Cardiff demonstrates his love of painters, particularly masters of light and shadow such as Vermeer and Caravaggio, with this film, for which he won an Oscar for Color Cinematography. His skillful camera work allows Powell and Pressburger to reach delirious heights of psychosexual melodrama. When young Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) opens a school and hospital deep in the northern Indian wilderness, she and her fellow nuns, including fragile Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron), find an environment unfriendly to self-restraint. As their liaison to the local villagers states: “There's something in the atmosphere that makes everything seem exaggerated.” Though shot almost entirely on a London set, the film feels bathed in soft, natural mountain light. Thus, a sudden shock of color-vibrant murals, blood and lipstick in deep crimson-is all the more jolting. The nuns strive for austerity, but the intoxicating colors, sounds, and aromas that surround them prove overpowering-and madness envelops the Himalayas.