Nasty Habits | |
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Directed by | Michael Lindsay-Hogg |
Screenplay by | Robert Enders |
Based on | The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark |
Produced by | Robert Enders |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Douglas Slocombe |
Edited by | Peter Tanner |
Music by | John Cameron |
Production company | Bowden Productions Limited |
Distributed by |
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Release date |
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Running time | 96 minutes |
Countries | |
Language | English |
Nasty Habits is a 1977 comedy film directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, starring Glenda Jackson, Melina Mercouri, Geraldine Page, Sandy Dennis, Anne Jackson, Anne Meara and Susan Penhaligon. The screenplay by Robert Enders is based on the 1974 novella The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark. [3]
At the little-known and extremely wealthy Abbey of Philadelphia, the Abbess, Sister Hildegard, is dying. She wishes her favorite, Sister Alexandra, to succeed her but dies moments before she can make her endorsement public. Alexandra conspires with Sisters Gertrude and Walburga to win the coming election against her rival, Sister Felicity, who is openly carrying on an affair with a Jesuit priest, Father Thomas. Alexandra orders hidden microphones and cameras installed throughout the convent, and even hires a pair of Jesuit students, Gregory and Ambrose, to break in and steal Thomas's compromising letters from Sister Felicity's sewing box. The break-in is discovered, but the real meaning is kept hidden and Alexandra wins the election by a landslide. Once she is made Abbess, Alexandra expels and excommunicates Felicity, who begins a very public campaign to topple Alexandra. At the same time, the publicity brings the abbey to the attention of the Holy See, which discovers that the order is an unofficial one, with no actual ties to the Roman Catholic Church. To make matters worse, Gregory and Ambrose blackmail Gertrude and Walburga, who send the bungling Sister Winifred to pay them off only to have the whole scandal made public.
The film and the original novel were a satire on the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, including Alexandra's parting line as she boards a plane to Rome to answer charges from the Vatican. The characters are parallels of the Nixon cabinet and Watergate conspirators. [4]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 40% based on 5 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10. [5] Vincent Canby in The New York Times wrote that Glenda Jackson had her best role in years, and that the film was "very funny" but was too uneven to be ultimately successful. [4]
The film was released on VHS in 1989 and on DVD in 2014.
The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict, are a mainly contemplative monastic religious order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. The male religious are also sometimes called the Black Monks, in reference to the colour of their religious habits, in contrast to other Benedictine orders such as the Olivetans, who wear white. They were founded in 529 by Benedict of Nursia, a 6th-century Italian monk who laid the foundations of Benedictine monasticism through the formulation of his Rule. Benedict's sister, Scholastica, possibly his twin, also became a religious from an early age, but chose to live as a hermit. They retained a close relationship until her death.
Hildegard of Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by a number of scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.
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Nasty Habits may refer to:
The State Government of Tasmania in Australia established the Tasmanian Honour Roll of Women in 2005 to recognise Tasmanian women who have been distinguished in their contributions to the State. In 2021 Martine Delaney became the first openly transgender woman into the Honour Roll.
The Abbess of Crewe is a novella published in 1974 by Muriel Spark. It is centred on a Catholic convent in Crewe and the political intrigues surrounding the election of a new abbess, after the death of the former. It exhibits Spark's typical style of crossing seamlessly between temporal points in the narrative. Michael Lindsay-Hogg adapted the novel into his film Nasty Habits, released in 1977. This book is considered an allegorical treatment of the Watergate scandal.
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