Word: abbesses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...forward with a dazzle of black and white, the black being his trousers and hair, the white being his coat, his teeth, and a napkin folded upon his wrist." This is Spark the peerless observer, in the grand tradition of her The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Abbess of Crewe...
...action drags, it makes little difference whether the crooks wear habits or five o'clock shadow. Nothing new emerges about the Watergate fiasco--except that it is difficult to make an entertaining film out of it. Robert Ender's screenplay, an adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel The Abbess of Crewe, manages only to trivialize the scandal, and any profundity about absolute power corrupting absolutely is lost beneath gossamer one-liners...
Anne Meara manages to chew gum and act at the same time as a Gerald Ford figure; her role is amusing, but it fits poorly into the narrative. Playing Kissinger with a Greek accent, Melina Mercouri advises Jackson from abroad, using a portable phone to check on the abbess' progress. It is funny once or twice, but not as a running gag. Still, there are few problems with the acting save the occasional air of embarrassment from the nuns who deliver the poorest lines...
Last year. All the President's Men; this year, all the abbess's nuns. Nasty Habits, adapted from Muriel Spark's 1974 novella The Abbess of Crewe, uses the goings-on at a Roman Catholic abbey outside Philadelphia to burlesque the Watergate affair...
Glenda Jackson, who is running for abbess, consolidates her strength with the help of two Haldeman-Ehrlichman types (Geraldine Page, Anne Jackson) and enough bugs and hidden cameras to outfit Moscow's embassy row. Her young rival (Susan Penhaligon), who is having a tumble under the poplars with a neighborhood priest, campaigns on a promise to make the abbey into a love nest. Just before Jackson sweeps to victory, her forces send a pair of Jesuit novices to burglarize her rival's sewing basket in search of love letters...