To understand why this got made you need to know it was based on a play that was very popular in Europe in the 1910s and which toured the US in the 1920s. Warners bought the film rights back then and to be honest that's when they should've made it but it kicked around in development hell until it was revived during the late 50s vogue for religious pictures (A Man Called Peter, The Nun's Story, etc.)
The plot is odd. It starts in a convent with some "how do you solve a problem like Maria" style chats among the nuns about Carroll Baker, who is a novice, but tends to day dream. When hunky British soldier Roger Moore trots into town (the time is the Napoleonic Wars and Wellington's campaign in Spain) she gets hot pants and the two of them are soon rolling in the hills. She gets it into her head that Moore is killed, goes a little ga-ga and runs off with the gypsies. Vittoria Gassman falls in love with her and winds up dead. Then she becomes a flamenco dancer; a bullfighter falls in love with her and ends up dead. Then she's reunited with Moore. At the convent the Virgin Mary comes down from a statue and pretends to be Baker. There's a drought. Baker goes back to the church so that Moore can survive the Battle of Waterloo and that it may rain again. I think I've got all that right.
So basically it's about a woman who wants to escape being a nun, but God keeps killing off all the men who are into her, and throwing in some drought for good measure, so she goes back to it. Which isn't very fun.
At times this has shades of Gainsborough Melodramas of the 1940s, with Baker going from nun, to gypsy wench, to flamenco dancer... Maybe that's should have made it. The filmmakers never get the tone right.
Baker actually is compelling in the lead - I always enjoy her, she's a strong actor, great voice, has star quality. She's better than the material. There is camp fun watching her hop around playing all these sort of characters - Baker as a nun is inherently campy. Roger Moore hadn't grown into his looks by this stage; like Baker he's got a great voice, and his performance isn't bad.
There is some hammy support acting from Walter Slezak and Katina Paxinou; some terrible dialogue such as "here's a portrait from my friend Goya" and the Duke of Wellington going "we could fight him here... at Waterloo".
It's a terrible move really only for Roger Moore and Carroll Baker completists, and/or students of religious films of the 1950s.
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