BLACK NARCISSUS

However, the mission is no easy task – the residents do not trust the nuns, and the climate is unsettling, preventing them from concentrating on their work and prayers. Unruly desires awaken or resurface in each of the sisters. The edifice of purity, humility and balance begins to crumble.

The BLACK NARCISSUS was made in 1947. Powell and Pressburger – the famous duo known as ‘The Archers’ – were already highly acclaimed filmmakers at the time, made their film at a time when India gained independence (and Britain was losing the most important of its colonies), and, just as significantly, when the bloody partition of India and Pakistan took place. The plot does not refer to either event, yet an awareness of this turning point shapes the way the film is interpreted.

Powell and Pressburger made a psychological film with a highly evocative erotic undertone (by the standards of the time), and yet it is hard to shake off the impression that BLACK NARCISSUS is a reflection on the phantasmal nature of colonial entanglement. India is portrayed as a country beyond the bounds of civilisation, a world of atavism and primal instincts. The inhabitants are ‘like children’ – primitive and unenlightened. The intensity of this wildness – like the seductive scent of the perfume called 'Black Narcissus' that tempts the sisters – exerts a hypnotic pull over the nuns. It robs them of the sound judgement that ought, after all, to be a hallmark of British rule.

‍

Text: dr Karolina Kosińska