Movies
It's not difficult to see how the film earned its reputation, but 60 years later there's little left of the shocking and perverted material on display. It's all rather slow and tame, Mark is a boring psycho and the acting as well as the styling are a bit dubious. Unique for its time, but not much to look at nowadays.
Starts off okay, but gets considerably worse as time passes. The romance is cheesy, the fantasy elements are somewhat cheap and the trial at the end is dull and lifeless. Niven is the only actor who makes something of his part, the rest is ultimately forgettable. Just like the rest of this film really.
Black Narcissus is revered for its Technicolor visuals, personally I can't stand the shrill, cold, somewhat lifeless color scheme. I really like bold, colorful films, but Technicolor just doesn't do it for me. Neither did the painted backgrounds by the way, they looked cheesy and borderline ridiculous. I didn't care for the visuals, but that wasn't the only problem. The performances are very weak and exaggerated, the soundtrack is pure kitsch, the characters are very one-dimensional, and the plot is slow and basic. I've seen a couple of Powell and Pressburger films now, none of them left a solid impact. Black Narcissus could be the most memorable of the bunch, but only because of the ugly colors.Read all
Classic Powell & Pressburger. So far I haven't really cared for their films (even though they seem to be universally praised), I Know Where I'm Going didn't do much to change my mind. It's classic drama/romance cinema, meaning it's about as subtle as a sledgehammer. At least it was rather short. The performances are overstated, the romance is predictable (and not exactly smoldering), and the British atmosphere is mostly just static and clunky. Towards the end, there were some decent shots, but otherwise, this was a dull and predictable classic, much like the other films I've seen from them.Read all
An old British favorite. Powell & Pressburger enjoy a reputation I really don't understand. This is the third collaboration between both directors I've seen and none of them has struck me as anything special. The same goes for this one. It's a long film, very long in fact, and that's about all there is to it really. There's a lot of British cheekiness that feels hopelessly outdated, apart from that it's just endless conversations about nothing much at all. Because it handles three periods in Candy's life the film ended up quite long, but that length adds surprisingly little to the characters and the narrative. I dozed off a couple of times, which at least made time pass quicker.Read all
The '24 adaptation of this story was a lot better than expected, sadly, the '40 version is every bit as bad as I'd feared. Color and dialogue don't do the film any good. Instead of being mystical and mysterious, it's just terrible cheesy and kitsch. At least, they were smart enough to cut down the length of the film. The special effects are truly horrendous, and there is no monochrome fuzziness to hide them here. The only appeal comes from how cheesy it all looks, which is nice when the film is in full fantasy mode. The rest is even worse. Just watch the '24 adaptation instead. Longer, but better.Read all
