In partnership with The Film Foundation, Turner Classic Movies is proud to bring you this exclusive new monthly column by iconic film director and classic movie lover Martin Scorsese in May 2012.

THE NUN'S STORY (May 4, 11:00am)--There are not so many good Hollywood pictures about Christian spirituality, and some of them are just silly magic shows. But this picture, directed by Fred Zinnemann and adapted by the playwright Robert Anderson from a best-selling book by Kathryn C. Hulme, is a major exception. The story is based on the life of Hulme's lifetime companion Marie Louise Habets, a Belgian woman who took her vows in the early '30s. Habets' father was a prominent doctor, she'd had extensive medical training, and she bristled at the absolute obedience demanded by her order. She was pained to leave the Congo, where she felt that her expertise was most useful. When her father was killed by the Nazis she made the painful decision to leave her vocation in order to join the resistance. The power of this film lies in the fact that its central conflict is genuinely spiritual. We are taken through every stage of the rigorous demands of training for sisterhood, and the storytelling is clear, handsome, and carefully detailed-- you come away remembering the sounds of the morning bells, the texture of wooden doorways, the footsteps, the different parts of the nun's habits. And as the film proceeds, the spiritual conflict becomes increasingly acute. As a nun, do you owe your obedience to your order or to your conscience? And, is your conscience where your spiritual awareness truly lives, or is it within the observance of religious rituals? Audrey Hepburn plays Gabrielle, or Sister Luke; she is as delicately beautiful here as in any of her romantic pictures, and she gives a compellingly intelligent performance: you can feel her character trying to correct her own inner impulses as she moves from one trial to the next. The Nun's Story, like all of Zinnemann's films, is made with an exquisite sense of craft that is a thing of beauty in and of itself. A moving and, in the end, oddly haunting experience.

FRANK BORZAGE (May 25, 8:00pm)--TCM is running three Frank Borzage pictures this month, all made during the same period. Three Comrades, adapted from Erich Maria Remarque's novel, The Mortal Storm and the mystical Strange Cargo. I like to draw attention to Borzage's pictures. I started looking at them in the '90s, and the more closely I studied them the more powerful they became. The studio era is known for its romances, but Borzage really believed in the communion of two souls, and the romantic bonds between the couples in his pictures have an intensity that you just don't find in other people's movies. James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in The Mortal Storm are one of the most moving couples in his entire body of work, which began in 1913 and ended in 1959. If you don't know Borzage's work, this trio of pictures is an excellent place to start.

GREGG TOLAND (May 19, 8:00pm)--I also wanted to say a brief word about the five Gregg Toland pictures being shown on May 19. So much has been said about the deep focus photography of Citizen Kane and The Grapes of Wrath that I don't really have much to add, apart from a reflection based on my recent experience making a picture in 3-D. As we were shooting, I came to realize that with deep focus, Toland was anticipating 3-D years before the technology was actually perfected (Manny Farber actually made a similar observation in the early '50s). Looking at those pictures again now, it seems more striking than ever. Like certain late silent pictures right on the verge of speech, they went to the brink of a third dimension.