Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)

Like director John Huston’s similarly themed The African Queen, the film finds conflict mixed with romantic tension in a tale of a demure religious woman thrown together with a rugged male loner. Here, though, the complicating factor is not fastidiousness on the part of the religious woman, but the woman’s vocation.

The film parallels the two contrasting sets of commitments, hers to her order, his to the Marine Corps. Like Allison himself, the film is respectfully curious about the exotic phenomenon of religious commitment, but has less insight into why a woman would join a religious order than why a man would join the Marines. At the same time, the film is honest about the issues bound to be raised by such a scenario, especially if the two wind up stranded there indefinitely.

Though essentially a character study, the film also provides some suspense and thrills, notably a squirm-inducing sequence in which Allison makes a daring foray into a Japanese camp and winds up pinned in a tight hiding place with an uncomfortably large rat.