Black Narcissus

Black Narcissus is Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s follow-up to their sublime A Matter of Life and Death, and the precursor to their masterpiece The Red Shoes. The film is most noteworthy for the astounding Technicolour cinematography by Jack Cardiff and the surreal creation within the confines of Pinewood Studios of the picture's Himalayan mountainous setting. The story about a group of Anglican nuns who attempt to set up a convent, school, and hospital in a remote cliffside Indian palace that was once a harem, makes for a compelling psycho-sexual religious drama. It's hard to imagine just how powerful the color and the repressed eroticism must have been to audiences of the day, but even 75 years later it still gets under your skin.