Thunder On The Hill (aka Bonaventure)

(1951, USA, 84m, b/w)
d Dougas Sirk p Michael Kraike sc Oscar Saul, Andrew Solt ph William H. Daniels ed Ted J. Kent ad Bernard Herzbrun, Nathan Juran m Hans J. Salter cast Claudette Colbert, Ann Blyth, Robert Douglas, Anne Crawford, Philip Friend, Gladys Cooper, Michael Pate, John Harmer, Connie Gilchrist, Gavin Muir

Sirkian melodrama melds with his earlier, pulpier mode in a flash-flood-bound convent hospital in Norfolk, where a condemned murdress (Blyth) is trapped the night before her hanging. Claudette Colbert is the nun to get her off, with blind faith and a casual disrespect for the law of the land and convent; she’s great – sweet and perfect, guilty and pig-headed – while Blythe is wonderfully grotesque then touching. Sirk milks the giant set for all its atmospherics and there’s a backwards janitor, comical nun support and a murderer that he lets us spot a mile off, which only adds to the fun.

© Time Out Film Guide