Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison Blu-ray Movie Review

Kerr and Mitchum are heavenly.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 12, 2014

The African Queen was one of the crowning triumphs of John Huston’s long and storied career, permanently etching the vision of a gruff and shabby Humphrey Bogart and the prim and proper Katharine Hepburn on many filmgoers’ minds. In some ways, Huston’s Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison can be seen as a companion piece to the earlier film, for it, too, posits a hardscrabble male sequestered with a straitlaced female (in this case, a novitiate) in an exotic location. Also as with The African Queen, while the film is in essence a “two hander”, playing out as a cinematic duet between disparate characters, there are epochal world events unfolding in the background. In The African Queen, the conflict is World War I, while Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison takes place on a remote atoll in the Pacific where the Japanese ultimately make an incursion during World War II. In other ways, though, the films are resolutely different experiences. The African Queen was (as odd as it may sound) a road movie of sorts, following the adventures of Mr. Allnut and Rose Sayer as they attempted to pilot the titular boat to a perhaps calamitous meeting with a German gunship. Aside from some brief establishing shots that play out underneath the credits sequence, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is anchored firmly on the island and as a result lacks the epic sweep of the Bogart-Hepburn film. That doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a lack of drama, however, for this intimate exploration of an odd but endearing relationship between two souls thrown together by the vagaries of fate and war has its own manifest pleasures, not the least of which is top tier work by the film’s co-stars, Deborah Kerr (Academy Award nominated for this role) and Robert Mitchum.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison begins in a peculiarly lurching fashion which gets the film off on a rather unsteady course. In one of the oddest credit sequences in a major film from this era, Huston offers the viewer a set of dissolves featuring a life raft out in the ocean which are supposedly meant to indicate a fairly lengthy span of time (there are reams of doctoral theses discussing the perceived lapses of time from hard edits or dissolves). What’s truly odd about this gambit, however, is that Huston spools out the credits in little dribs and drabs, with just a few seconds at a time of underscore by Georges Auric, a composer who had burst into international prominence when his theme for Huston’s Moulin Rouge became the best selling record of 1953 in an a reworking and arrangement by Percy Faith. Auric’s music is colorful but not especially helpful to this film, and the “on again, off again” way it begins unfortunately only draws attention to this rather unusual opening few minutes.

Luckily once the credits sequence is over and Huston has divulged that the life raft contains a haggard looking military man, things take off and establish themselves artfully going forward. The man turns out to be one Corporal Allison (Robert Mitchum), a U.S. Marine assigned to a submarine who found himself stranded when an away mission was interrupted by incoming Japanese fire just as he and his buddies were disembarking the sub. Somehow Allison managed to bump into the raft and had been drifting for days before washing up on what initially seems to be a deserted (though somewhat developed) island in the South Pacific. Allison’s quick reconnaissance mission around the island reveals several outbuildings and one grave with a cross, and soon enough he stumbles across a rather beautiful nun in training named Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr), who herself has only been on the island for a few days.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison develops the burgeoning relationship between Allison and Sister Angela in a quite leisurely fashion, and it’s notable that it’s not even until what would probably be considered well into the film’s second act that any real threat shows up, when the pair’s idyllic island existence is interrupted by a horde of invading Japanese setting up a weather station. That forces the duo to retreat to a cave, where slightly more intimate (nothing racy, mind you) fodder occurs. When the two run out of food, the film’s one real suspense unfolds, with Allison making a nighttime raid on the Japanese encampment to rustle up some vittles.

Most of the film is rather lighthearted, albeit rather melancholy at times. Allison, it turns out, was an orphan, and probably illegitimate, while Sister Angela is also struggling with her decision to enter the life of a nun. The first part of the film plays out in almost paradisiacal form, with the two taking off after a giant turtle in the hopes of scoring some foodstuff, but finding out that this particular tortoise could probably give the veritable hare a run for its money. But as the two get to know each other better, and especially after the Japanese arrive, there’s the tug of a traditional romance at play here, something that finally explodes in the film’s emotional climax, when a drunken Allison reveals his true feelings about Sister Angela to the troubled young woman.

What’s fascinating about Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is how absolutely minimalistic it is at times, especially for an ostensibly “big” fifties film with two A-list stars. This is a surprisingly heartfelt, sweet film that manages to never be dull despite a lack of traditional conflict or even rote plot elements. Kerr and Mitchum are perfectly cast here and play off of each other magnificently. Some aficionados will want to contrast Sister Angela with Kerr’s somewhat more neurotic take on a nun in Black Narcissus, but the link between the two characterizations is how much Kerr is able to convey without a word of dialogue. Mitchum is his typically virile self here, but he’s also appealingly vulnerable in a way that he perhaps only came close to exhibiting again in Ryan’s Daughter. Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison may in fact have little of the grit and excitement of Huston’s The African Queen, but in its own way it’s just as significant of an achievement.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Maybe it's just the cynic in me, but I have to wonder if the licensing folks at Fox have recently unearthed a trove of older, less than desirable masters that they are now happily allowing any number of niche labels to release (though truth be told, they even release some of these problematic presentations themselves, as was the case with The King and I). While Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison doesn't exhibit the kind of widely variant color space that The King and I did, there are still noticeable density and variable palette issues that, while admittedly minor, can easily be spotted, with things like fleshtones altering just slightly moment by moment at times. This is also a surprisingly soft looking presentation that is further hampered by some evident fringing and some more than evident ringing, both of which can be seen in several of the screenshots accompanying this review. The overall color scheme looks just slightly faded, though it tends to show up more in terms of vividness rather than any tint issues. The elements are in fine shape, though there are just one or two anomalies, including what looks like an issue with emulsion in one close-up of Mitchum. As with The King and I, parts—even large parts—of Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison look quite good, but this is still a less than optimal release from a video standpoint.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Despite a bit of boxiness which is most apparent when Auric's music is playing, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix delivers the film's dialogue and effects without any major issues, if also without a lot of punch (something that keeps some of the gunfire and explosions from ever resounding very deeply). Fidelity is very good if not superb, and there is no damage of any kind to report.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Movietone News (480i; 10:26) features a series of newsreels which deal both with the actual Pacific Theater during World War II and also with the movie awards season of 1957-58.


• Original Theatrical Trailer (480p; 3:14)


• Isolated Music and Effects Track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is a rather remarkably innovative film, one which eschews traditional plotting to let its unusual "romance" develop in a naturally organic fashion. The two stars have never been better, and their teaming is one of the supreme pleasures of this era of film. There are some issues with the video quality here that will no doubt bother some viewers, and so some may want to carefully peruse the screenshots before deciding whether to purchase this release. With caveats in mind, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison comes Recommended.