Title
Veiled Desires : Intimate Portrayals of Nuns in Postwar Anglo-American Film / Maureen Sabine.
ISBN
9780823252121
Published
New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2013]
Copyright
©2013
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (352 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers
10.1515/9780823252121 doi
Dewey Decimal Classification
791.4309
Summary
Ingrid Bergman's engaging screen performance as Sister Mary Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary's made the film nun a star and her character a shining standard of comparison. She represented the religious life as the happy and rewarding choice of a modern woman who had a "complete understanding" of both erotic and spiritual desire. How did this vibrant and mature nun figure come to be viewed as girlish and naïve? Why have she and her cinematic sisters in postwar popular film so often been stereotyped or selectively analyzed, so seldom been seen as women and religious? In Veiled Desires-a unique full-length, in-depth look at nuns in film-Maureen Sabine explores these questions in a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study covering more than sixty years of cinema. She looks at an impressive breadth of films in which the nun features as an ardent lead character, including The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), Black Narcissus (1947), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Sea Wife (1957), The Nun's Story (1959), The Sound of Music (1965), Change of Habit (1969), In This House of Brede (1975), Agnes of God (1985), Dead Man Walking (1995), and Doubt (2008). Veiled Desires considers how the beautiful and charismatic stars who play chaste nuns, from Ingrid Bergman and Audrey Hepburn to Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep, call attention to desires that the veil concealed and the habit was thought to stifle. In a theologically and psychoanalytically informed argument, Sabine responds to the critics who have pigeonholed the film nun as the obedient daughter and religious handmaiden of a patriarchal church, and the respectful audience who revered her as an icon of spiritual perfection. Sabine provides a framework for a more complex and holistic picture of nuns onscreen by showing how the films dramatize these women's Christian call to serve, sacrifice, and dedicate themselves to God, and their erotic desire for intimacy, agency, achievement, and fulfillment.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)
Available in Other Form
print 9780823251650
Frontmatter
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Selfless Desires: Sacrificial and Self-Fulfilling Service to Others in Casablanca (1942), The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958)
2. Sexual Desires: Repression and Sublimation in Black Narcissus (1947), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), and Sea Wife (1957)
3. Subjective Desires: The Role of the Catholic Family Romance in The Nun's Story (1959)
4. Sonorous Desires: Sweet, Spirited, and Stirring Voices in The Sound of Music (1965) and Change of Habit (1969)
5. Sacred Desires: Passion and Pathology in In This House of Brede (1975) and Agnes of God (1985)
6. Spiritual Desires: Sin, Suffering, Death, and Salvation in Dead Man Walking (1995)
Conclusion: Suspect Desires: The End of a Religious Illusion in Doubt (2008)?
Works Cited
Index
