Cinema: Abstinence on the Trail

Shirley MacLaine's screen career careens from pillow to lamppost. She specializes in playing lovable, indomitable whores (Some Came Running, Irma La Douce, Sweet Charity), a role she sashays through once again in Two Mules for Sister Sara. In this one, Shirley is supposed to be a nun but the fact that she is a hooker in disguise comes as more of a surprise to Co-Star Clint Eastwood than it does to the audience.

Eastwood is an 1865 soldier of fortune who pauses on his way through Mexico to help a nun escape the clutches of some typically greasy and grinning desperadoes. The...

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