CinemaLit - Black Narcissus (1947)

September 13 - Black Narcissus (1947), 96 minutes, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, starring Deborah Kerr, Sabu, and David Farrar.

The legendary British filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made perhaps their most indelible and audacious film with Black Narcissus. Five Protestant missionary nuns attempt to establish a school in the remote Himalayas, but are beset by doubt, worldly desires, and madness. This fever dream of a movie stands by itself in film history. The extensive use of matte paintings and huge landscape paintings contribute its unsettling aura of mysticism and displacement, while Jack Cardiff’s Oscar-winning deeply saturated color photography richly enhances Powell and Pressburger’s concern for visual symbolism and metaphor. 

September 2024 CinemaLit: Members Choice

To launch the 2024/2025 CinemaLit Season, we conducted a members choice survey of select films in the Mechanics’ DVD collection for screening. We’ve tallied the results, and… the members have spoken! (And have exquisite good taste in films.) Below are the top vote getters. They’re a fantastic quartet of classics young and old with a diversity of genres, styles, nationalities, and eras. Join us for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Black Narcissus (1947), Fargo (1996), and Cinema Paradiso (1988).

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