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In honour of Deborah Kerr's 95th birthday, which is today, this week on «Film Friday» I bring you what is perhaps one of her best remembered pictures. This is one of my personal favourites of hers, and also the film that made me a Robert Mitchum fan.  Directed by John Huston, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957) begins when United States Marine Corporal Allison (Robert Mitchum) finds himself stranded on a deserted South Pacific island in 1944. He finds an abandoned settlement and a chapel with one occupant, Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr), an Irish Catholic novice nun who has not yet taken her final vows. She herself has only landed there a few days before with Father Philips, who has since died. Despite their extreme differences in backgrounds and outlooks, their are respectful of each other's vocation and soon form a close bond. For a while, Allison and Sister Angela have the bountiful island completely to themselves, but then a detachment of Japanese troops arrives to set up a wea...

In honour of Katharine Hepburn's 109th birthday, which was yesterday, this week on «Film Friday» I have decided to bring you one of her best-remembered films. This also happens to be one of my personal favourite films, classic or otherwise. Directed by John Huston, The African Queen (1951) begins at the outbreak of World War I in a small village in German East Africa, where the Reverend Samuel Sayer (Robert Morley) and his spinster sister, Rose (Katharine Hepburn), work as Methodist missionaries. The Sayers' only link to the outside world is Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart), a drunken Canadian boat captain who brings them mail and supplies from their native England aboard his tramp streamer, the African Queen . When German troops invade the mission village, Samuel is wounded and soon succumbs to jungle fever. Shortly afterwards, Charlie returns to help the grieving Rose bury her brother, and the two then set off downriver in the African Queen . During their tribulated journe...