BYU

Harold B. Lee Library

The Nun’s Story

Starring Audrey Hepburn, Peter Finch, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Dean Jagger. Mildred Dunnock.

  • Time: 7:00 PM
  • Date: Friday, November 21, 2008
  • Place: HBLL Auditorium, 1st Floor; Admission is free; arrive early for seats.


About the Event
Some have called The Nun’s Story the greatest film that Hepburn ever made, although it would seem unlikely that a story, beginning in the late 1920s, about a young postulant nun in a Belgian convent striving for a career as a nurse, would rate such prominence. It came about because of Kathryn Hulme’s best-selling 1956 novel, based on the real Marie-Louise Habets, Hepburn’s enthusiasm for playing the lead role, and the assistance of Habets during production. This is a powerful, gripping film. The theme of the “clash of an individual with the community of which he is a part” is universal, said director Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, Oklahoma!, A Man For All Seasons). “An individual who is trying to follow his own, personal conscience against all kinds of odds; it applies equally to a purely interior dilemma, where the conflict of conscience is not directed against an opponent, but rages within the soul of the individual himself.”
Warner Bros., 1959. 149 mins. Technicolor. Director: Fred Zinnemann.

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