Monday, June 30, 2008

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Once I found out that Robert Mitchum starred in a John Huston movie, I couldn't resist and immediately put it on my queue. But I had been watching an unbalanced number of Huston movies at that time, and didn't feel that was in the spirit of my K2K, so I held off.

It's similar in its broad outlines to Huston's The African Queen (religious woman and uncivilized man go on WW2 adventure together), so to a certain degree it was probably trying to cash in on the success of that film. Still, Huston changes up things enough so that it doesn't feel like a rehash, and explores some very different themes. This is less of a comedy and more of a drama, and this time around the woman is a nun, making the burgeoning attraction between the man and the woman a lot more awkward. And that leads to a touch not often seen in these kinds of movies, but one that I always appreciate, where the two characters decide not to shack up. It's refreshing to see a movie where they don't contrive to kept the boy and the girl together in the end.

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