Episode 67 – Black Narcissus

Bill and Ted discuss Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 film adaptation of Margaret Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel “Black Narcissus.” Set in the Himalayas a newly minted mother superior, Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr), is sent to the palatial yet rundown former mountaintop harem house of Mo- Poo to establish a convent and open a combination school for girls and pharmacy for local minor medical needs. Both beautiful and brimming with dark obsessions the film delves into physiological and spiritual themes of arrogance and humility against a backdrop of mission-field-culture-shock and extreme isolation with all the temptations and the struggles accompanying a life in which vows of self-sacrifice and poverty have been made and luxury and sensuality is actively denied.

If you enjoyed this film, you may also like these Ted’s Picks: The Red Shoes (1948), The King and I (1956), Silence (2016)