|
"Norfolk County, England, when the floods came." Convent doubling as hospital, stranded and incommunicado, the perfect stage for the metaphysical side of sleuthing. The ward matron (Claudette Colbert) oversees the emergency, burdened by her own guilty past. A high-strung gallery, surgeon (Robert Douglas) and the missus (Anne Crawford), equable nun (Connie Gilchrist) and disapproving Mother Superior (Gladys Cooper), disgruntled nurse (Phyllis Stanley) and "thieving half-wit" (Michael Pate). A mysterious connection with the special guest, the convicted young murderess (Ann Blyth) on her way to the gallows, faith in her innocence sparks the heroine's personal investigation. "Why don't you perform a miracle?" Douglas Sirk back in The First Legion territory and properly heightened, lightning flashes and all. A "relentless drive" behind the starched habit, on a dinghy through spectral mist to reach the tavern and bring back the prisoner's fiancé (Philip Friend). Clues on old newspaper clippings, the order of keys, the number of aspirin tablets. "Well, let me tell you this: It would do your soul good to be wrong once in a while." The victim was a toxic musician, his supposed poisoner initially bristles at the nun's kindness but soon enough a dissolve fuses both women in desperate prayer. "Less than angels," everyone's story, you can talk about God and the Holy Spirit or you can actually try to right an injustice. "When everything's in a turmoil, one forgets formalities." The climax up the bell tower is a midpoint between Welles' The Stranger and Hitchcock's Vertigo, the illumination of humility brings about dawn at last. With Gavin Muir, Norma Varden, Queenie Leonard, and Patrick O'Moore. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |