Die Liebesbriefe einer Portugiesischen Nonne (1977)

On a beautiful summer day long ago, 16-year-old Maria Rosalia runs wild through the Portuguese woods with an 18-year-old friend. A clergyman watches them. He introduces himself as Father Vincent. He makes Maria feel guilty about her fornication and goes with her to her mother, a poor laundress. He tells her that the young girl’s soul can only be saved in a special convent. The priest relieves the mother of her last savings and takes Maria to the convent. There, the superior, who has herself called the “High Priestess,” first establishes that Maria is a virgin, then appoints Father Vincent as guardian and disciplinarian of her body and soul. During a confession, the priest draws some secrets out of her. However, she says that she dreamed them. The priest nevertheless becomes sexually aroused and sentences Maria to wear a crown of thorns for three days. The abbess places it on her head that same day. Some lesbian excesses then take place within the convent walls, arranged so that Maria has to hear them and, in her naive innocence, interprets them as sexual fantasies she has dreamed, whereupon she is made to feel even more guilty. A little later, her friend appears at the convent and wants to take her home. But Maria considers herself guilty and wants to endure further purification in the convent. After some time, however, she writes a letter to her mother, admitting that she would now be willing to leave with the boy if he came back. The head of the convent intercepts the letter with the help of a fellow nun, and Maria is summoned to a “conversation” with the abbess and the priest. Because of the letter, Maria becomes ever more entangled in their machinations. She is sentenced to spend the coming period in the dungeon, whereupon she is stripped of her nun’s habit and locked inside a kind of cupboard. During this time, she has to satisfy the priest orally. One night, a ceremony is held for her, during which Satan violates and deflowers her. Later, this night, too, is made out to be a dreamlike product of her wickedness. A short time later, she manages to escape from the convent and turns to the local mayor. He does not believe her, however, and takes her back to the convent. This escape attempt is punished in turn. This time, the convent authorities take Maria to the regional inquisitor, to whom she confesses everything and blames the convent’s superiors. On the basis of her confession, she is sentenced to death by burning at the stake. But because she has made an accusation against others, the inquisitor wants to begin a new investigation—unless the accused have Maria sign a paper retracting her allegations. Maria is now tortured until she signs the paper. Soon afterward, she is in a prison, waiting to be executed. There, she writes a letter to God, since no one else will listen to her. She describes what happened and apologizes to her Lord. In desperation, she then lets the letter drift out of the window, and it lands at a prince’s feet. He is an enlightened, modern prince who has long been opposed to the burning of witches. He makes all the preparations and rescues Maria the next day from the already smoking pyre. The film ends as the prince reads her letter aloud and, shortly afterward, his soldiers arrest those responsible, Father Vincent and the High Priestess.