O Milagre

Since this is my favorite "guilty pleasure" of all time, due its histrionics and sheer cheesiness, I feel a bit uncomfortable being critical. Poor Carroll Baker suffers and suffers, but she's not as pretty as Roger Moore. Then there's Walter Slezak having a good time with his silly part. The plot is one of the most unintentionally funny screen plays ever -- a camp classic. If you are Catholic with a sense of humor, you'll really enjoy it. By all means, watch it once.

My sister recently asked me if I knew where to find this picture, and coincidentally I had it in my film library, purchased about a year back from Movies Unlimited, a mail-order VHS/DVD house. I decided to revisit it, and to my delight it was everything I remembered it to be when it first came out in my pre-pubescence. This is a saga which begs to be re-made today, but NOT for the big screen, rather for the The Met. It has everything one could possibly ask for in Grand Opera. The beautiful young postulant nun, the dashing British officer, the regiment passing through with little children dancing around them waving flags. The backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars. Gypsies, bullfighters, Flamenco dancing and religious spectacle. What more could you ask for? With a plot as thin as a scrim, the libretto would be a cake walk, which I would LOVE to write. Would any composer care to collaborate? One thing eludes me, in the film, and IMDb has failed to enlighten me: Who is the singing voice of Theresa in the Spanish nightclub scenes? Could it be Victoria de Los Angeles? A fabulous voice. I highly recommend this movie to young and old, mostly female audiences (after all, it is cornier than even "An Affair to Remember"). Enjoy the sheer prettiness of it.

Where can I watch from. Loved the movie many years ago and would like my family to watch it.

This could've been a great great movie. The problem was Carol Baker. While I think she's absolutely beautiful and I liked her in baby doll giant she just wasn't the right person for the role of the nun. I could see Natalie Wood, Pier Angeli, Susan Kohner (Imitation of life), Leslie Caron or Susan Strasberg. My mother saw it on Broadway and said what an absolutely beautiful show years and years and years ago also there was a silent film version that is all handpainted in color . it's supposed to bePantomime and absolutely breathtaking. .

After playing the ultimate teen sexpot in Baby Doll, Carroll Baker plays a young nun who was a foundling. The convent where she is a postulant serves as a medical hospital during the Napoleonic Wars. It's there that Baker starts doubting whether she has the right stuff to be a nun.

Who is giving her second thoughts is young Roger Moore, wounded nephew of the Duke Of Wellington. While he convalesces he also stirs something in Baker about what she's missing on the outside. When Moore leaves to rejoin his regiment, Baker follows.

But The Miracle happens. A statue of the Virgin Mary comes off a pedestal in the nunnery chapel and takes Baker's place. But with the statue gone the country around withers and dies, crops go bad, animals and people go hungry. Still no one knows in the convent that the greatest woman in Catholic history is among them.

As for Baker the rest of the film is episodic at best as she joins the gypsies, specifically Walter Slezak as a come-on for his various enterprises. She's also hard luck to any man who falls for her.

I couldn't quite buy Baker as a Catholic nun still the film is worth a look. Roger Moore when he was young and before James Bond was great at these stalwart hero roles. Gypsy brothers Vittorio Gassman and Carlos Rivas and their mother Katina Paxinou stand out as well as Dennis King as old roué of a nobleman and Gustavo Rojo a matador. All the men fall hard for her.

Someone like Sophia Loren would have been great in the title role. And more convincing than mid-west born and bred Carroll Baker as a Spaniard.