--- title: "The Nun's Story" year: 1959 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-nuns-story" fi1m_score: 84 critics_score: 75 critics_reviews: 4 published: "2026-09-20T03:36:25.598909+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T03:36:37.466517+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Nun's Story (1959) Directed by Fred Zinnemann · 2h 31m · MPA NR · Drama **Fi1m score: 84** · Critics 75 (early) from 4 reviews *In a sentence:* A woman spends half her life trying to become nobody, and Audrey Hepburn’s face will not let her > Fred Zinnemann’s account of a Belgian woman’s years in a nursing order is slow, severe and nearly unadorned, and Audrey Hepburn is better in it than anywhere else we have seen her. Franz Waxman’s score keeps telling us what she has already shown; ignore it. ## Synopsis Bruges, the late 1920s. The daughter of the surgeon Dr. Hubert Van Der Mal (Dean Jagger) leaves her father’s house to enter a convent of nursing sisters. She wants to go to the Congo and work in a mission hospital. First she has to become someone else. She is given the name Sister Luke (Audrey Hepburn), her hair is cut, and Sister Margharita (Mildred Dunnock), mistress of postulants, teaches her the Grand Silence, the custody of the eyes and the public confession of faults before the whole community. The Rev. Mother Emmanuel (Edith Evans) presides over it all and misses nothing. Sister Luke is clever, proud and quick to argue, and the order regards all three as things to be got rid of before it will send her anywhere. ## Review Fred Zinnemann’s film about a Belgian woman who spends years trying to be a good nun runs 151 minutes. It has no villain, no love affair in the usual sense and hardly a raised voice, and it held us from the first shot to the last. Robert Anderson’s screenplay, from Kathryn C. Hulme’s novel, is about one thing, obedience, and whether a clever, proud woman can want it enough. Zinnemann, who produced with Henry Blanke, gives that question two and a half hours and never tells us the answer. The first hour is spent in the mother house in Bruges. Franz Planer shoots it in white walls, grey habits and black floors, so that when Sister Luke’s hair comes off the picture has almost no colour left. The postulants learn to walk without sound, to eat without looking up and to kneel before the community and confess their faults aloud. Hepburn plays all of it still. The face that was so mobile in [*Roman Holiday*](https://film.one/film/roman-holiday) is held nearly flat here, and the effort of holding it is the performance. When something gets through, a flicker of impatience at a slow sister, a glance she was told not to take, it lands like a shout. The Belgian chapters test her, and the tests are never cruel in the obvious way. Her superiors ask things of her in a level voice, give their reasons straight, and wait. Sister Luke stands there and says nothing, and Hepburn lets us see exactly how much the nothing costs. We were angry, properly angry, more than once, and the film did not tell us whether we were right to be. A stretch in a mental hospital under Beatrice Straight’s Mother Christophe frightened us more than we expected, and Zinnemann gets the fear from what is behind the doors rather than from anything he shows. The Congo is a second film inside this one, and Planer changes everything for it. The whites go cream, the shadows go brown, the light comes in low through slatted shutters, and for the first time the picture looks warm. Peter Finch’s Fortunati, the surgeon Sister Luke assists, is an unbeliever who watches her more closely than any of her superiors have, and their scenes are the best two-handers in the film. He tells her, without cruelty, what he thinks she is, and Hepburn takes it in silence and lets us watch her decide whether he is right. Peggy Ashcroft’s Mother Mathilde, running the mission, gets less to do than she deserves and does it perfectly. Not everything holds. Franz Waxman’s score is the loudest problem: organ and choir over Bruges, drums under the Congo, forever announcing feelings the actors have already shown us. Zinnemann knew it; he keeps Waxman out of the last scene altogether, and the silence is the best decision in the picture. Walter Thompson’s cutting is patient to a fault, and there are stretches in the Belgian hospital chapters where a scene ends, the next begins and we could not have said what had moved. Marjorie Best’s habits are exact and unlovely, which is right. Zinnemann’s better-known films, [*High Noon*](https://film.one/film/high-noon), [*From Here to Eternity*](https://film.one/film/from-here-to-eternity), *A Man for All Seasons*, are about people who will not bend. This one asks whether bending is the whole point, and it puts at its centre a woman who is good at her job and is told that being good at it is the trouble. Edith Evans, as Mother Emmanuel, has perhaps four scenes, and in each of them lays out the terms of the life as facts, not warnings. The complaint from