The “Exaggerated” Colors of Black Narcissus (1947 and 2020)

This article explores the correspondences and differences in terms of color design between two screen versions Black Narcissus, a popular novel by Rumer Godden published 1939. Conceptual approaches drawn upon include ideas “the figural,” intertextuality hybridity as central to understanding how Narcissus operates on many complex levels, arguing that is key expressive mode their articulation. Powell Pressburger’s 1947 film 2020 television mini-series directed Charlotte Bruus Christensen are for first time compared relation landscape natural environment; interior spaces; costume; race. The texts’ experimentation with color, lighting diffusion enables boundaries exterior spaces, well characters’ memories repressed desires, be problematized. As “end empire” texts, literary iterations related postcolonial theories which series hybrid, “in-between” spaces cultural attitudes explored.