It almost ruined a great film - #2: Mr Dean's shorts

Black Narcissus is an astonishing film. The casting for the most part is perfect, the colour photography is gorgeous, the painted backgrounds are stunning, the plot is engrossing and wonderfully acted BUT for the so much of the film I am hypnotized by Mr Dean's shorts, a little too short and pulled up a little too high. He wears them for a large part of the film and even towards the end turns up wearing those shorts and precious little else.

I could of course extend this to the whole of Mr Dean's wardrobe - the ridiculous hat he wears most of the time and the even sillier fur coat he digs out at Christmas...but the short shorts are undoubtedly the very things that send poor Sister Ruth around the bend...

Honourable mention also goes to May Hallet for the very annoying Ayah but her performance is too similar and not as annoying as a later entry in this series.

• Black Narcissus on IMDB
• Black Narcissus on Wikipedia
• Black Narcissus - Criterion Collection on Amazon.com
• Black Narcissus on Amazon.co.uk