Black Narcissus

Powell and Pressburger's film about a group of Anglican nuns sent to establish a school and dispensary in a former palace high in the Himalayas. The building was once a harem, the wind never stops, and the altitude does something to everyone who stays. What the film is actually about is repression breaking down. The nuns begin remembering their lives before the order; one of them starts to unravel completely, and the presence of a British agent living nearby, indifferent and half-dressed, does the rest. None of it was shot in the Himalayas. The mountains were painted; the exteriors were built at Pinewood and in a garden in Sussex. Jack Cardiff's Technicolor photography won the Oscar, as did Alfred Junge's production design, and both are cited as high points of colour in cinema. The reds in the final act arrive as an assault after two hours of pale blues and greys. Deborah Kerr plays Sister Clodagh and Kathleen Byron plays Sister Ruth, whose last scenes are among the most frightening in British film without a single element of horror. Who it is for: viewers who want to see what colour and design can do, and psychological drama with no reassurance in it. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot get past the casting. British actors in brownface play Indian characters, and the film's view of the region is entirely a colonial one.