If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Absolutely Fantastic

Absolutely brilliant

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Nuns form a nunnery in the Himalayan "roof the world" and quickly get swept up by the local traditions, cultures and people. Being more effected by them than the natives are by the newly arrived nuns.Films are made too often and too often for the wrong reasons for them to stumble in the world of profound art. But here they have created a masterpiece which despite passing of time rarely fails to enthral and amaze. The care and attention to detail are astonishing.(Shame the bell tower scene features on the poster and in the trailer - should be kept as a surprise. But any film maker - from Hitchcock down - could learn from it. If they haven't already.)The first thing this film needs and then gets is a great cast. Deborah Kerr is amazing as she has to play two roles: The nun and the nun in her former life. This isn't as easy as you would believe and provides insight and comparison. The locals are well cast too - and believable - in a way so few films of the period are. Fully fleshed with a life and agendas of their own.Emeric Pressburger is a genius. This film is all the evidence anyone would need. Like musicals it has all the ingredients not only to be a failure - but a complete joke. A colony of nuns in the middle of nowhere! What nerve the producers had! My final thoughts are the final thoughts of many favourite films. Flawed or otherwise. They are a deep experience. Not always a pleasant experience and not always an experience you wish to repeat, but a unique experience. Black Narcissus is a unique experience and there aren't that many films that stand on their own like that. See it.

Deborah Kerr plays a nun who's transferred against her will to head up a new seminary and school in Calcutta. While most of the movie tries to convince the audience how stressful the assignment is, and how terrible the "heathens" are, I was left puzzled. What she and the other four accompanying nuns went through wasn't that bad. Why did they lose it?For no explained reason, David Farrar lives in Calcutta, and despite a couple of drunken episodes, he's always around to dispense advice or help the struggling nuns. Most of the natives aren't interested in being saved or educated, but a very influential member of society actively seeks their help in furthering his education, so doesn't that kind of make up for the others' apathy? It was very strange to me, that these non-problems cause the nuns to hallucinate, beg for transfers, and lose their tempers.Jean Simmons has a very small part in this movie. She plays a morally loose Indian, given to the nuns so that she might stay out of trouble. She was given dark makeup for her skin and an earring for her nose, but her performance is more comical than believable. And to top it off, she doesn't utter a single word! But, regardless how much you like Jean Simmons, or Deborah Kerr, don't watch this one. You can see Deborah Kerr play a nun in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, which is a far better movie.

BLACK NARCISSUS is one of the famous films made by the directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It's about a hilltop nunnery occupied by a fine bunch of oppressed nuns, some of whom are gradually going crazy, while others are busy falling in love and Deborah Kerr desperately attempts to hold everything together. It's a psychological case study of isolation and repression, one which is very well acted by all of the principal cast members, and well-shot in Technicolor by the directorial duo. There's no denying that the once-controversial subject matter is now tame by modern standards, but that doesn't stop BLACK NARCISSUS being a cinematic milestone and quite probably the first movie to depict nuns as real people rather than just quaint and kindly religious figures.

After opening a convent in the Himalayas, five nuns encounter conflict and tension - both with the natives and also within their own group - as they attempt to adapt to their remote, exotic surroundings.This film has absolutely amazing color, and has gone on to be known as the film that best demonstrated how Technicolor should be used. I would agree completely with this assessment. I had no idea that color could look so good in the 1940s, and in many ways it looks better than it does today.The film's themes are also good. Some have said it is about "nuns and lust", but not in the sense that was made popular in the 1970s. That is certainly true, but many other themes exist -- not the least of which is the British influence on India, not long before their independence.