Black Narcissus (1947)

Black Narcissus is one of those films that, no matter how many recommendations you get or how many plot synopses you read, probably won't make you want to rush out and buy it. After all, the story – nuns struggling to set up a convent in the Himalayas – won't grab many people. But Black Narcissus is far more than just a plot – it's one of the most vibrant, exciting and – how can I put it? – hysterical films ever made. Once again Michael Powell pushes the possibilities of cinema to their extremes to show you a story.

First of all, Black Narcissus has to be the most visually beautiful film I have ever seen. The set design and shot composition hark back to both German Expressionist films and the work of Dutch painter Vermeer. Joined together with the breathtaking scenery (in actual fact carefully painted backdrops) and gorgeous Technicolor every single frame is a work of art.

Michael Powell had of course made a few great colour pictures before this, but this is probably his most assured use of Technicolor. Part of this is down to the amazing cinematography of Jack Cardiff, but Powell also shows a brilliant mind for colour scheme. Like in Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, he picks fairly neutral, almost monochrome shades, which give the really bold colours a greater impact when they appear. It's no accident that this order of nuns uses white habits – white symbolising purity, like a wedding dress. In Kathleen Byron's first major scene her habit is splattered with blood, and by the end of the film she is wearing all red. The nun's peak-shaped cowls also resemble the snowy mountains that surround them on all sides, although ironically not nearly as permanent or immovable.

This is also one of the earliest examples I can think of where one genre is played as another. Black Narcissus is really a drama played as a horror. Those German Expressionist films referenced with the wonky set design and artistic shot composition – Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Nosferatu, Faust etc – were horrors. Most of the film, with its whites and blues, its large cavernous halls and not to mention the wind howling through every set has a feeling of cold eeriness. This builds up to the final half-hour which has a contrastingly hot aura of hot terror, culminating in a sequence that is the equal of the last five minutes of Nosferatu.

The use of music was Powell's best up to that point. Like the best silent film scoring, the imagery is often perfectly matched up to the score (by Brian Easdale). This is particularly nicely done in the wordless courtship between Sabu and Jean Simmons. There was a growing musical dimension to Powell and Pressburger's films, which would reach its peak with The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann.

Michael Powell's films were generally as daring in terms of their ideas as they were in style, and his collaborator Emeric Pressburger is really half the secret of his success. Black Narcissus has often been noted as being rather risqué and ahead of its time in portraying sexual tension, and in a convent of all places! But it is also quite bold in its statements about the British Empire, and it's perhaps no surprise that this was made one year before India gained its independence. The whole thing could be read as an allegory for the colonies biting back, but it's the smaller details that really struck me. The attitude of the nuns towards the natives is at best patronising and at worst arrogant, but they are constantly being surprised and proved wrong. For exa

Fmovies: This spellbinding movie from that spellbinding film-making team (Powell and Pressburger) is another entry in the long line of literary and film stories that revolve around British restraint and repression unraveling under the force of mysterious foreign cultures (usually Eastern and frequently Indian), and it's one of the best.

A group of nuns travel to the Himalayas to do missionary work among the natives, but instead find themselves coming under the mystical spell of the place and people around them. Deborah Kerr is stunning as the head nun, who's determined to maintain order and British civility at all costs. I still can't decide whether this or "The Innocents" (1961) gave her her best role. At the other extreme is Kathleen Byron's Sister Ruth, who renounces her vows, paints her lips bright red, and engages in a fierce battle of wills with Kerr. What follows is a film that is surprisingly sexual, erotic and wild.

Powell and Pressburger are experts at using color. Instead of employing their Technicolor to simply make their film look pretty, the color almost becomes a character in itself, creating a feverish, hyper-realistic glow to the film. Legendary cameraman Jack Cardiff is responsible for the sterling and Oscar-winning cinematography. Equally stunning is the art direction, which created very realistic mountains out of papier-mache.

