Satan Never Sleeps is a 1962 film directed by Leo McCarey (returning to the religious themes of his classics Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)), is his final film. It is about a priest, Father O'Banion (William Holden), who arrives at a mission-post in China accompanied by a young native girl, Siu Lan (France Nuyen), who has joined him along the way. His job is to relieve the incumbent priest Father Bovard (Clifton Webb), who is now too old and weak to continue with the upkeep of the church. However, Mao's 1949 Communist soldiers, who arrive at the mission before Bovard can depart, seize it as a command post. Their leader, Ho San (Weaver Lee), rapes the native girl and impregnates her, only later to realise that Communism is no good for him. In the end, the foursome flee to the border, but are pursued by Communist forces along the way.
Famous quotes containing the words satan and/or sleeps:
“When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Oh! that’s in course—I do love him; why wouldn’t I? for he has a nice little room all decently furnished for any young woman to go into—besides the shop; and he never has the horses at all into the one we sleeps in, as is to be.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)