MovieChat Forums > The Nun's Story (1959) Discussion > 3 nagging queries

3 nagging queries

posted 20 years ago by shooby
3 replies | jump to latest

1) The narration: I have long been under the impression that the voiceovers were spoken by Beatrice Straight, who also appears as a nun in the film. I can't remember where or how I came by this bit of info, or whether I invented it. There is no voiceover credit offered in the IMBD listings. Can anyone confirm/deny?

2) Another mystery-voice question, this one a good deal weirder. When Sister Luke finally arrives in Africa, one of the first patients she encounters in the white hospital speaks in what is unmistakably the voice of Dean Jagger (who also plays her father), execrably dubbed. There is no plausible reason for this bizarre doubling-up of voices, so I can only think it must have been a last-minute and incredibly cheesy fix to what is an otherwise scrupulously crafted film, to replace an unacceptable bit of dialog. Again, can anyone confirm/explain?

3) This radiant film has one of the most beautiful and worst-recorded music scores ever composed, possibly Waxman's finest. Can we ever expect a re-recording of the score by a good orchestra, or at least a re-mastered presentation of the original, as has been the case with many less deserving scores by, for example, Bernard Herrmann? Even the CD (on Stanyan Records!) of the undoctored original seems now to be out of print.

[–] Jon Kolenchak 20 years ago

1) Narration question. Yes, the narration in the beginning is Beatrice Straight. Although I cannot prove this, I invite you to watch the scene again where she has the conference with Sr. Luke in her office. Close your eyes and listen carefully, especially when she says, "There is no resting place... ever". There should be no doubt then that it is her voice at the beginning of the film.

2) Mystery-voice question. Although the man in the hospital sounds very much like Dean Jagger (I thought so to at one time), I can't be positive that it is his voice. So, I can't help you there.

3)Film score. AH! This has been one of my most nagging questions regarding this film -- right up there with "WHY is this film not on DVD?". If you can find a copy of the original vinyl LP (they are very rare) either in stereo or mono, you will get the best recording available. The stereo recording was actually recorded with 3 microphones in the original take. Then came that awful quadrophonic recording by Stanyan that sounded like it was recorded in someone's bathroom, followed by the Stanyan CD, which only had additional tracks in its favor, and is still very poorly engineered.

We can only hope that someone like Rhino recordings under pressure from someplace like TCM may make a recording in the future. I've made a recording of the movie from TCM and sometimes listen to the music that way.

[–] shooby 20 years ago

1) Thanks for confirming. I forgot to mention, in my original query, that of course it SOUNDS like BS, who had a fairly unmistakable voice -- which leads me to . . .

2) Next time it's on, listen to the guy in the hospital bed again -- not only does his voice seem to be DJ's (another unmistakable voice -- no two people sounded like that, and the odds of such similar voices happpening to be in the same movie are off the charts), but its oddly disembodied quality (not really seeming to come from the mouth of the speaker) also suggests extremely sloppy and/or rushed post-dubbing. My real question is still, WHY was it dubbed? And wasn't anyone less unmistakable available to dub it?

3) The score on the Stanyan CD does sound lousy, but so it does in the movie (as screened by TCM, at any rate) -- lots of distortion -- so I'd always been reluctant to place the blame on Stanyan; they did what they could with what was available -- a poorly recorded soundtrack (don't remember ever hearing the LP). But a cleaned-up (or re-recorded) version is definitely called for, ideally in the context of a nice Criterion presentation of the film on DVD. So how long will we have to wait?

RS

[–] hobnob53 17 years ago

Three years since the last post, but anyway....

I'm writing mainly on your item #2 -- it is absolutely and unmistakably the voice of Dean Jagger looping over the lines of the patient in the hospital. I agree, such a thing is astonishing, a well-known actor in a film dubbing in the dialogue of another performer. It must indeed have been a rush job of some sort, though it's impossible to believe they couldn't have found someone else -- especially someone not actually in the film -- to do it. It's a small but very noticeable flaw. (Since most interiors were shot in Rome at Cinecitta Studios, perhaps this was an Italian actor whose English was poor, but I still can't fathom why they'd resort to using Jagger for the loop. And the dubbing doesn't match the lip movements very well, as has been pointed out.)

I didn't think of it, but I tend to agree that's Beatrice Straight in the opening narration, also a bit curious under the circumstances. As to Franz Waxman's great score, it sounds all right to me, but then perhaps it's been cleaned up and remastered for the DVD and newer widescreen TV prints released since the last posting on this thread in 2004.