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Story of a Cloistered Nun
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (30th January 2025). |
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The Film
 Promised by marriage contract since birth to the son of another landowning family, Carmela Simoni (Inferno's Eleonora Giorgi) has fallen in love with peasant Giuliano ('Tis Pity She's a Whore's Antonio Falsi). When she refuses to marry her fiance, her father (Werewolf Woman's Tino Cararro) and mother (Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom's Caterina Boratto) send her off to a nunnery to avoid social ruin and Giuliano is forcibly recruited into the army. She is stripped of her possessions and even her identity and put through a month of isolation and near-starvation in a cell to study the learn the rules of the convent. Once her isolation period is over, she is warmly welcomed by the Mother Superior (Torso's Suzy Kendall) and befriended by Sister Elisabetta (The Libertine's Catherine Spaak) who both warn her not to trust the other. Carmela soon learns that by means of a substantial financial contribution by her parents, Elisabetta has special privileges and indulges, including lesbian dalliances with novices Beatrice (The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine's Barbara Herrera) and Michela (Emanuelle in America's Paola Senatore) as well as stealing outside the walls of the convent for regular rendezvous with her lover Don Diego (Emmanuelle 2's Umberto Orsini). In the aftermath of the suicide of insane Sister Lucia (Murder Obsession's Martine Brochard), the Mother Superior who Elisabetta describes as "evil and corrupt" reveals to Carmela her intense loneliness and need for human warmth that goes beyond her previously-expressed desire to be Carmela's "new mother." When Guiliano gets word to Carmela that he is nearby, Elisabetta offers to arrange for her to see him… but at what price? The Story of the Cloistered Nun was certainly not the first "nunsploitation" film or with adaptations of Denis Diderot's joke confessional "La religieuse" adapted in 1962 by Jacques Rivette – and further loosely inspiring the later Joe D'Amato-produced Images in a Convent and Convent of Sinners – Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz's "Mother Joan of the Angels" adapted in 1961 by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Boccaccio's "Decameron" story adapted by Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1971, and variations on the medieval true crime "Nun of Monza" story adapted in 1962 and more popularly by Eriprando Visconti in 1969 (and later by Bruno Mattei as The True Story of the Nun of Monza shot simultaneously with The Other Hell and the more mainstream take in The Devils of Monza released stateside as "Sacrilege"). While obviously motivated by the scandalous reception of Ken Russell's The Devils, jobbing director Domenico Paolella's The Story of a Cloistered Nun was actually a follow-up to his earlier The Nun and the Devil – based on Stendhal's "The Abbess of Castro" which also inspired Walerian Borowczyk's Behind Convent Walls – and more so than that effort seems to have been the film that set off the more Women-in-Prison subset of more exploitative nunsploitation films of the seventies in Italy (Flavia the Heretic), Spain after General Franco's death (Love Letters of a Nun), Germany with Jess Franco's Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun (the latter two based on letters purported to have been written by seventeenth century nun Mariana Alcoforado), Japan with their pink films and studio variants (School of the Holy Beast, Cloistered Nun: Runa's Confession), and even Mexico with the wonderfully horror-tinged pics Satanico Pandemonium and Alucarda. The women-in-prison parallels include stripping away the outside identity and replacing it with a coarse uniform, a period of isolation, being sized up by the fellow inmates including the leader of the pack, a perverse wardress, the suicide of a "weaker" inmate, corporal punishment, clandestine activities with staff looking the other way, sadistic displays of power, a scandal that brings in the outside and causes rivals to band together (with a hilarious "I am Spartacus!" scene). While it is a concoction of elements from its antecedents, the film manages to make the characters likable and give the "villains" depth while also conveying feminist sympathies as the Mother Superior sadly states that Lucia not wanting to be a nun was the cause of her madness while the Archbishop claims she was possessed by demons (and said archibishop also bellows impotently trying to intimidate the nuns into exposing Carmela). Some of the most garish wardrobe this side of an Andy Milligan period film aside, The Story of a Cloistered Nun is also one of the most beautiful examples of the genre with the lighting of Armando Nannuzzi (Silver Bullet), the scoring of Piero Piccioni (Camille 2000), and performances by Giorgi, Kendall, and Spaak that are more than decorative (particularly Spaak who was so blank and wooden in The Cat O'Nine Tails). Paolella's directorial career became more sporadic after this duo and the erotic meldorama The Prey but he continued to work in writing and production for production/distribution company Produzioni Atlas Consorziate (P.A.C.) between films like Stunt Squad and Gardenia. 
