Synopsis
Black Narcissus (1947) is the Powell and Pressburger drama you can watch online on iFILM. Five Anglican nuns, led by Sister Clodagh, climb to an abandoned palace high in the Himalayas to open a school and a clinic. The building once housed a harem, and something in those walls still hums with the appetites it was built for.
Thin air, relentless wind and sheer mountain beauty loosen the women's vows faster than any of them notices. Clodagh keeps drifting back to a love she left behind in Ireland. Sister Ruth fixates on Mr. Dean, the local British agent, and that obsession slowly tips her toward madness. Deborah Kerr holds the cold composure of the Mother Superior, while Kathleen Byron, as Ruth, delivers one of the most frightening breakdowns of the decade.
Every "mountain" was built on a London soundstage — painted backdrops and the lighting trickery of cinematographer Jack Cardiff, whose work here took home the Oscar for color photography. The film has long sat in the canon of British cinema. A must for anyone drawn to slow, psychologically charged classics. Stream Black Narcissus (1947) online on iFILM.
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