The Nun's Story is a 1959 American drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Audrey Hepburn, Peter Finch, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, and Dean Jagger.

The film tells the life of Gabrielle Van Der Mal (Hepburn), a young woman who decides to enter a convent and make the many sacrifices required by her choice.

[1][3] Gabrielle "Gaby" Van Der Mal, whose widowed father, Hubert, is a prominent surgeon in Belgium, enters a convent of nursing sisters in the late 1920s, hoping to serve in the Belgian Congo.

The local superior poses a startling challenge to Sister Luke, suggesting that she deliberately fail her oral examination to demonstrate humility.

Fortunati, not wanting to lose a competent nurse and sympathetic to her desire to stay in the Congo, engineers a treatment plan that allows her to remain there rather than having to convalesce in Europe.

After Sister Luke recovers and returns to work, Fortunati is forced to send her to Belgium as the only nurse qualified to accompany a VIP who has become mentally unstable.

While at her new assignment, Sister Luke's struggle with obedience becomes impossible for her to sustain as she is repeatedly forced into compromises to cope with the reality of the Nazi occupation, including that they have killed her father.

In particular he objected to the scene in which Sister Luke's clothes are torn off by a mental patient passing as the Archangel Gabriel and a discussion of anal suppositories.

Although the book was popular among devout followers of many religions, it proved somewhat divisive: Some praised its intimate and empathetic view of religious conviction, and others worried that it might discourage potential postulants.

[4]: 23-33  Eventually Warners secured the rights to the book, and Robert Anderson and Fred Zinnemann signed to write and direct the film.

[4]: 34-35 With progress being made on the script, the production turned its attention to Europe, where the film was shot, and where cooperation with religious organizations was crucial.

Producer Henry Blanke soon learned that the Catholic Church in Belgium were not impressed with the book, finding it injurious to religious vocations, and it would not cooperate with the production in any form.

[4]: 37-38  After recovering from an automobile accident, Jack Vizzard went to work on his European connections, hoping to convince Leo Joseph Suenens, auxiliary bishop of Mechelen to relinquish his objections.

Together with Lunders, who soon was contracted as the film's ecclesiastical advisor, Vizzard won over Monsignor Suenens, but still needed to convince the Mother General of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary in Ghent.

Both had Belgian roots and had experienced personal trauma during World War II, including losing touch with their fathers and having their brothers imprisoned by Germans.

[8] Habets later helped nurse Hepburn back to health following her near-fatal horse-riding accident on the set of the 1960 film The Unforgiven.

Zinnemann also continued his usual practices of collaborating with the film's writer on the second draft of the screenplay (but not receiving a writing credit) and meeting with each major actor for an in-depth discussion of his or her character.

[10] The cast was completed by Colleen Dewhurst, making her first screen appearance, and Renée Zinnemann, the wife of the director who played the assistant of the Mother Superior (Edith Evans).

[12] Fred Zinnemann had originally intended to film only the African scenes in color, with Europe rendered in stark black and white.

[9] Interior scenes for the Belgian portions of the film were shot in Rome at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and Cinecittà on sets designed by Alexandre Trauner.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times praised The Nun's Story as an "amazing motion picture" and "a thoroughly tasteful film", writing that "Mr. Zinnemann has made this off-beat drama describe a parabola of spiritual afflatus and deflation that ends in a strange sort of defeat.

"[15] The National Legion of Decency classified the film as A-II, "Morally Unobjectionable for Adults and Adolescents" with the observation that, "This entertainment film, noble, sensitive, reverent, and inspiring in its production, is a theologically sound and profound analysis of the essential meaning of religious vocation through the story of a person who objectively lacked the fundamental qualification for an authentic religious calling.

If the film fails to capture the full meaning of religious life in terms of its spiritual joy and all-pervading charity, this must be attributed to the inherent limitations of a visual art.