Black Narcissus

Variety by

The cast has been well chosen, but Kerr gets only occasional opportunities to reveal her talents.

Chicago Reader by Dave Kehr

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.

Time Out by Keith Uhlich

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.

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

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.

Empire by William Thomas

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.