Historical Context
Black Narcissus was released only a few months before India achieved independence from Britain in August 1947. Film critic Dave Kehr has suggested that the final images of the film, as the nuns abandon the Himalayas and proceed down the mountain, could have been interpreted by British viewers in 1947 as 'a last farewell to their fading empire'; he suggests that for the filmmakers, it is not an image of defeat 'but of a respectful, rational retreat from something that England never owned and never understood'. The story in the film quite closely follows that of the book, which was written in 1939.
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