A simply sensational film, one that holds up completely and could be watched again and again. This and "Out of the Past" vie in my esteem for best film released in 1947.

Grade: A+

I have now watched this film at least seven times and I am always startled by its majestic photography (all done in England and Wales), intelligent and modern dialog, and the way it dispels the dogmas of Catholic faith through cultural contact, the doubts of a non-believer, the inclement weather, the incredible height of inescapable premises, and ultimately the renunciation of a nun. Michael Powell's direction goes beyond impeccable: It is as near-perfect as one will see. But it is the psychological element, the bottled up hysteria of the nuns against the backdrop of forbidding nature, the aloof British male who is as much a Western peacock as the young Indian general who falls for the "beggarmaid," and above all the unraveling nun that provide the foundations for a riveting film with a climax to match and the most perfect ending sequence I can think of.

Black Narcissus fmovies. Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) is promoted to Sister Superior, and sent to establish an Anglican mission/convent/school in a remote village high in the Himalayas. With her she brings several other nuns (a level-headed Judith Furse, an older nun Flora Robson, and a neophyte Kathleen Byron). The strange atmosphere of this remote region affects all those involved. Ruth (Kathleen Byron) falls hopelessly in love with a British jack-of-all trades and local agent (David Farrar). The surrounding events and Farrar's presence also rekindle Kerr's memories of a failed love affair she once had with a young man (Shaun Noble). When Noble left her life, Jesus Christ entered, and Kerr became a nun. Jean Simmons plays a beautiful beggar girl, who is placed in the care of Kerr by Farrar. Simmons later becomes Prince Dilip Raj's (Sabu's) wife, of sorts. The most stunning scenes occur toward the end of the movie. Ruth's mental disintegration and her pathetic pass at Farrar are very sad. Ruth's change in appearance is visually riveting, as much perhaps as Isabelle Adjani's transformation in The Story of Adele H. The performances by Kerr and Byron are superlative, their facial expressions revealing deep heartfelt emotion and pain. If you think Holly Hunter did a great (non-speaking) acting job in The Piano, see Black Narcissus for a real revelation!

This Powell-Pressburger film is one of the most beautifully photographed color movies ever made. Black Narcissus won two Academy awards, for art direction and cinematography. It would take over 3 decades for a comparable film (Days of Heaven) to come along. If you are fortunate enough to have viewed the laserdisc version of the movie, you will be able to listen to Powell and Scorsese do a running commentary of the movie. Toward the end, you will learn how the final scene was shot to a film score, and not the other way around.

Wind is always blowing throughout the monastery the Servants of God nuns have inherited in a remote part of India. In accepting being in charge of the new place, Sister Clodagh will question her faith as she faces one of the greatest challenges of her life.

Michael Powell, working with his usual collaborator, Emeric Pressburger, on the Rumer Godden's novel, created a film that stands the test of time. His achievement is even more incredible as he shot this film in an English studio. The film, brilliantly photographed by Jack Cardiff, one of the best men in the business, and a frequent ally of Mr. Powell, is one of the best pictures of the English cinema. The glorious Technicolor still looks great.

"Black Narcissus" questions how some Christians, in this case, nuns of a religious order, can be so blind about things that deviate from what it deems is the right way. When the young General wants to be part of the school the nuns are creating, they reject him, yet, he asks about how would a God, made human in the form of Christ, would respond to his petition.

Sister Clodagh is also put in a spot when she wants to get rid of the old man who day after day sits staring at the distant mountains. It's Mr. Dean who challenges her in asking how would her God deal with the old man. Sister Clodagh's past is revealed in flashbacks when she was a young woman and in love with a young man who wanted to emigrate to America and she wasn't ready to follow him.

Also, Sister Ruth, who is a rebel, decides to abandon the order because she is in love with Mr. Dean. The highlight of the film is the scene in which Ruth begins applying the deep red lipstick, which makes quite a contrast with her beautiful reddish hair to the horror of Sister Clodagh, who clearly is not prepared for the desertion.