the reviews that dislike it is that it is slow. It is slow; that is what it is about. Watch it on a quiet evening with nobody talking over it, and give it the first hour. If the confession of faults does nothing for you, the rest will not either. If it does, you will not look at your watch. *Fi1m score 84, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say With only 4 reviews in so far, the lean is warm but the sample is thin. Most critics admire Zinnemann’s handling of a serious subject and the pictorial use of the convent and the Congo, and Hepburn’s central performance draws the strongest praise, with the supporting cast singled out alongside her. The one reservation comes from Time Out, writing decades later, which finds the length and the insistent score heavy going for anyone not already drawn to questions of faith and obedience. The spread is wide for so few reviews, from near-unqualified admiration to a polite shrug. ### Reviews we read (4) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (90/100, inferred): The film is an extraordinary and sensitively depicted account of a dedicated life, with Zinnemann crafting a brilliant synthesis of idea and imagery that traces a spiritual arc ending in a strange defeat. Hepburn is fluent and luminous in the central role, supported by strong performances from the ensemble. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1959/06/19/archives/the-dedicated-story-of-a-nun-audrey-hepburn-stars-in-music-hall.html) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (90/100, inferred): Zinnemann's production is a soaring and luminous film with absorbing drama, pathos, humor, and memorable scenes despite its serious theme. Hepburn gives her finest performance in the demanding central role, backed by a strong ensemble and striking visuals from the photography and score. [Read](https://variety.com/1958/film/reviews/the-nun-s-story-1200419266/) - **The New Yorker**, John McCarten (70/100, inferred): The picture is for the most part a successful attempt to deal realistically and sympathetically with the spiritual struggles of a proud young woman in a strict religious order. Zinnemann makes the most of the pictorial possibilities in convents and the Congo, with Hepburn entrancing in the lead and a splendid supporting cast. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1959/06/27/bride-of-christ) - **Time Out**, TM (50/100, inferred): The film adapts Kathryn Hulme's bestseller about a Belgian woman's journey as a missionary nun in the Congo, where she grapples with her vows and personal doubts. It offers fascinating details on nun training and subtle expressions of inner conflict, with solid performances, though the length and insistent score make it a slog for those uninterested in themes of faith and obedience. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-nuns-story-1) ## Details - **Director:** Fred Zinnemann - **Director:** Fred Zinnemann - **Screenplay:** Robert Anderson - **Novel:** Kathryn C. Hulme - **Cinematography:** Franz Planer - **Editor:** Walter Thompson - **Music:** Franz Waxman - **Costume design:** Marjorie Best - **Producer:** Henry Blanke, Fred Zinnemann - **Cast:** Audrey Hepburn as Sister Luke; Peter Finch as Dr. Fortunati; Edith Evans as Rev. Mother Emmanuel; Peggy Ashcroft as Mother Mathilde; Dean Jagger as Dr. Hubert Van Der Mal; Mildred Dunnock as Sister Margharita; Beatrice Straight as Mother Christophe; Patricia Collinge as Sister William - **Runtime:** 2h 31m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 18 June 1959 - **Genres:** Drama - **Budget:** $4 million - **Box office:** $13 million ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1960: Best Actress (nominated); Best Cinematography, Color (nominated); Best Director (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Original Dramatic or Comedy Score (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Sound (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated) - Golden Globes 1960: Best Film Promoting International Understanding (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Black Narcissus* (1947), Fi1m 88: Nuns in the Himalayas, in Technicolor that boils; the fever this film keeps under control. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/black-narcissus.md) - *Ida* (2013), Fi1m 85: A Polish novice goes looking for her family and finds the twentieth century. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/ida.md) - *Of Gods and Men* (2010), Fi1m 84: French monks in Algeria decide whether to stay; obedience with the stakes made plain. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/of-gods-and-men.md) - *Novitiate* (2017): The postulant years again, in an American convent, with the anger left in. - *A Man for All Seasons* (1966), Fi1m 81: Zinnemann’s other film about conscience, this time with a man who refuses to bend. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/a-man-for-all-seasons.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-nuns-story