8/10
The story of how two people learn the true meaning of love
8 April 2007
Warning: Spoilers
"Heaven knows Mr. Allison" is a story of love and war on a South Pacific island swarming with Japanese troops in the second World War…

A man and a woman, the only ones to live through a storm, find each other at a deserted church…

There were few words when such people met; there was sympathy, but the sympathy was not expressed in words…

Together, they share many dangers… Out of their trials grows a love which bring to each a new closeness to God…

Robert Mitchum plays a United States Marine in serious trouble… With an ordinary girl or woman, he would have just taken charge of her and he would have begun at once to do what he could for both of them… But a woman in holy orders was a great mystery to him… A nun was something outside his experience…

He had believed that nuns were delicate creatures, living far from the roughness of the world… Nuns were strange, mysterious beings, behind the walls of secret, quiet, holy places… But here he was one of them alone in the jungle, in the middle of war and danger… And she apparently believed that he, Private Henry Allison had been brought here by God's hand just for the purpose of helping her…

Deborah Kerr plays Sister Angela, the nun who was expecting someone when Mr. Allison came… Her face, almost hidden by the white head-dress, looked surprising young… There were shadows of worry under her eyes, but the eyes themselves were almost like a child's…

To her, there was no importance in the fact that Allison was a man… Her faith, her years of religious training, the high purposes of her life, all placed her above and beyond the things of the earth…

To Allison she appeared sexless in the sense that she was beyond her sex… To him she was a being who ate and drank and slept and had to be protected… In other ways, she was a complete mystery…

The adventure, beautifully filmed in the West Indies, is a touching story of unrequited love and an expert acting duet by two legendary stars
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