A group of nuns open a convent in an Indian area of the Himalayas, and are soon seduced by the local atmosphere, creating unpredictable internal turmoil.
Englishman Michael Powell and Hungarian immigrant Emeric Pressburger (known together as "The Archers") are a filmmaking duo who set the bar for artistic achievement in British cinema. Working together for over 25 years, the team hopped from genre to genre including espionage, romantic comedy, fantasy, war, literary adaptations, and their own innovative experiments blending music and narrative cinema.
After World War II and a series of films with varying degrees of pro-British propaganda, they moved into more esoteric territory, culminating in the one-two punch of Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, both showing a highly-stylized, colorful eroticism previously unseen in their national cinema, or anywhere else. Adapted from a novel by Rumer Godden, a British woman raised in Colonial India, the subtext deals with the inability of the British to fully understand India's ways, or to convert the country to their own.
In a move that shocked his faithful stable of collaborators, Powell opted not to shoot on location in India, but on British soundstages, where he could have tighter control of the production. Designer Alfred Junge and a team of artists used a combination of photographs and pastels to create the jaw-droppingly realistic backdrops. Cinematographer Jack Cardiff (the first British cameraman to be trained in the recently-acquired Technicolor process and a student of fine art) took color photography to new heights, modeling the film's lighting and color style after paintings by Vermeer.
The cast is headed by Deborah Kerr (An Affair To Remember, From Here To Eternity), joined by David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, and reliable character actor Esmond Knight. While two prominent Indian characters are played by British actors in make-up (including young ingenue Jean Simmons), former Indian child-star Sabu has a notable role.
The film was met with mixed reviews, common for the Archers as their films from this period were usually ahead of the times. Despite not being a Hollywood production, it impressed enough professionals to earn Academy Awards for its cinematography and art direction. Fittingly, India gained independence from the British Empire just months after the film's release.
Running time is approx. 100 minutes.
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