"Heaven knows Mr. Allison" is a story of love and war on a South Pacific island swarming with Japanese troops in the second World War…

A man and a woman, the only ones to live through a storm, find each other at a deserted church…

There were few words when such people met; there was sympathy, but the sympathy was not expressed in words…

Together, they share many dangers… Out of their trials grows a love which bring to each a new closeness to God…

Robert Mitchum plays a United States Marine in serious trouble… With an ordinary girl or woman, he would have just taken charge of her and he would have begun at once to do what he could for both of them… But a woman in holy orders was a great mystery to him… A nun was something outside his experience…

He had believed that nuns were delicate creatures, living far from the roughness of the world… Nuns were strange, mysterious beings, behind the walls of secret, quiet, holy places… But here he was one of them alone in the jungle, in the middle of war and danger… And she apparently believed that he, Private Henry Allison had been brought here by God's hand just for the purpose of helping her…

Deborah Kerr plays Sister Angela, the nun who was expecting someone when Mr. Allison came… Her face, almost hidden by the white head-dress, looked surprising young… There were shadows of worry under her eyes, but the eyes themselves were almost like a child's…

To her, there was no importance in the fact that Allison was a man… Her faith, her years of religious training, the high purposes of her life, all placed her above and beyond the things of the earth…

To Allison she appeared sexless in the sense that she was beyond her sex… To him she was a being who ate and drank and slept and had to be protected… In other ways, she was a complete mystery…

The adventure, beautifully filmed in the West Indies, is a touching story of unrequited love and an expert acting duet by two legendary stars

Marvelous WW II film, set in the South Pacific in 1944, on an island three hundred miles from Fiji. Mr. Allison (Mitchum), sole survivor of from his submarine, washes up on an island. He meets Sister Angela (Kerr), who was left behind when the ship that was supposed to take her from the island left without her. A Japanese plane flies over while on a reconnaissance mission. I'll let you watch and see where the film takes it from there.

Mitchum and and Kerr (she was nominated for an Oscar) are both excellent and have chemistry, as the film gradually turns into a love story/comedy. Mitchum's encounter with a turtle and Kerr's introduction to sushi are especially memorable. On paper, you would think this teaming would never work - Kerr playing one of her various governess/nun personalities, Mitchum being one of his various hard guy types with a soul, but they play off of each other marvelously and are paired in three more films after this, the last one being in the 1980s.

Oswald Morris did the fine cinematography. John Huston wrote the Oscar nominated screenplay, and four different composers were responsible for the musical score, which verges on being cute. Very worthwhile.

It's always interesting to hear what movie directors think of their own work, and John Huston once made a very insightful comment about this 1957 film which he made for 20th Century Fox:- "Allison is seldom referred to. But I think it was one of the best things I ever made". Huston has hit the nail squarely on the head with this comment. It is - just as he states - a film that has faded into obscurity as the years have passed. It is also paradoxically one of his great works. Perhaps The African Queen, The Red Badge Of Courage, The Asphalt Jungle and Treasure Of The Sierra Madre rank in the director's very top tier of work, but Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is definitely among the front-runners in the second tier.

The story is extremely simple, but absorbing. American marine Allison (Robert Mitchum) is washed ashore on a Pacific island during WWII. The only other person on the island is a nun named Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr). Although they are totally different types of people - and in other circumstances might well have looked down their noses at each other - they find that their mutual plight draws them together and creates a very close friendship. Their situations worsens, however, when a Japanese force arrives and stations a garrison on the island. Allison and Sister Angela find themselves in genuinely grave danger now. Initially, they were merely shipwrecked.... but the arrival of the Japanese soldiers places them in the very midst of the enemy, with nowhere to run and almost nowhere to hide.

As it was made in 1957, the filming was fraught with difficulties, because at that time the Catholic church imposed strict censorship laws on films dealing with religious situations or characters. In the original Charles Shaw book which provided the inspiration for the film, the marine and the nun fell in love.... but it would have been deemed offensive if that were to happen in a 1957 film, so Huston had to create a revised resolution in which the marine and nun gain strength, hope and determination from each other without ever physically consummating their relationship. The performances are meticulous, with Mitchum showing what depth and sensitivity he could bring to a part when asked to do more than his usual man-of-action thing. Kerr is, if anything, even better and earned a thoroughly worthy Oscar nomination (she was eventually beaten - probably undeservedly - by Joanne Woodward). Oswald Morris shoots the film splendidly, ensuring that it is always pleasing to the eye, while Huston expertly juggles the suspense and the sensitivity. Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is a really first-rate film and how sad it is that such a likable motion picture has become virtually forgotten.