BUY TICKETS HERE
Join us at 1 p.m. Sunday, Septermber 15, for a screening of 1947’s “Black Narcissus.” This explosive work about the conflict between the spirit and the flesh is the epitome of the sensuous style of co-directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
BLACK NARCISSUS | 1947 | DIRECTORS: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger | WITH: Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, Flora Robson | RUNNING TIME: 1H 41M | UNRATED no offensive material | PROJECTED IN 2K DCP
A group of nuns—played by some of Britain’s finest actresses, including Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, and Flora Robson—struggle to establish a convent in the Himalayas, while isolation, extreme weather, altitude, and culture clashes all conspire to drive the well-intentioned missionaries mad. A darkly grand film that won Oscars for Alfred Junge’s art direction and Jack Cardiff’s cinematography, Black Narcissus is one of the greatest achievements by two of cinema’s true visionaries.
“Black Narcissus is a film about people who try and fail to remake the world to their specifications, and it was paradoxically made by people who control every square inch of the environment being represented—every sliver of light, every quavering breeze—in order to render its effect on frozen consciousness as vividly and dramatically as possible.
“The sisters in Black Narcissus are taken aback to find their buried memories and unfulfilled yearnings spontaneously conjured to life as they contemplate the apparently limitless horizon. “I think you can see too far,” observes Sister Philippa (Flora Robson, who gives the film’s most delicate and underrated performance), by way of explaining the sudden intrusion of past experiences into her heretofore perfect spiritual life.
“in Black Narcissus, the growing affection and understanding between David Farrar’s Mr. Dean and Deborah Kerr’s Sister Clodagh, both fixed in their solitude, remain unremarked and unfulfilled, a matter of quick glances, sympathetic exchanges, and poignantly masked surges of feeling.” — Kent Jones
Tickets are $5 and available at link above. Students use UMSTUDENT for free admission (must show Cane card at the door).
