Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 31-July-05
Spoiler Rating: High

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)

A nun and a Marine walk into a bar ….

Well, a sandbar, anyway, in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, the provocative 1957 drama co-written and directed by John Huston. It's an intriguing situation wherein a U.S. soldier during World War II (Robert Mitchum) washes ashore an island in the South Pacific and finds an Irish nun who has recently been stranded (Deborah Kerr). Being the only two people for miles around, the unlikely duo begins planning for survival while trying to sound each other out. Corporal Allison is soon revealed to be an efficient and courteous fella who traded the recklessness of youth for the discipline of the Marine Corps, to which he is firmly devoted. Sister Angela doesn't appear to have sowed any wild oats in her day, but she shares with him a passionate devotion to her calling. A reverence for purpose helps explain the affinity that springs up between them, which intensifies in dependence and esteem after the Japanese arrive and add execution (or imprisonment) to their list of castaways' cares.

The odd-couple aspect is the film's obvious starting point and might have sustained its focus, but it quickly becomes apparent that the driving force of this story is sex: the eternal, and in this case unavoidable, question of Will they or won't they? Will nature or nurture win out? (Ah, the '50s: always good for a tale of desire confronting respectability.) Mitchum and Kerr were clearly selected because they can carry a two-performance film with distinction and because they're both ripe for bedding, despite his filthiness and her greying wimple. (Naturally, the wimple comes off once, and his shirt several times.) Huston and his crew deserve credit for not carrying the sexual tension to the point of absurdity, but it's hard not to feel jerked around by the "Dear Playboy …" titillation of the scenario. "Why do you have to have such big blue eyes?" the corporal wails in a rare moment of weakness, and one can only echo the question. What's worse, the movie refuses to part with either the characters' purity or the burning question of their lust even when it sends them off to their fate. The question then becomes, What does it all mean?

For this reason, I can only recommend Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison to fans of the stars or those Harlequin Romances that don't contain explicit carnality. Beyond its desert-island interest and wartime suspense, this is essentially a movie designed to widen eyes and speed up heart rates without sullying the ideals of G. I. Joe and the Virgin Mary. Mitchum and Kerr create two compelling characters and find unexplored common ground between them, but their talent cannot hide the fact that the picture (as its coy title suggests) is a tease.

Copyright © 2005 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.