Veiled Desires: Intimate Portrayals of Nuns in Postwar Anglo-American Film

Maureen Sabine

Published by Fordham University Press 2013

Veiled Desires

Intimate Portrayals of Nuns in Postwar Anglo-American Film

Maureen Sabine

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823252121

Overview
Contents

About this book

Veiled Desires is the first full-length study of the film nun to trace the shifting features of her screen representation in twelve or more postwar films that span a sixty-year period. It not only situates them within the changing history of modern women religious but employs an inter-disciplinary perspective to argue that the film nun projects a complex and often vexed portrait of both traditional religious and modern female desires.

Author / Editor information

Sabine Maureen :

Maureen Sabine is Professor of Literary, Cultural, and Religious Studies in the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong.

Reviews

—Rebecca Sullivan:
Veiled Desires is a rich, compelling, and provocative appraisal of the cinematic nun. In her intricate analyses of both contemporary and historical films, Maureen Sabine masterfully recovers the Eros of a religious vocation. In so doing, she challenges the way that popular culture defines women’s desire and erotic selfhood, and reveals the complex dynamic between our spiritual and sexual lives.

—Christopher S. Shannon:
“The ‘nun film’ was a significant genre in Anglo-American cinema through most of the second half of the twentieth century. Maureen Sabine’s is the most impressive treatment to date of a genre that has been sadly neglected in the literature of film studies. Ranging from serious art films such as Black Narcissus to the popular entertainment of The Sound of Music, Sabine combines Freudian psychology and Christian theology to offer a sensitive reading of films whose protagonists invariably struggle to fashion distinct personal identities while remaining faithful to received traditions.”

Not every reader will find the Freudian analysis helpful and compelling. Nonetheless, Veiled Desires, which seeks to '[challenge] the view that Freud and his psychoanalytic disciples have nothing to tell us about faith' (301), has much to teach specialists (and especially graduate students) in Catholic Studies.

—Amy L. Koehlinger:
“Veiled Desires is a provocative, fascinating, and occasionally lyrical study of the narratives and imagery of Catholic women religious on the big screen. The book is impressively ambitious in scope, bringing together social theory, psychoanalysis, Catholic history, and media studies to interpret forty years of film.”

“An accessible and engaging read.”

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Selfless Desires: Sacrificial and Self-Fulfilling Service to Others in Casablanca (1942), The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	18
2. Sexual Desires: Repression and Sublimation in Black Narcissus (1947), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), and Sea Wife (1957) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
3. Subjective Desires: The Role of the Catholic Family Romance in The Nun’s Story (1959) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	109
4. Sonorous Desires: Sweet, Spirited, and Stirring Voices in The Sound of Music (1965) and Change of Habit (1969) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
5. Sacred Desires: Passion and Pathology in In This House of Brede (1975) and Agnes of God (1985) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
6. Spiritual Desires: Sin, Suffering, Death, and Salvation in Dead Man Walking (1995) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
Conclusion: Suspect Desires: The End of a Religious Illusion in Doubt (2008)? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	275
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	327

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Pages
- Main content: 352
Keywords: nuns; Postwar Film; Desire; Agape and Eros; Spirituality and Sexuality; Twentieth-Century Religious Life and History; Catholicism; Cultural Studies; Freud; Faith; Feminism; Gender Politics

eBook

Published: August 22, 2013
ISBN: 9780823252121