Neil Young's Film Lounge

Neil Young’s Film Lounge – Black Narcissus

BLACK NARCISSUS

8/10

UK 1946 : Michael POWELL & Emeric PRESSBURGER : 100 mins

One-of-a-kind classic from the directorial duo also responsible for the likes of The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death. A group of British nuns including prim-and-proper Deborah Kerr and mentally unstable Kathleen Byron move into a Himalayan palace that was once the residence of the pashas concubines. The altitude and fetid climate make things tough: relationships with the locals soon become strained; and the presence of strapping forester Mr Dean (David Farrar) tests the sisters vows of chastity to breaking point Shot entirely at Pinewood Studios, this astonishing-looking film transcends its melodramatic plot and moments of colonial creakiness to achieve a kind of demented, erotic, technicolour surrealism that hasnt faded at all six decades later. God only knows what they made of it in 1946.

20^th April, 2003

by Neil Young

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