unqualified praise then I should probably underline the words trite and absurd and caution one that there is not, perhaps, very much depth of development in this. But if one’s aims are set at a gorgeous location shoot and a genuine, minimalist portrait of an abortive relationship in the midst of war and duty, the film basically succeeds.
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