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The Nun's Story Overview:

The Nun's Story (1959) was a Drama - Film Adaptation Film directed by Fred Zinnemann and produced by Fred Zinnemann and Henry Blanke.

Academy Awards 1959 --- Ceremony Number 32 (source: AMPAS)

AwardRecipientResult
Best ActressAudrey HepburnNominated
Best CinematographyFranz PlanerNominated
Best DirectorFred ZinnemannNominated
Best Film EditingWalter ThompsonNominated
Best Music - ScoringFranz WaxmanNominated
Best PictureHenry Blanke, ProducerNominated
Best WritingRobert AndersonNominated
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The Nun's Story Quotes:

Sister Luke: You can cheat your sisters, but you cannot cheat yourself or God.
Rev. Mother Emmanuel: Have you struggled long enough to say surely that you've come to the end?
Sister Luke: I think I've been struggling all these years, Reverend Mother. In the beginning each struggle seemed different from the one before it. But then they began to repeat, and I saw they all had the same core: obedience. Without question, without inner murmuring. Perfect obedience as Christ practiced it. As I no longer can.
Rev. Mother Emmanuel: Yes?
Sister Luke: There are times when my conscience asks which has priority. It or the Holy Rule? When the bell calls me to chapel, I often have to sacrifice what might be the decisive moment in a spiritual talk with a patient. I'm late every day for chapel or refectory or both. When I have night duty I break the Grand Silence because I can no longer cut short a talk with a patient who seems to need me. Mother, why must God's helpers be struck dumb by five bells in the very hours when men in trouble want to talk about their souls?
[after a nun has been beaten to death by a crazed native]
Illunga: If such a death happened with us, Mama Luke, we would tie the murderer to a pole and cut his body for fish bait.
Sister Luke: But we would not. We have been taught to forgive.
Rev. Mother Emmanuel: Do good, then disappear.
[kneeling in prayer after offering to help the Belgian Underground]
Sister Luke: Dear Lord, forgive me, I cannot obey anymore. What I do from now on is between You and me alone.
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The Nun's Story Facts
The film was based on the novel of the same name, that told the story of the real-life "Sister Luke," Marie-Louise Habets. In the film, Audrey Hepburn's sisters (siblings) were named Marie and Louise.
After acquiring the rights to Kathryn Hulme's bestselling novel, Fred Zinnemann found that no one in Hollywood had any enthusiasm towards turning it into a film, citing it as being devoid of action. All that changed when Audrey Hepburn expressed a desire to take the lead role. Suddenly, a bidding war ensued which was won by Warner Brothers and netted them not only one of the most acclaimed films of the year but also their biggest financial hit for 1959.
The role of Sister Luke was suggested for Ingrid Bergman but Bergman herself said she was too old for the role and instead proposed Audrey Hepburn.
Audrey Hepburn met the real Marie-Louise Habets - inspiration for the novel and film - while she was preparing for the role. The two actually became great friends and Habets later nursed Hepburn back to health after her near-fatal horse-riding accident on the set of The Unforgiven.
Members of the Rome Opera ballet corps were hired to play some of the nuns, and complex convent rituals were literally choreographed for them.
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