Narcissus
1983 · 21m · Canada
Directed by Norman McLaren
Genres: experimental
Tones: contemplative, mythic, theatrical
Dancers perform the myth of Narcissus, a beautiful young man whose obsession with himself leaves him trapped by his own self-love.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
McLaren takes the oldest story in the book and does exactly what you'd expect—beautiful dancers, mythic inevitability, the whole reverent treatment. It's technically immaculate, which is almost worse; there's no friction, no reason to argue.
McLaren's *Narcissus* is essential precisely because it knows exactly what it is: a distillation of dance-film as formal practice, where the camera becomes a choreographic tool itself, and the myth functions as pure visual argument about desire and form—the kind of work that only deepens under repeated viewing.
The decision to let the dance *be* the entire narrative apparatus—no voiceover, no representational set dressing—means McLaren's editing and frame choices have to carry all the weight, and they do; it's economical filmmaking that understands restraint as amplification.