"Place" and the Modernist Redemption of Empire in Black Narcissus (1947)

The coherence of an imperial narrative is predicated on the continuation of the colonial place as a backdrop. In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's Black Narcissus (1947), the fictional Himalayan community of "Mopu" becomes central enough to impede assumptions projected onto it. However, the threat of narrative collapse is averted by a visibly modernist preoccupation with the (imperial) self and the film's redemptive theme.