Cool nun wants you to watch movies the Catholic Church condemned

The Story of Temple DrakeThe series opens Thursday at 8 p.m. with “The Story of Temple Drake” (1933), an adaptation of a William Faulkner novel about a woman (Miriam Hopkins) who’s raped by a gangster and becomes his moll. So notorious was this pre-code film that it wasn’t even shown on TV until a couple of years ago.

It drew one of the Legion’s first “condemned” ratings, but Sister Rose says, “I actually like the film. It’s 83 years old and you can still watch it because of the writing, acting and brooding cinematography. The Catholic Legion of Decency didn’t trust that Catholic audiences would figure out that the woman didn’t want to be a prostitute and that she’s shown as a victim, even though this predicament is as old as the Bible.”

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