Now Huston had made several classic films about men and women's greed ending with catastrophic results in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE (1948), THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950), and THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (1975). But one of Huston's most endearing films and an outright classic is THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951) starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn as two polar opposites who become attracted to each other in the heart of Africa during World War I. It's a different kind of John Huston movie, the closest to a romantic film that he would do. I thought it was the only one Huston made. That is until I watched Huston's 1957 film HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON.
Whether a studio convinced Huston to try the formula again or if Huston himself read the Charles Shaw novel and saw the similarities, HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON is a reworking of THE AFRICAN QUEEN formula. The setting is similar. HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON takes place at the end of World War II in the South Pacific. THE AFRICAN QUEEN takes place during World War I in German East Africa around 1914. The characters from both films are similar as well. Two completely different people thrust together in a time of upheaval who find comfort in each other despite coming from different worlds.
Co-written by John Lee Mahin and John Huston and directed by Huston, HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON has no dialogue for the first ten minutes as U.S. Marine Corporal Allison (Robert Mitchum) drifts unconscious in a rubber raft before washing ashore on a seemingly deserted South Pacific island during 1944 World War II. On the beach, Allison comes across a few bungalows and a church before stumbling across Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr), a Roman Catholic nun and the only other inhabitant of the island (if you don't count rats and wild pigs). Allison was on a reconnaissance mission when the Japanese attacked his submarine. Floundering in the water, Allison found a raft and jumped in. Sister Angela came to the island with Father Phillips to find another priest Father Ryan and evacuate to Fiji before the Japanese could conscript him. But Ryan had already been taken and Phillips became sick and died leaving Angela alone. Allison and Angela must work together to survive and figure out how to get off the island.
The soldier and the nun manage to catch a sea turtle and cook it for food. They prepare to build a raft to get off the island when a Japanese reconnaissance plane flies overhead. Allison takes Angela to a cave he discovered not far from their beach huts. The Japanese bomb the beach before coming ashore and setting up a makeshift camp. Allison sneaks down into the camp one night to steal some food from the camp. He becomes trapped in the kitchen when two cooks show up. Sister Angela wakes up to find Allison missing. She hears gunshots and fears Allison has been shot. But it's just the Japanese shooting at a wild pig. Allison returns with his booty. Angela's happy he's alive but upset he left without telling her.
Allison begins to fall for Sister Angela. Angela confesses she's hasn't completed all her vows which gives Allison hope. The two of them watch a sea battle between the Japanese and the Allies on the horizon. The next morning, they wake up to find the Japanese have left the island. Allison picks this moment to confess his love to Sister Angela. But Angela won't give up her love to God. Scrounging for supplies that the Japanese left behind, Angela finds a bottle of Saki. Allison becomes drunk on Saki and upsets Angela with his rants. Angela runs out into a storm and falls asleep in the outdoors wet and cold. Allison eventually finds Angela among the tall grasses, shivering and feverish. He brings her back to the cave.
Allison sees naval ships off in the distance. At first, he thinks it's the U.S. Navy but soon realizes the Japanese are returning to the island. With Sister Angela near death, Allison sneaks into the camp again to grab some blankets. A Japanese soldier catches him in the hut. They struggle and Allison kills the soldier. Allison returns Angela back to health but at a price. The Japanese begin burning the bamboo and grasses on the island to find the castaways. As the two of them prepare to become prisoners, Angela says a prayer. Suddenly, explosions fill the air and U.S. planes fly over, bombing the Japanese. Allison feels God telling him to take out the Japanese cannons so the U.S. landing will be safer. Can Marine Corporal Allison pull off this divine suicide mission?
Just as the alcohol loving riverboat captain Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogard) and the prim missionary Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) made THE AFRICAN QUEEN so endearing, we have the same archetypes with Corporal Allison and Sister Angela in HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON. Two completely different people. A marine and a nun. The military and the Catholic church. But Allison and Angela's vocations, although seemingly polar opposite, have a lot in common. Cpl. Allison was raised an orphan. The marines are his family. The Marine Corps are his religion just like Catholicism is Angela's. They both wear clothing connected to their employer. Marine green for Allison. Angelic white for Angela. Both were raised by tough teachers. Allison by a DI (Drill Instructor). Angela reveals she had her own type of drill instructor: a nun she and the other sisters called "the holy terror."
