Quand la terre brûle

After playing the ultimate teen sexpot in Baby Doll, Carroll Baker plays a young nun who was a foundling. The convent where she is a postulant serves as a medical hospital during the Napoleonic Wars. It's there that Baker starts doubting whether she has the right stuff to be a nun.

Who is giving her second thoughts is young Roger Moore, wounded nephew of the Duke Of Wellington. While he convalesces he also stirs something in Baker about what she's missing on the outside. When Moore leaves to rejoin his regiment, Baker follows.

But The Miracle happens. A statue of the Virgin Mary comes off a pedestal in the nunnery chapel and takes Baker's place. But with the statue gone the country around withers and dies, crops go bad, animals and people go hungry. Still no one knows in the convent that the greatest woman in Catholic history is among them.

As for Baker the rest of the film is episodic at best as she joins the gypsies, specifically Walter Slezak as a come-on for his various enterprises. She's also hard luck to any man who falls for her.

I couldn't quite buy Baker as a Catholic nun still the film is worth a look. Roger Moore when he was young and before James Bond was great at these stalwart hero roles. Gypsy brothers Vittorio Gassman and Carlos Rivas and their mother Katina Paxinou stand out as well as Dennis King as old roué of a nobleman and Gustavo Rojo a matador. All the men fall hard for her.

Someone like Sophia Loren would have been great in the title role. And more convincing than mid-west born and bred Carroll Baker as a Spaniard.