Video
The Story of a Cloistered Nun was unreleaesed theatrically in the U.K. although it did get a U.S. release through Jerry Gross' Cinemation Industries in 1975 as "The Unholy Convent". It did not receive a U.K. release until 1995 on VHS from Redemption Films followed by a 2009 DVD from Argent Films which presumably used the same HD master as the earlier U.S. NoShame Films DVD. 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray likewise follows a U.S. Blu-ray release from Severin films (available separately or in the Nasty Habits: The Nunsploitation Collection boxed set). Nannuzzi's lighting benefits greatly from the new master which also reveals greater detail of texture that makes the wardrobe look more authentic but no less garish. Also more evident are a greater variety of skin pallor from Giorgi's malnourished look after isolation and the pale visages of the nuns to the tanned and healthy looks of Orsini and his buddy in a Roman bath sequence that plays like a gender reversal of the women-in-prison shower sequence as well as contrasting the leisurely lives of the male characters with the toil and deprivation of the nuns. 
Audio
English and Italian LPCM 2.0 mono tracks are included along with optional English subtitles. The film is post-dubbed either way, and this is a case where the Italian track sounds dignified but the English track sounds more than respectable, supporting the film's drama with restrained performances that suit the physical performances of the actors. Piccioni's rich orchestral score comes through boldly while effects are supportive but unobtrustive apart from some whip cracks and some foley punches late in the film. 
Extras
The film is accompanied by a new audio commentary by Italian cinema experts Troy Howarth and Eugenio Ercolani in which they discuss the literary sources and films that set the precedent for the nunsploitation genre, ponder the true story claim of the film, and draw parallels between the women-in-prison genre and nunsploitation (although they do struggle with describing this film in particulars as exploitative). They also note how Italian examples of the genre tend to be a bit tamer in contrast not only to nunsploitation films from other countries but Italian treatments of the women-in-prison film, with Ercolani noting that the film is anti-clerical but not anti-religious, and that it may be because Italians still hold the figure of the nun in esteem. They also discuss Giorgi in contrast to The Nun and the Devil's Ornella Muti who wanted too much money for this film, as well as some of the other casting including other actors the film has in common with Dario Argento's filmography and indeed the level of cast this film had in contrast to women-in-prison films and some of the sleazier later nunsploitation films. They also discuss the film's feminist subtext and how it may be an unintentional outgrowth of a film designed for the male gaze regardless of the lurid interest in what happens "behind convent walls." Ercolani also reveals that Giorgi's dress in her first scene was previously worn by Charlotte Rampling for Tis Pity She's a Whore.  "Story of an Uncloistered Martine" (22:15) is an interview with actress Martine Brochard, or perhaps we should say "interviews" as it cuts in excerpts from earlier interviews conducted by Ercolani featured in other releases to flesh out some of her remarks as she discusses being a dancer in France and her first roles there before going to Italy to star in a Pietro Germi television miniseries and deciding to stay in Italy. She also discusses some of her subsequent notable work before getting to The Nun and the Devil in which she had a much larger role and did more or less a "cameo" in The Story of a Cloistered Nun out of her friendship with Paolella. "Novices and Malices" (31:35) is a video essay by film historian Andrea Meroni referenced throughout the commentary in defining the nunsploitaiton subgenre and parallels with the women-in-prison and exorcist ripoff subgenres but also reveals that it was primarily the outrage of right wing media covering films like The Devils and The Nun of Monza that attracted audiences to see them. In expanding upon another commentary thread about the comparative charisma and respectability of nunsploitation leads compared to those in the other aforementioned genres, he notes how the success in Italy of The Fox in which Anne Heywood is part of a bisexual threesome lead to her casting in both The Nun of Monza and The Nun and the Devil. He continues to discuss the other female cast members of nunsploitation films, focusing on the Paolella duo including their real life notoriety before and after the films from Muti's and Giorgi's subsequent works and private lives to the more unfortunate circumstances of Senatore. The disc also includes the film's English international trailer (3:47). 
Packaging
The disc comes with a reversible cover while the first pressing includes a limited edition slipcover and booklet notes by Daniel Burnett.
Overall
While not the first nunsploitation film or even the first one by Domenico Paolella, The Story of a Cloistered Nun is a gorgeously-mounted, well-written, and movingly-acted entry in a cycle of films that would get sleazier with each subsequent iteration.
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