The clash of passion and restraint, duty and desire underpin the Technicolour melodrama of a group of nuns setting up a remote convent high in the Himalayas.
Ambitious Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) is tasked with the role of heading up the small group who must overcome local suspicion and the constant winds blowing through the buildings. The only help they have is from a British government representative (the hunky David Farrar). Passions run high as an increasingly deranged Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) challenges the authority of Sister Clodagh.
Directors Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, with cinematographer Jack Cardiff, use colour to convey states of mind to stunning effect (an increasing use of red for Sister Ruth, green for Sister Clodagh’s flashbacks to Ireland). Intense, startlingly beautiful, so overtly sexual in its undertones that it was censored at the behest of the Catholic Legion of Decency!
Jack Cardiff and Alfred Junge (for Art Direction: Colour) each picked up Oscars – an indication of the provocative Himalayan settings – in spite of the film being shot in its entirety in Pinewood Studios.
Rating: 74%
Director: Michael Powell (The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life & Death), Emeric Pressburger (The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life & Death)
Writer: Michael Powell (The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life & Death), Emeric Pressburger (The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life & Death) – adapted from the novel by Rumer Godden
Main cast: Deborah Kerr (The King and I, From Here to Eternity), David Farrar (Frieda, The Lisbon Story), Kathleen Byron (The Small Back Room, Saving Private Ryan)
Cinematographer: Jack Cardiff (The Red Shoes, The African Queen)
An Opinion or Two 