Dame Muriel Spark (1918-96 )repeatedly wrote about small casts of character in relatively closed-off social worlds, such as boarding schools (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Finishing School), a boarding house (Girls of Slender Means) ,an old-age home (Memento Mori), shipwrecked on an desert island (Robinson), and the convent in The Abbess of Crewe. That wickedly funny and short 1974 novel was her version of the fall of Richard Nixon in the Watergate cover-up.
Although the abbesses in the movie are very English (Edith Evans, Glenda Jackson), the abbey has been transplanted to Philadelphia. The old abbess (Evans) dies before naming Sister Alexandra (Jackson) her successor. Sister Alexandra has some of Nixon’s paranoia and the same need he felt to know what his rivals were up to.
The young free-love nun (who is openly having a sexual relationship with a Jesuit novice), Sister Felicity (Susan Penahaligon) bears no resemblance to Senator George McGovern. Although Sister Alexandra is contemptuous of Sister Felicity and her unconventional attitudes, it seems that she had as little need to sponsor “a third-rate burglary” as Nixon did. Sister Alexandra also has already had her office and much of the rest of the convent bugged. This is known by her henchwomen, the chain-smoking Sister Walburga (Geraldine Page) and Sister Mildred (Anne Jackson) whereas if I recall correctly, the men on whom they are modeled, presidential advisors Bob Haldemann and John Ehrlichman did not knows of the Oval office taping. And certainly John Dean did not, though his stand-in, Sister Winifred (an extra-gawky and toothy Sandy Dennis), does. And in one of the funniest adaptation of Nixon’s teams, Melina Mercouri jets around the world and issues gnomic advice in the manner of Henry Kissinger.
Sister Alexandra lacks Nixon’s self-pity. Glenda Jackson is more confident and regal. Still, she repeats many of his lines as she scapegoats Sister Winifred and eventually sacrifices Sisters Walburga and Mildred, as Nixon eventually sacrificed Haldemann and Ehrlichman. The attention of the press on an obscure convent is not altogether plausible. Sister Alexandra is answerable to Rome. The Monsignor traveling to Philadelphia to investigate (a stand-in for the folksy Senator Sam Ervin?) is played by Eli Wallach. And Anne Mears plays Gerald Ford.
The cast also includes Rip Torn and Jerry Stiller as Jesuit co-conspirators. The production values do not match the quality of the cast (or those of “Brideshead Revisited” which Michael Lindsay-Hogg went on to direct shortly after directing “Nasty Habits”).
Corruption among the pious has not ceased, as the recent failed coverups of DOnald Trump payoffs and the revelations about coverups of serial pedophilia of Catholic priests (and Muslim imams) attests, along with another White House bent on widespread surveillance and proceeding in secrecy reprises Nixon’s.
The pace slackens with two ludicrous money drops in public lavatories. And Susan Penahaligon is so overmatched by Glenda Jackson that it seems silly to enter into such serious strategizing to foil her. I realize that it was similarly insane to do what Nixon did, but he had used dirty tricks every step of the way up, while what Sister Alexandra’s concerns and tactics seem not just unnecessary but out of character (though she is careful to distance herself so that she can simulate plausible deniability of responsibility). Nevertheless, watching Jackson before she retired from acting to run for Parliament is the main pleasure afforded by “Nasty Habits.”
The DVD transfer is not very good and there are no DVD bonus features, but it does give viewers the opportunity to enjoy seeing actresses no longer around to perform (Jackson retired from acting (though recentyly returned to stages as King Lear); Dennis, Evans, Mercouri, Page have been dead for years).
©2006, Stephen O. Murray
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