The Trouble with Angels

Two girls arrive at St. Francis, a Catholic boarding school. Over three years Mary Clancy and her friend Rachel run a campaign of pranks against the Mother Superior, from cigarettes hidden in a sweet tin to a bubble bath disaster that engulfs the plumbing. The decision Mary makes at the end reveals that the pranks were never quite what they looked like. Ida Lupino directs. Hayley Mills is Mary, June Harding is Rachel, Rosalind Russell is the Mother Superior, and Gypsy Rose Lee turns up briefly as a dance instructor. Lupino was one of very few women directing features inside the studio system, and this was her last theatrical film for a major; afterwards she worked almost entirely in television. Her move into directing had been accidental in the first place: in 1949 the director of Not Wanted, Elmer Clifton, had a heart attack, and Lupino, its producer, finished the picture. It was shot at St. Mary's Home for Children in Pennsylvania. It was an unexpected commercial hit, and a sequel followed in 1968, Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows. Russell returned. Mills did not. Who it is for: anyone with affection for the old school comedy of misbehaviour, and anyone curious about Lupino behind the camera. Who it is not for: viewers expecting the darker register that religious boarding school stories carry now. This film looks at that world fondly.