Due to the current media saturation with web cams, CCTV footage, and docu-soap television, there is always the danger that you may find your self desensitised to the extremes of human emotion. If so, count on "Black Narcissus" to bring you back with a jolt.

Powell and Pressburger's powerful film - based on the Rumer Godden novel - pioneered the now familiar style of psychological drama exploring the social claustrophobia of people in extreme circumstances. The film follows the tortuous emotional journey of a group of Anglican nuns as they set up a remote convent among the bleak ruins of an abandoned Himalayan harem.

It is a first taste of authority for Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr). As the nuns' leader, her struggles to maintain moral order and a sense of Christian mission are set against the extremes of the environment, the doubts of her charges, and the beguiling amorality of the local inhabitants. Finding themselves disturbed by all manner of natural phenomena - extremes of temperature, weather, and a maverick local expat's rugged charms - it is only a matter of time before hardship and temptation gradually draw the women away from their vocation, and they descend into doubt, jealousy and madness.

"Black Narcissus" is a masterly exploration of the dangers of ambition, British reserve, and unbridled emotion. The acting is superb, particularly Kathleen Byron as Sister Ruth, and the emotional crescendo builds steadily throughout the film. Smouldering with hysteria, madness and brooding eroticism, the film won Oscars for Jack Cardiff's Technicolor cinematography and for art direction.

Available on VHS.