Sea Wife (1957)

Imagine a Casablanca-like postscript on a story like The African Queen or Heaven Knows Mr. Allison, but not as well written and acted, and you would have Sea Wife. Our story opens years after the supposedly harrowing but mostly humdrum survival at sea of four (er, three) occupants of a lifeboat. Apparently, they dealt with the trauma of their ship being sunk by the Japanese and finding themselves, four strangers, in what might be the sole surviving lifeboat by referring to each other only by nicknames: Bulldog, Cannon, Sea Wife, and Number Four. They refrain from divulging personal details of their lives back in society and Sea Wife (Joan Collins) esp. abstains from divulging that she is a nun. (She was passing children into a lifeboat when she lost her religious robes.) Still she observes her faith by quietly praying so that the others may not hear and later refusing the romantic advances of Cannon (Richard Burton), who late in life decides to seek her out. He just misses her at the end, walking right past her, dressed in the habit of her religious order. When her superior comments that he did not recognize the woman he loved, she replies, "Why should he? No one ever looks at the face of a nun." 3 stars.