There is also an undercurrent between Sister Clodagh and Mr. Dean, who one feels loves her. The nun is too loyal to the principles that made her take the vows. She realizes at the end that while she had the best intentions to transform the place, she is only a human being who suffers a defeat because of her surroundings.

Deborah Kerr enjoyed one of the best triumphs of her career with the role of Sister Clodagh. She is seen as a young woman of great beauty and the austere nun she became later in her life. David Farrar is Mr. Dean, the Englishman who is now living in that remote part of India and knows the people well. Kathleen Byron makes an excellent contribution as the rebel Sister Ruth. Flora Robson plays the kind Sister Philippa. Jean Simmons appears as a cruel Indian girl, and Sabu has some interesting moments in the film.

This is one of Mr. Powell's best movies in his influential film career. He was one of the most innovative film makers of his generation and it shows well in "Black Narcissus".

A small group of nuns, working nuns, not contemplatives, journey to the Himalayas to establish a school and dispensary in a high and remote deserted palace. It was a palace built for a ruler's women, and every wall painting, every decoration, contrasts the sensuality of this society with the chaste and energetic vocation of the nuns. Only Dean (David Farrar), the ruling General's Agent, links the steamy life of the valley with the wind-blown austerity of the nunnery above.

It is the destructive power of emotions reppressed and released that is most obvious in 'Black Narcissus', but more fundamental to this beautiful film is a stronger, yet quieter, ancient and more subtle power, that of place. The Himalayan setting is established surprisingly convincingly for the period, in a series of vivid shots that disclose the fact of that landscape's power from the beginning. And the particular quality, the particular power of that place is continuously present in the wind that blows constantly, stirring every fabric, every soft thing. Only as that power of place begins to work its insidious magic on the nuns does it begin to reveal its nature. Everyone there is affected, their practical efforts diverted by poetry and passion. Somehow flowers are planted, not potatoes. The Young General (Sabu) falls in love with a dancing girl (Jean Simmons). Two of the nuns are drawn to the rough Agent, already sunk into the life of the society around him. Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr), the Sister Superior, initially drawn back to memories of her lover in Ireland, remains strong in her faith, yet is softened, becomes more human. Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron), on the other hand, becomes maddened by jealous passion and it is her tragedy, itself peculiarly bound up with the geography of the place, that brings the drama to an end.

The testing of a few people brought together in isolation is a familiar theme, but this is an unusual example. 'Black Narcissus' has an unusual symmetry: acceptance of this tainted life, in the person of the agent, is compared with the surrender to her passions of Sister Ruth, whose irrational passion, in turn, contrasts with the gentle loves of the Sister Clodagh; the abandonment of this world by the holy contemplative who lives in the nunnery grounds contrasts with the nun's holy yet practical struggles. So, too, we see the valley richly coloured, but the Mopu Palace nunnery almost monochrome, washed out.

The project at Mopu fails, the struggle against the genius of the place is abandoned. But not everything fails: Sister Clodagh has become wiser and less proud. Some struggles are too great, but we learn that there can be victories in small things: the Young General wins Kanchi, his dancing girl.

This is a fine film, well acted. David Farrar, though at times uneasy in a difficult role, requiring roughness and sympathy in equal measure, generally manages to strike the right balance. Kathleen Byron grows convincingly mad with jealousy and is stupendous in her dramatic final scene. Flora Robson, as Sister Phillipa, tending her gardens, has a small part which she plays to perfection. Deborah Kerr is outstanding: that Sister Clodagh has a fundamental sympathy disguised by pride is apparent from the beginning, and the progressive disclose of the quiet, loving, passion of her character, is finely judged. The art direction and cinematography, too, is excellent: the wind tugging at every fabric, the sputtering candles, the long shots of the landscape, Sister L p