Black Narcissus - 1947

I sometimes just pick up a film, based on nothing other than the fact it is Criterion Collection, and rent it.  This is not the biggest plug of all time for Criterion, although I do tend to think their stuff is, at the very least, damn fine film.  This is an ongoing project for me, it's how I discovered things like Meantime and...uh...other stuff I forget about right now.

Black Narcissus stars Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Sabu, and Jean Simmons in the story of colonial English times, when the expansion East meant that explorers and religious people were coming to India, China, and everywhere in between with their "modern religion".  This story follows the nuns released on these missions.

Deborah Kerr, Flora Robson, Jenny Laird, and Kathleen Byron are the nuns in question.  And honestly, I have no idea which one was which.  One of them is made the leader of the group which will be dispatched to the Himalayas to do whatever it is they do there, and she is assigned a group of about 5 nuns to take with her.  One of them is the troublesome Sister Ruth.  But seriously, especially in nun garb, they all look exactly the same and I had no idea who was who 90% of the time.

I guess the prevailing theme here was supposed to be the sexual undertones of the nuns and the main white man there, David Farrar as Mr. Dean.  There are a few scenes of the nuns ogling him, but he is so outrageously comically written and acted I didn't see it.  The other theme of course is isolation and the obstacles faced by the nuns on the mission.  They're all facing hardship and trying to cope with situations out of their control and out of the realms of what they'd expected.

It's kinda boring, it's not that special, I didn't like it too much.  I'll give it 2 stars.