I've always liked movies about unrequited love. They can be frustrating but you keep watching hoping the two people will kiss and/or fall in love. HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON is that kind of film. Allison begins falling for Sister Angela. They get along well. It appears as if they're going to be on the island for some time. When Allison proposes to Angela, she turns him down. It's not that she doesn't have feelings for Allison. She's fond of him. But Angela has promised her love to a higher power. Jesus Christ. But the filmmakers come up with a plot device that is the closest to intimacy they will have. When Allison finds Angela feverish outside the cave after he scared her with his "drunk talk", he undresses her (off camera) and wraps her in warm blankets so she doesn't die of exposure. He tells Angela what he had to do. Angela approves of the act. It's the two characters way of consummating their relationship without making love. Allison and Angela are a modern day Adam and Eve on this island. Only there's no snake to tempt them. Just the Japanese army to hide from. The film's ending hints that there still could be hope for the two. As Allison is taken by a stretcher to a nearby ship, Angela follows holding both the comb Allison made for her and a cross from the church. The camera lingers on both as if to suggest Angela's mind is not completely made up whether she will choose God or Allison. Maybe that's why the title suggests only "heaven knows" Angela's decision.
Who wouldn't fall in love with the lovely Deborah Kerr as Sister Angela? Kerr has a wonderful porcelain face that shines throughout the film as that's all we really see of her. Just as we ache to see Kerr and Mitchum kiss, we yearn to see a glimpse of Kerr's hair. For almost the entire film, she wears her habit. Only her face is seen. But Huston does provide one scene in which Angela is out of her nun's clothing and we see her short cropped red hair. My first encounter with Kerr was in Fred Zinnemann's FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953) as the unfaithful wife to an army captain. Sister Angela is a far cry from ETERNITY'S cheating wife. But Kerr had the versatility to bounce between demure characters like the English teacher in THE KING AND I (1956) to another philandering wife in THE END OF THE AFFAIR (1955) as well as classical performances like Portia in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's JULIUS CAESAR (1953).
Robert Mitchum began his career playing tough guys and cowboys in films like Don Siegel's THE BIG STEAL (1949) or Raoul Walsh's PURSUED (1947). But Mitchum would break out from being typecast when he played the malevolent preacher Harry Powell in Charles Laughton's THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955). Mitchum would work with many great directors throughout his career including Howard Hawks (EL DORADO), David Lean (RYAN'S DAUGHTER), and Sydney Pollack (THE YAKUZA). Corporal Allison is one of Mitchum's finest roles. He brings both a gritty toughness yet boyish tenderness to Allison as he protects and falls in love with Sister Angela. One moment, Allison's a love struck teenager bringing Sister Angela a comb he made by hand as a gift. He's in love for the first time in his life. "I've never even lived before," he tells Angela. "Never really..lived...inside" as he taps his heart. The next moment, he kills a Japanese soldier with his bare hands to protect their presence on the island. It's a daring performance by Mitchum.
When I think of Hollywood on screen couples, I usually think of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, or Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON would be the first of four films (one a television movie) that Robert Mitchum and Debora Kerr would appear in together. After watching their chemistry in HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON, it's not surprising. Mitchum and Kerr would also star in Fred Zinnemann's THE SUNDOWNERS (1960) set in early 20th Century Australia and Stanley Donen's THE GRASS IS GREENER (1960) co-starring Cary Grant and Jean Simmons.
When I first saw HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON, the island location struck me as unique. The island looked dense with palm trees. I wondered did they really film HEAVEN KNOWS somewhere in the South Pacific? Director Huston was known for filming in far away locations like Mexico for THE TREASURE OF SIERRE MADRE or the Belgian Congo in Africa for THE AFRICAN QUEEN. It turns out the location for HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON is Tobago, one of the two island in the Caribbean known as Trinidad-Tobago. Tobago has an incredibly lush look and most likely resembles the hundreds of small islands in the South Pacific. Ironically, Mitchum had just made a film the year before called THE FIRE DOWN BELOW (1957) in Tobago co-starring Rita Hayworth and Jack Lemmon. Fans of Disney's 1960 adventure THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON will recognize Tobago as the location for that film too.
Kerr and Mitchum are the only two stars of the film. They have almost all the screen time. But Huston does give a few scenes to the Japanese actors who portray the Japanese army in HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON. Huston shows them as human beings just like anyone else. Shining boots, dancing to music, engaging in some physical athletic games. Two cooks exemplify the universal grunt in war. They both show their disdain for a superior (after he leaves the kitchen). The battle boredom by playing a board game and drinking Saki that was meant for the officer. They seem like nice enough men. Allison watches them, trapped in the kitchen until they go to bed. As normal as the two cooks appear, Allison would kill them in a heartbeat if they were to discover him. It's nice to see Huston show the human side of the enemy.
The opposites attract film went to great lengths in the 80s to be vastly different in movies like Ron Howard's SPLASH (1984) where a man falls in love with a mermaid or John Carpenter's STARMAN (also 1984) that has a woman falling in love with an extraterrestrial who can resemble her dead husband. But John Huston perfected the formula with his classic film THE AFRICAN QUEEN. But Huston's lesser known HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON might be even more true to the formula than THE AFRICAN QUEEN. HEAVEN'S two protagonists are almost fated to never be together due to Angela's vows. But it's worth watching and hoping that they might become a couple.
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