Quand la terre brûle

During Napoleon's war with Spain, a young postulate at a convent near Madrid experiences her first stirrings of romantic love for a passing British Captain; she breaks her vows and runs off to be with him, but instead falls in league with traveling gypsies after her beloved is presumed dead in a rampage by the French. Unbelievable concoction, scripted by Frank Butler from Karl Vollmöller's play, given uncertain treatment by director Irving Rapper. Is this material high camp or serious-minded? At times, it manages to be both, with the addition of some unintentional humor to lighten the load. Stars Carroll Baker and Roger Moore occasionally look bewildered or lost--and they get no help from Rapper, nor from their dialogue. The appropriately large-scaled production includes several set-pieces which are exciting and well-accomplished, though the plot is episodic, and each new chapter is more outlandish than the last. ** from ****

During the war of 1812, a young nun leaves the convent to search for a series of romantic adventures, and during her journey the statue of the virgin Mary descends from the pedestal and takes the young nun's place until her return.

Adapted from a fairly deadening and lunatic play, and tricked out with the old-fashioned Max Reinhardt pageantry; this immensely long and heavy-going amalgam of would-be religious parable and decorative period romance soon becomes numbingly risible and never lets up. A very curious choice for an emergent leading lady obviously, and unsuccessfully, fighting against her freshly established image, while the star supporting players - apparently intended as a balance - suffer from being tediously typecast. None of the actors have much opportunity to display their skills and the direction is below average. Quite a stupefying enterprise, but a sometimes engagingly silly one.

This could've been a great great movie. The problem was Carol Baker. While I think she's absolutely beautiful and I liked her in baby doll giant she just wasn't the right person for the role of the nun. I could see Natalie Wood, Pier Angeli, Susan Kohner (Imitation of life), Leslie Caron or Susan Strasberg. My mother saw it on Broadway and said what an absolutely beautiful show years and years and years ago also there was a silent film version that is all handpainted in color . it's supposed to bePantomime and absolutely breathtaking. .

After playing the ultimate teen sexpot in Baby Doll, Carroll Baker plays a young nun who was a foundling. The convent where she is a postulant serves as a medical hospital during the Napoleonic Wars. It's there that Baker starts doubting whether she has the right stuff to be a nun.

Who is giving her second thoughts is young Roger Moore, wounded nephew of the Duke Of Wellington. While he convalesces he also stirs something in Baker about what she's missing on the outside. When Moore leaves to rejoin his regiment, Baker follows.

But The Miracle happens. A statue of the Virgin Mary comes off a pedestal in the nunnery chapel and takes Baker's place. But with the statue gone the country around withers and dies, crops go bad, animals and people go hungry. Still no one knows in the convent that the greatest woman in Catholic history is among them.

As for Baker the rest of the film is episodic at best as she joins the gypsies, specifically Walter Slezak as a come-on for his various enterprises. She's also hard luck to any man who falls for her.

I couldn't quite buy Baker as a Catholic nun still the film is worth a look. Roger Moore when he was young and before James Bond was great at these stalwart hero roles. Gypsy brothers Vittorio Gassman and Carlos Rivas and their mother Katina Paxinou stand out as well as Dennis King as old roué of a nobleman and Gustavo Rojo a matador. All the men fall hard for her.

Someone like Sophia Loren would have been great in the title role. And more convincing than mid-west born and bred Carroll Baker as a Spaniard.

I had watched in my tender age in 1983 and due my religion's roots on Catholic Church I'd gave a great dimension on it, regarding it with a hefty meaning for my believers, for many years l've been looking for this hard to find movie, now I'd got an average copy on DVD-R taped from cable TV, revisiting this long awaited "The Miracle", sadly I have realized that my early feelings was wrong, this picture walks in a fake premise of Puritanism, the Novice Teresa (Carroll Baker) clearly had an ambiguous personality, all this took place at in the Valley of Miraflores in Spain during the Napoleonic wars at its time trespassing the Spanish territory, already aware of such menacing movement the British Army fleetingly sent a massive troops to face the greed French Emperor, in this tricky environment the attractive Novice Teresa meets the gallant Captain Michael Stuart (Roger Moore) whom she falling in love at first glance, after one battle the brave Captain was sternly injured, thus she makes a promise to Madonna of the Miraflores, if he survives she'll gives her vows to be a Nun, he recovers and goes back to the battle, however she leaves the Convent trying to meet his beloved soldier, thereupon the holly Madonna disappears from the shrine and embodies the Teresa's absent, she follows the Gypsies, soon appears Michael's belongs with a Gypsy's member who told to her that all objects was found with a dead body of a British soldier, upon this awful reality she breaks her previous vows gave to Madonna, becoming a mundane girl having several love affairs, always they end up on a tragic death, the times goes by, four years precisely at Brussels she finally meets the still alive now General Michael, somehow she heard an odd story when Michael visited her at convent, what he saw her there, then undermined about that she returns to Valley of the Miraflores where has ongoing a hard dry season for exact last four years, none a single drop of water fallen there, plenty unsatisfactory outcome and too much fanciful, no make sense whatever yours persuasions, anyone has to pay for others fails, it sounds fully contradictory at God's sight, thus there no miracle!!!

Resume:

First watch: 1984 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-DVD-R / Rating: 6.5.