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Deborah Kerr leads a community of nuns struggling with temptations in the classic Black Narcissus |
Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Cast: Deborah Kerr (Sister Clodagh), Sabu (Young General),
David Farrar (Mr Dean), Kathleen Byron (Sister Ruth), Flora Robson (Sister
Philippa), Jenny Laird (Sister Honey), Judith Furse (Sister Briony), Esmond
Knight (Old General), Jean Simmons (Kanchi), May Hallatt (Angu Ayah)
In 1947, people hadn’t seen anything like Black Narcissus. Its triumphant
technicolour was like nothing that had been made before – and watching it now
on a brand new, shiny restoration, it’s still overwhelmingly impressive.
Alongside this beautifully shot action, we have a storyline surprisingly modern
in its acute psychology and questioning of the strengths and weaknesses of
human nature.
Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) is given leadership of a group
of nuns in a remote Himalayan harem building converted into a nunnery. But the
isolation of the mountains and the strange atmosphere of the harem bring out
weaknesses in the characters of the nuns, leading to profound challenges to
their spiritual and mental well-being – not least Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron),
who becomes increasingly pre-occupied with local land captain Mr Dean (David
Farrar).
Powell and Pressburger’s film is a brilliant, slightly hard
to interpret, psychological gothic drama, a du Maurier-style sexually charged drama
set in an exotic Indian location which the nuns struggle to understand. It’s a
curious melange of scenes, often moving swiftly, sometimes only with narrow
bridge scenes, meaning you soon get as lost in how much time has passed as the
nuns themselves. Several key events take place off screen, and the native
Indians are curious, unknowable and strangely intimidating in their distance
and coolness.
All this is to help build the audience into feeling as
unsettled as the characters themselves. It’s a film about the struggles between
expression and repression. The two principal nuns – Sisters Clodagh and Ruth –
both show elements of this. Both are drawn towards the earthy, manly but still
patrician Dean, but both handle these emotions in very different ways – one by
denying those feelings, another by trying to embrace them. All of this takes place in a distancing and intoxicating environment, where the convention rules of life seem suspended.
For Sister Clodagh, Dean serves as a bridge back to her own
frustrated romantic feelings for an old flame – whose failure to propose guided
her towards taking the veil – and elements of her warmer persona (witnessed by
us in flashback). But Clodagh resolves never to make herself a slave to these
feelings, and these moments of remembrance seem to make her cling all the more
to her order – even while the film suggests that it is a strange mixture of
pride, insecurity and fear as well as faith that motivates her.
By contrast, Sister Ruth – already acknowledged by the
Mother Superior as not an obvious choice for the sisterhood – increasingly loses
her grip first on her faith, then sanity, as she struggles with the feelings she
clearly has for Dean. This quiet obsession has built up in her mind into
representing all the desires for freedom and independence she feels while in
the order. Where Clodagh resolves to cling closer to the repression of her
feelings, Ruth rejects this very idea and determines to express herself – even
as it costs her everything.
This heated growing madness is powers the film – and
Kathleen Byron provides most of the drama with a stunningly unhinged
performance, which builds so quietly (almost in the background of the film)
that it never becomes wearing and also surprises with the extent of her
unhinged delusion. One particular night-time encounter with Clodagh sizzles
with rival agendas – one woman using a lipstick, the other using a Bible.
Powell (and it was Powell who largely directed these Archers
pictures) uses a variety of techniques to develop this unease. Several shots
are direct POV shots, with the audience becoming one of the characters, giving
us the slightly unsettling feeling of being addressed by the actors. Quick
tableaux editing gives us economic storytelling and a sense of events building
swiftly towards a head (several sequences use a series of quick cuts of
characters reacting to events). The camera uses a series of close-ups of sweaty
foreheads or dizzying, vertigo inducing shots of the Himalayas to increase the
unease. A later shot shows Sister Ruth moving through a shimmeringly filmed
jungle, bringing a sense of confused eroticism to the picture.
Sexuality is a major theme of the film – and the characters
have a series of acknowledged or unacknowledged sexual interests in each other.
The music and camera work develop a sense of heated intensity on the mountain
that suggests a simmering heat that unnerves the mind and throws open the
temptations of physicality. Old wall paintings from the harem of bare-breasted
women seem to be a constant presence – no wonder feelings are running high.
Jack Cardiff’s photography is simply extraordinary – it’s
hard to believe none of this was filmed on location and most of it was shot in
a studio – and this is still a film today that is hugely beautiful. The
production by Alfred Junge is hugely impressive, with the nunnery a triumph of
mismatched themes.
It’s not perfect. It’s a bit awkward to see actors blacking
up. Some of the acting is quite OTT or stagy – in particular May Hallatt at
points – and the film’s occasional delight in its visual appeal means its
themes don’t always get the exploration that they deserve. One of the
disadvantages of its deliberately vague timeline is that sometimes events
happen too soon – or we don’t get enough sense of why they are happening. But
these are blemishes.
This is a masterfully made picture, still beautiful to look
at with impressive performances from Kerr, Byron, Farrar and many of the rest
of the cast. It’s a surprisingly gothic melodrama by the end, with reds
splashed across the screen with an imposing sense of threat. Still one that
needs to be seen: and the end is so melodramatically gothic considering where
the film started that the fact it doesn’t seem hugely jarring is an enormous
tribute to the talents of those involved.
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