Stunningly beautiful atmospheric tale of nuns in the Himalayas. Like the best Powell/ Pressburger this has a touch of a magic about it – and the touch is often a dark one. Mostly people have sex/love on the brain – Deborah Kerr thinks back to when she was a girl in love in Ireland, David Farrar walks around in shorts and not much else as the nuns check him out and seems to have eyes for Kerr, crazy Kathleen Byron lusts after Farrar, sexy native girl Jean Simmons turns up just gagging for it and prince Sabu wants to give it to her.
Sex, nuns, religion, God, colonialism, a cliff top nunnery (spectacularly scary), native superstition, donkeys… it’s a heady mixture, like no other film. Superlative acting – why didn’t David Farrar become as big a British star as James Mason, they had a similar brooding quality? (He was much better than Dennis Price, who was Gainsborough’s back up James Mason).
One thing – I remember first seeing this the sight of Kathleen Byron in a dress (after viewing her only in nun’s habit) was one of the great shocks of cinema. It had less impact on second viewing, maybe because I was used to it – or I saw a version which had Deborah Kerr in mufti (in flashback). She’s still pretty terrifying – especially at the end when she looks all wasted.
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