As this was in CinemaScope, I thought an extra-wide poster was appropriate. This is the film John Huston directed right after The African Queen, and the general consensus seems to be that it was rather dismissed as being too similar, in the "rough-and-ready American Male rescues prissy female of higher intellectual class" vein. Only this time, instead of Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, we have Robert Mitchum (unusually lovable!) and Deborah Kerr (in a lesser nun-playing role after Black Narcissus), and instead of Africa we have the war-torn South Pacific. So in that respect, it has a lot in common with Father Goose, only Mitchum is as marooned as Kerr, having been a marine whose submarine was attacked just as he was getting out of it, and who washes ashore in a rubber dinghy. And it's a good deal less of a comedy than Father Goose, despite the jokey-sounding title. In fact, it would be fair to say that it's a rom-com without much of either, as Kerr's vocation is a pretty large barrier to the latter. (Perhaps the biggest concession to the latter is an early scene when they still have Allison's boat and use it to chase a big sea turtle, who puts up a fight - see magazine clipping below for Kerr's sweary comment during the filming.)
However, it would also be fair to say that it's surprisingly gripping, especially as the two leads are pretty much the only people on screen for the vast bulk of the film, apart from some Japanese-speaking Japanese soldiers, and a rescuing party of American Marines at the very end (spoiler). And the film opens like a thriller, with Mitchum furtively exploring an apparently-deserted camp that might conceal hidden Japanese soldiers, having washed ashore in his escape-raft. What he finds, of course, is Kerr, sweeping out the church which sits rather incongruously among the tropical foliage. Turns out she's been there four days because she came with the septuagenarian Father Ryan to help rescue another Father, who had already left, only to have the nervous natives who ferried them there abandon them for fear of the encroaching Japanese. Father Ryan didn't last two days, either, and is buried in a fresh grave, leaving behind only his pipe.
Turns out Mitchum's Mr. Allison (we never learn his first name) is so-named because he was delivered as a baby to an orphanage on Allison Street in Milwaukee, whence he escaped to a life of crime at age 14, only to be rescued by the Marines. He sees his commitment to the Marines as very similar to Sister Angela's devotion to the church. Of course he falls for Kerr's Irish nun fairly quickly, although her nunnitude is played very seriously and her devotion clearly earnest, something that makes the film seem more grounded and earnest than you would expect. Clearly Huston, who also wrote the script, had a great deal of respect for the Catholic faith, despite having Mr. Allison refer to believers in the Marines as "Mackerel snappers". (Turns out Sister Angela is not, herself, a good Mackerel Snapper, as she cannot keep down the raw fish he feeds her, which in turn leads to an incredibly tense scene where he raids the stores of the Japanese camp currently on the island. He gets trapped overnight, and Sister Allison wakes up to find him not there and is convinced he's been shot.
(In the course of the film there are first, no Japanese, then the raft they are adapting to sail to Fiji gets bombed by the Japanese, who then land and form a camp, then the camp is deserted, then the Japanese come back. It all makes sense, and this raid is in the first stay.)) (Having said that, apparently the National Legion of Decency monitored the production, and "knowing this, Kerr and Mitchum deliberately ad-libbed a scene (not included in the final print) in which their characters wildly kissed and grabbed at each other." Good for them!)
But in general, Mr. Allison is nothing but solicitous for Sister Angela, the one exception being when the Japanese desert their camp and the two of them move in and Allison gets drunk on a bottle of Sake they find hidden (seen earlier by Allison on his raid for supplies) and laments that she had to be so young and pretty, "with FRECKLES". This turns into a speech about how they don't have to be loyal to the church and the Marines because the war has passed them by and they're like Adam and Eve (which would've been a better title than the misleadingly corny one they went with). (At this point there has been a big sea battle in the distance and they don't know who won, but if it had been the Americans they would've landed by now. The next day the Japanese return.) When he's drunk, you get a glimpse of the scary Mitchum of Cape Fear or Night of the Hunter, and Sister Angela runs out in tears into a rainstorm. This being Hollywood, this automatically leads to a dreadful fever, and the remorseful Allison has to drag her back to the cave they'd been hiding in when the Japanese were here the first time when they come back. Only he has to do another raid on the camp for warm blankets (after he has to remove her from her wet clothes - something that is passed over off screen) and this one doesn't go off so well - he ends up having to stab someone to death, something that Sister Angela bitterly regrets when she hears about it, and not just because it causes the Japanese to scour the island. In fact, they are about to be grenaded out of their cave when the Marines arrive.
Allison has to do one last feat to ensure they can land safely before the film wraps up... very unsatisfactorily, if you're hoping for Hollywood ending. But ambiguous enough that you can hope for a happily ever after. Overall, not especially deep, but a very solid and absorbing little number, with genuine chemistry between the two leads, who are both at the top of their games.
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