The cast has been well chosen, but Kerr gets only occasional opportunities to reveal her talents.
Black Narcissus
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
United Kingdom · 1947
1h 40m
Director Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell
Starring Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Flora Robson, Kathleen Byron
Genre Drama
Add to Watchlist
Please login to add films to your watchlist.
A group of nuns is sent to open a convent high in the Himalayas. The locals are friendly and welcome them enthusiastically, as does the local ruler, The General. But, when the General dies and his twenty-something-year-old son takes over, things get even more complicated.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Films on this subject are generally solemn and naive, but director Michael Powell and writer Emeric Pressburger bring wit and intelligence to it.
Slant Magazine by Joseph Jon Lanthier
Black Narcissus impishly keeps watch over the Archers’ canon with a sunken, rabidly prismatic eye.
For Powell and Pressburger, the personal and the political—much like their distinctive mix of high and low artistry—weren’t separate bedfellows: Even a marvelously entertaining tale of repressed abbesses on the edge could explore, with enduring resonance and profundity, an empire losing its grip.
The New Yorker by Michael Sragow
This is a landmark of Hollywood-on-Thames trompe-l’oeil.
It remains a rapturous, near-indescribable work of cinematic art, spun from a simple story about nuns who travel to the Himalayas to start a school and a hospital, only to have mountain winds and native mysticism weaken their confidence and their faith.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
The co-directors created from Rumer Godden's novel an extraordinary melodrama of repressed love and Forsterian Englishness - or rather Irishness - coming unglued in the vertiginous landscape of South Asia.
Sexual tension hangs in the air as the wind blows and native drums beat, but it's on a visual level that the film excels.
Users who liked this film also liked
Peeping Tom
What made this the most diabolical murder weapon ever used?
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- United Kingdom • 1960
- Director Michael Powell
- Cast Karlheinz Böhm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey, Maxine Audley, Brenda Bruce, Miles Malleson
- Genre Horror, Thriller, Drama
- Available on Criterion Channel, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, Amazon Video, YouTube, Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, Xumo Play
Aaltra
- ✭ ✭ ✭
- Belgium, France • 2004
- Director Benoît Delépine, Gustave Kervern
- Cast Benoît Delépine, Gustave Kervern, Michel de Gavre, Isabelle Delépine, Gérard Condejean, Pierre Ghenassia
- Genre Comedy, Drama
- Available on No streaming locations found.
A Canterbury Tale
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- United Kingdom • 1944
- Director Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell
- Cast Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Dennis Price, John Sweet, Charles Hawtrey, Esmond Knight
- Genre Comedy, Drama, Mystery
- Available on Criterion Channel, Apple TV, Amazon Video, Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, Shout! Factory TV, Plex, Plex Channel
The Importance of Being Earnest
They don't come any wilder than Oscar Wilde's classic comedy of manners, morals and morality!
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- United Kingdom • 1952
- Director Anthony Asquith
- Cast Michael Redgrave, Michael Denison, Edith Evans, Joan Greenwood, Dorothy Tutin, Margaret Rutherford
- Genre Romance, Comedy
- Available on Criterion Channel, Apple TV, Amazon Video, Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, Freevee, Shout! Factory TV, Plex, Plex Channel
A Matter of Life and Death
Neither Heaven nor Earth could keep them apart!
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- United Kingdom • 1946
- Director Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell
- Cast David Niven, Kim Hunter, Marius Goring, Kathleen Byron, Richard Attenborough, Robert Coote
- Genre Comedy, Fantasy, Romance, Drama
- Available on Classix, Tubi TV
Bunker Palace Hotel
(Bunker Palace Hôtel)
- ✭ ✭ ✭
- France • 1989
- Director Enki Bilal
- Cast Jean-Louis Trintignant, Carole Bouquet, Maria Schneider, Roger Dumas, Yann Collette, Philippe Morier-Genoud
- Genre Science Fiction
- Available on No streaming locations found.
Night Train to Munich
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- United Kingdom • 1940
- Director Carol Reed
- Cast Margaret Lockwood, Rex Harrison, Paul Henreid, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne, James Harcourt
- Genre Drama, Thriller, War
- Available on FlixFling, Tubi TV
The Small Back Room
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- United Kingdom • 1949
- Director Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell
- Cast David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, Jack Hawkins, Leslie Banks, Michael Gough, Cyril Cusack
- Genre War, Drama, Thriller, Romance
- Available on Criterion Channel, Vudu
Happiness
(Le Bonheur)
A young carpenter strikes up an affair with a postal worker despite his happy marriage.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- France • 1965
- Director Agnès Varda
- Cast Jean-Claude Drouot, Claire Drouot, Olivier Drouot, Sandrine Drouot, Marie-France Boyer, Marcelle Faure-Bertin
- Genre Drama, Romance
- Available on Criterion Channel, Max Amazon Channel, Max
The Golden Coach
(Le carrosse d'or)
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- France, Italy • 1952
- Director Jean Renoir
- Cast Anna Magnani, Odoardo Spadaro, Nada Fiorelli, Dante, Duncan Lamont, George Higgins
- Genre History, Comedy, Drama, Romance
- Available on Criterion Channel, Amazon Video
The Chalk Garden
Hayley The Hell Raiser!
- ✭ ✭ ✭
- United Kingdom, United States • 1964
- Director Ronald Neame
- Cast Deborah Kerr, Hayley Mills, John Mills, Edith Evans, Felix Aylmer, Elizabeth Sellars
- Genre Drama, Mystery
- Available on No streaming locations found.
Je, tu, il, elle
'Je' is a girl voluntarily locked in a room. 'Tu' is the script. 'Il' is a lorry driver. 'Elle' is the girlfriend.
- ✭ ✭ ✭
- Belgium, France • 1976
- Director Chantal Akerman
- Cast Chantal Akerman, Niels Arestrup, Claire Wauthion
- Genre Drama, Romance
- Available on Criterion Channel, Max, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, Vudu, YouTube
Edward, My Son
Broadway Stage Hit . . . Now on the Screen !
- ✭ ✭ ✭
- United Kingdom, United States • 1949
- Director George Cukor
- Cast Spencer Tracy, Deborah Kerr, Ian Hunter, James Donald, Mervyn Johns, Leueen MacGrath
- Genre Drama
- Available on TCM, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, Vudu, Amazon Video, YouTube
A Talking Picture
(Um Filme Falado)
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Portugal, France, Italy • 2003
- Director Manoel de Oliveira
- Cast Leonor Silveira, Filipa de Almeida, John Malkovich, Catherine Deneuve, Stefania Sandrelli
- Genre Drama, History
- Available on No streaming locations found.
Between Home
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Germany, United States, Australia • 2012
- Director Jack Rath
- Cast Nick Jaffe
- Genre Adventure
- Available on Amazon Video