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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
pasha’s 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 hasn’t
faded at all six decades later. God only knows what they made of it in
1946.
20th April, 2003
by Neil
Young
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