Word: joans
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Joan Hackett, Kevin McCarthy and Kathy Nolan in a murder story about two former school friends and a photographer...
Confused by his failure to "purify" Mother Joan and the rest of the passion-crazed nuns, the priest seeks the advice of an old rabbi, played by the same actor. To the Poles, Judaism is something dark and mysterious, and so in answer to the priest's wish to make everyone angels, the rabbi answers that we are all devils, that Satan created the world. The only force strong enough to change anything, capable of threatening the priests' droning ritual and the nunnery's newly-constructed wall, is the violent explosion of passion. The story begins because a former priest...
Even the priest becomes infected by Joan's passion--and it turns him into a horrifying criminal. Similarly the Polish man of action, corrupted to the point of insanity by the moral sickness of communism, chops his country to pieces. Afterward he can, like the priest, only shrug and murmur "I did it for your good...
...acting is beautiful. Director Jerzy Kawalerowicz won an award at Cannes for this--probably for its stark dramatic power. Scenes like the exorcism in church, the flaring up of Joan's devils, the meeting of priest and rabbi, and the final communion of the two nuns are breathtaking. Joan's face particularly reveals the torments of a soul, but all the characters are washed over with the abstractness of a medieval morality play...
...orthodox communist believes that a moralistic social order can actually change human nature; this is felt by the Poles to be stiflingly mechanistic. Is the devil in Joan really an angel? Are the medieval heaven of obedience and the hell of rebellion still valid? The film poses this question in its title...