Satan Never Sleeps

Satan Never Sleeps (1962)

How Violators of Human Decency Work Their Terror Countdown!

A priest arrives at a mission-post in China accompanied by a young native girl who has joined him along the way. His job is to relieve the existing priest, who is now too old and weak to continue with the upkeep of the church. However, Communist soldiers arrive at the mission and seize it as a command post. Their leader rapes the native girl and impregnates her, only later to realize that Communism is no good for him. In the end, the foursome flee to the border, but are pursued by Communist forces along the way.

Date of release
1962-02-22
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (17)
Runtime
2h 5m
Genres
Drama
Director
Leo McCarey

Casting

Interesting facts

Satan Never Sleeps is a 1962 American drama romance war film directed by Leo McCarey, his final film, in which he returns to the religious themes of his classics Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945). It also is the final screen appearance of actor Clifton Webb.

Production

Satan Never Sleeps had The China Story for working title. The film was based on an original screenplay by Pearl S. Buck called China Story that had been sold to 20th Century Fox. In 1950, Hal B. Wallis acquired it and in 1960, it came to Leo McCarey.

Hooper and Poague report McCarey's difficulties directing Satan Never Sleeps which he discussed in a 1965 Cahiers du Cinéma interview. According to McCarey, he left the film in disgust [due to] constant studio interference with his work and "modifications" to his script, and the final week's shooting was left to an assistant.

Biographer Wes D. Gehring notes that McCarey had conceived a denouement different from that which the studio inserted, in which "William Holden’s priest dies, rather than act upon his love for a woman".

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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