Just watched this yesterday. I think it's probably Audrey Hepburn's greatest performance. You could see the struggle she was having just through her eyes.

I really liked Peter Finch too. The gruff exterior but a heart of gold.

Although the nuns in this movie portray nothing like the nuns I had in primary school. They were cruel women, whom I'm pretty sure hated kids.

I've also heard some others say they had the harsh and quick-to-punish "mean" nuns. My closest-in-age brother and I didn't go to Catholic school, but our eldest siblings did, during some of their school years, and overall they liked - or at least they weren't left with unfavourable memories of - their nun teachers. Their agreeable to neutral experiences perhaps were because they were at private boarding schools, that may have had a lower ratio of students per nun or something.

By the way, Agnes of God (1985) is another "nun" movie I really like. There's also the excellent 1923 Silent The White Sister starring Lillian Gish.

I hate to say I thought this was majorly flawed. I gave it 80 mins then skipped to the inevitable ending.

Audrey's character is parachuted into joining the nuns at the outset despite a seemingly reluctant father. There is no background to her character whatsoever. No mother, no influences that may have awakened or inspired her spiritually. No indication she was in any way a devoted Catholic. No key moments in her formative years, no indication of her sexual thoughts (if any) or of her inclination to solitude or social intercourse. There wasnt even much in the way of intrigue or power balance within the incredibly hierarchical organisation. Not much sign of relations between the different tiers of nuns and prospects.

It was just the journey of a random, blank canvas of a person into a nunnery and it left me stone cold.

4/10

This was one of the many 'nun' movies from the 50s & early 60s that made me want to be a nun(when I was 10). But by the time I was 11, my vocation had changed to a burlesque stripper! I was a strange child.