The Nun's Story (1959) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction
Added 2025-05-30 12:00:13 +0000 UTCAnother Audrey Hepburn movie to check off my list! Thank you so much to Nate Jasper for the Reactr request. I was surprised seeing such a long runtime on this one before diving in, but now that I'm through it all, I can genuinely understand it! It was a long journey and took its time and was the better for it. Audrey is a beauty and her performance is great. Let me know if it's your first time watching this too and thank you so much for taking the time to do so. 🥰 I hope you enjoy the reaction. [Direct link here.]
✦ KL
Comments
Sorry for the late response! I appreciate all of the info and details here. I love that Audrey spent time with a real nun in prep for this role and thanks for the info about her!
Movies with KL
2025-06-01 23:30:24 +0000 UTCWhat's so cool about this is that the movie and book are based on a real nun whom Audrey met herself. Audrey prepared and researched this role for an entire year and in that time met Sister Xaverine (changed to Luke for the book/movie), real name Mary-Louise Habets. The two became friends and, perhaps in some divine intervention, Habets was Audrey's nurse after a horse-riding accident during the making of The Unforgiven in 1960. Habets apparently was a trendsetter. After the film was released, many, many nuns left the order over the decades. It was actually a rarity in that time for a nun to leave the order so it must have been quite the shock to the Church for women to start leaving more and more! I wish I could say there was some grand reason why Sister Luke wanted to be a nun. But, she was just a devout woman who felt the call of God. Perhaps they could have had an extra scene with prayer and a big light shining down as "the call" or something? I'm not sure what they could have done to portray that. I do love how twisted the ideology the convents cling to really is. Purge memories, get rid of attachments, can't have pride. Sound like another order we know? Jedi are space nuns confirmed 😆 I'm so glad you enjoyed and learned a lot from this film, it's certainly one that could be a bit polarizing today, which I suppose is why it's been forgotten over time. But no one can deny how much good Sister Luke did both during her time as a nun and after. Habets settled in Antwerp after leaving the Order. She joined a British First Aid unit which nursed the soldiers wounded while fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. She was present in Antwerp when German forces massively bombarded the city soon after its liberation, killing and maiming some 10,000 people. After the end of the war in Europe, she was sent to Germany to help care for her fellow Belgians who had been imprisoned in concentration camps there. Habets was part of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which is how she met Kathryn Hulme, who would become the writer of The Nun's Story. At the time they met, Habets was extremely depressed and burdened with a sense of failure and was rather asocial. Kathryn began talking to her and soon Habets told her story of being a nun that spanned 17 years. The two became such good friends that they moved to America and eventually settled in Arizona where Habets helped the Navajo people, and of course eventually finding her way to California where she both met Audrey Hepburn and saved her life. Habets and Hulme moved to Hawaii eventually, and continued to travel throughout the rest of their lives. When Hulme passed, Habets inherited her literary estate. One more bit of trivia, a lot of Audrey's family were Nazi sympathizers. So, what she did was take up dance and the money she earned doing it, she donated to the Belgian fight against Germany. Audrey was such a remarkable person inside and out and so was Sister Luke. I like to think Hepburn, Habets, and Hulme are up there somewhere, still the best of friends and finally at rest and peace.
Nathan Jasper, the Artist Formerly Known as Primary
2025-05-30 13:34:31 +0000 UTC
