Unintended Black Comedy

Powell and Pressburger have a high reputation but their work, as here, is often very dated. There is clever photography but the story of a doomed attempt of an order of nuns to set up a community in Asia is not well handled. The growing madness of one of the sisters, by today's standards was embarrassingly overacted. Its place lies in the history of the cinema rather than in its hall of fame. Deborah Kerr as the mother superior, beautiful as she was, had too narrow an acting range for the part and never surpassed her bad girl part in 'From Here to Eternity'.