Narcisus and Psyche is based on a novel by Sandor Weores which was adapted by Vilmos Csaplar and director Gabor Body for a feature-length film. Borrowing the character of Psyche from mythology and placing her in Europe in the 19th century, the authors give her a "modern" life. She is an attractive young woman - and remains so throughout the film, in spite of one hardship after another. Psyche is libidinous, and her prurient interests shock her staid contemporaries.

The film depicts the lives of veterans of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution in the American Civil War, based in part on an Ambrose Bierce story. The whole film was re-edited using his own method called "light editing" in order to make it resemble a damaged silent film from the late 1800s.