Heaven Knows, Mr Allison

On the one hand, Huston's typically wry contribution to Hollywood's long-established, censor-baiting fascination with nuns. On the other, a quirky and superior reworking of his own The African Queen. Deborah Kerr, back in the habit ten years after Black Narcissus, is stranded on a Jap-held Pacific island with Marine corporal Mitchum, whose wonderfully low-key portrait of melting machismo is everything Bogart's respectably Oscar-chasing irascibility wasn't. The favourite film of its veteran screenwriter, John Lee Mahin.