The Nun's Story
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 screenplay was written by Robert Anderson, based on the 1956 novel of the same name by Kathryn Hulme. 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.
Plot
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. After receiving the religious name of Sister Luke, she undergoes her postulancy and novitiate which foreshadow her future difficulties with the vow of obedience. She takes her first vows and is sent to the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp. There, she experiences a crisis when another sister, a weaker student, accuses her of pride. The local superior poses a startling challenge to Sister Luke, suggesting that she deliberately fail her oral examination to demonstrate humility. Hesitating to answer and clearly agonizing over the choice, she eventually passes the exam, finishing fourth in a class of eighty.