mark.waltz The legendary future "King of Hollywood" meets the future "Queen of Broadway" in this remake of a silent classic that starred another odd pairing. Clark Gable was at the start of a long reign as the top dog at MGM, while Helen Hayes, already a stage star, attempted a screen career that left her cold because of her longing for the footlights. A recent Oscar winner, she had several more years to go on her contract, and did the best she could with what she got. Gable, just over a year from receiving his Oscar, was made for the cinema. Hayes, however, longed for applause, not something you get from being 15 feet tall on a movie screen.Their single pairing has them as star crossed lovers during World War I who are torn apart by fate. Believing him dead, she goes into a convent, leaving behind the life she's known, certain that his death was God's way of telling her that she was not meant to be a wife. Gable, in the meantime, struggles to get back to her, tearing them both apart when the truth comes out. Co-starring Lewis Stone as her stern father, Louise Closser Hale as her companion, Edward Arnold as the priest who advises her and May Robson as the kindly mother superior, quite a different role for her from the same year's "Lady For a Day". This is quite a different type of film for the rugged Victor Fleming who directed gable in several tough guy roles. The MGM gloss is glorious, and if you open your heart, you might find it nearly broken from the emotional story.

pixelwks Back in the days before VCR's I set my alarm clock to 3:00 Am to watch this film. If you were a film buff back then you had no choice, the TV told you when to watch something. I was a big Clark Gable fan and this was a pretty obscure film that I was keen on seeing.My grandmother wandered in and sat down with me to watch. She not only knew the film immediately but remembered every moment in the film like she had just seen it. She remembered what she wore and what she had for lunch that day in 1934. This movie was like a time machine for her. She cried at the end like a little girl.I lost my grandmother not long after that and this memory has stayed with me for 30 years.I haven't seen the film since but I remember it being a very old fashioned melodrama. It will never get to DVD I suppose.

lianfarrer The screenwriter for "The White Sister," Donald Ogden Stewart, has an uncredited bit playing the hind end of a horse; that pretty well sums up this picture. It's an insipid, implausible, and uncompelling film that wastes a lot of prime MGM talent. ***SPOILER ALERT*** The story concerns the ill-fated love between a sheltered, aristocratic Italian girl, Angela Chiaromonte, and a dashing soldier, Giovanni Severi. He pursues her despite the strenuous objections of her father and thwarts her marriage to a wealthy banker—an alliance that apparently was meant to save the girl's family from financial ruin. Their romance leads indirectly to the death of Angela's father in a car crash. The affair goes downhill from there. Throughout the film, Angela and Giovanni keep getting together only to be torn apart—first by her father, then by the war, and then by God himself. Their rotten luck and bad timing are almost comical. Sent off to battle, Giovanni implausibly survives a horrific plane crash, then makes a daring escape from a German prisoner-of-war camp, only to find that Angela, believing him dead, has become a nun. At this point, there's nothing left for him to do but die an anticlimactic death with his white-habited fiancée at his bedside.The two leads, Helen Hayes (Angela) and Clark Gable (Giovanni), give it their best, but they can't overcome being both miscast and mismatched. Coming into his own just as films learned to talk, Gable exemplified the "new" American male: confident, brash, and openly sexual. The old-fashioned pieties of this movie fit him like a straight jacket. Hayes is more plausible in the role of the spirited/spiritual young girl. While you can see how she'd be carried away by Gable's charisma and animal magnetism, it's hard to understand why he'd be so attracted to this mousy little innocent. The whole enterprise might just have worked with someone like Leslie Howard as Giovanni; his restrained classical style would have been better suited to this dated material. Other welcome and familiar faces include Edward Arnold as a sympathetic priest (like Gable, though, he's seen to better advantage in earthy or roguish parts); Louise Closser Hale as Angela's duenna/companion, and May Robson as the Mother Superior. Uncredited but recognizable are Gino Corrado as a chauffeur, Nat Pendleton as Giovanni's soldier buddy, and Greta Meyer as the Italian-German woman who nurses Giovanni back to health after his plane crash.A minor quibble, but I found it hugely annoying—none of the characters can agree on how to pronounce "Giovanni." Hayes, as Angela, seems to say it differently (and wrong) every time, which is odd considering her character is supposed to be madly in love with him.Worth watching mainly as an opportunity to catch Helen Hayes in one of her infrequent film roles (her reputation was primarily as a stage actress) and for Gable's characteristically charming performance (not to mention beefcake appeal!) in an uncharacteristic role.

oewnaynailf Throwing Clark Gable against God isn't exactly the best plot, but the movie is watchable. Giovanni (Gable) falls in love with Angela, a prince's daughter, after running into her at a festival. Complications arise for the two of them, including (spoilers ahead) Angela's fiancé Ernesto, her father's death, Giovanni's recruitment into war, and her eventual commitment to God.The first half of the film is pretty interesting as Gable wooing Helen Hayes is entertaining for the most part. Afterward, Hayes's indecisiveness about her way of life drags on a bit. In the beginning of the movie, she wishes to adventure out into the world and celebrate, then it takes her some time to realize she loves Giovanni, but a possible life with him is eventually put to an end as she becomes a nun.A movie worth catching on television on a rainy day.