Black Narcissus

This is a landmark of Hollywood-on-Thames trompe-l'oeil.

There's something truly unearthly about this place of howling winds, yawning chasms and atmosphere thick with temptation. Sanctity, it will be proven, is no match for sin.

Powell's equally extravagant visual style transforms it into a landscape of the mind -- grand and terrible in its thorough abstraction.

Production has gained much through being in color. The production and camerawork atone for minor lapses in the story, Jack Cardiff's photography being outstanding.

Theatre this Michael Powell film most certainly is, as stressed by the gothic melodrama of the story and the acting, the studio setting with its beautiful backdrops and vivid colours and the most deliberate of characters and events.

While Messrs. Powell and Pressburger may have a picture that will disturb and antagonize some, they also have in Black Narcissus an artistic accomplishment of no small proportions.

The natural colour is beautiful; but, more, the rhythm of camera movement is recurrently used in combination with an overtinting of the whole scene, at significant dramatic moments, to produce an emphasis we have not seen before.

The Archers at their most carnal-bonkers-sublime

Michael Powell was right when he called Black Narcissus an "erotic film," but the attraction is pure Pygmalionism.

A 1947 English film classic about the challenges of desire faced by some nuns in a new mission in the Himalayas.

Colonial hubris nunsploitation = an unforgettable movie.

Run, don't walk to see this 1947 classic from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.