Black Narcissus (1947)

BLACK NARCISSUS  (1947)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
    Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Sabu, Jean Simmons,
    Kathleen Byron, Flora Robson, Jenny Laird,
    Judith Furse, Nancy Roberts, Esmond Knight
A small community of nuns open a school and clinic high in the Himalayas, in a remote cliffside palace that used to house a harem. The nuns see the atmosphere with its spectacularly clean air as corrupting, but is it corrupting them, or just tapping into the corruption they've brought with them? Deborah Kerr plays the young mother superior. David Farrar plays the handsome ex-pat whose devilish manner and bare legs and torso could cause a cloistered girl to rethink her vow of celibacy. Needless to say, the film ran into trouble with the Catholic Church. Jack Cardiff did the Technicolor cinematography, and amazingly, the whole thing was shot on a soundstage.