Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Writers: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Flora Robson, Jenny Laird, Judith Furse, Kathleen Byron, Esmond Knight, Sabu, David Farrar, Jean Simmons, May Hallatt, Eddie Whaley Jr.
Runtime: 101 mins.
1947
Black Narcissus is the story of a small group of Anglican nuns who are sent to establish a convent high in the Himalayas. The structure they will occupy sits 9,000 feet above a village nestled in a fertile valley. Originally occupied by the local general's many concubines, it has been sitting empty for years save a group of monks who came and went after six months. The nuns' mission is to provide schooling and medicine to the community. The pressure is high for the newly-minted Mother Superior, the horrid-named Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr), given that her promotion makes her the youngest Superior in the entire order. The pressure only mounts further when her English contact at the village, the ~sensual~ Mr. Dean (David Farrar), warns her that westerners don't take well to the rarefied conditions of the mountain's edge.
The most prominent and stunning accomplishment of the film is the Technicolor cinematography by Jack Cardiff. Black Narcissus approaches the definition of the word 'sumptuous' in a way unheard of for 1947. The "for 1947" amendment is hardly even necessary; this film is jaw-dropping by 2020 standards. One sudden cut to a brilliant field of pink flowers actually made me gasp. One can only imagine how gobsmacked an audience of the '40s would be to witness that on the big screen.
The visual buffet of the film is a neverbroken sequence of wonders. The nuns float around in blistering white, tarnished only once by a blast of red blood resulting from a difficult medical procedure. The young Indian General (Sabu) is garbed in cascading color patterns. The sunsets send swathes of reds pinks and oranges so lively that they appear to be vibrating. The view off the cliff's edge disappears into vistas of green trees and brown rock shrouded by mist, providing an exaggerated sense of elevation thanks to the tall 1.33:1 aspect ratio.
The vistas are not only sublime to look at, but they become a prominent obsession of the sisters. The view is accomplished through gorgeous matte paintings. For those unfamiliar with that term, it refers to painting on sheets of glass to achieve the illusion of a location that would either be impossible or impractical to shoot at. They may not be as "convincing" as what computers can do now, but a skillful matte painting does a much better job of "convincing" me that I'm enjoying the movie.
Although director Michael Powell habitually shot on location, he became obsessed with shooting Black Narcissus in studio to maximize the level of control he, Cardiff, and co-director Emeric Pressburger would have over the fidelity of the image. The experiment works. There's an early scene in which tetchy keeper of the space Angu (May Hallatt) flits about the empty palace attending to her environment. The sexy wall art of the long gone wives, the stone hallways touched by swirling leaves, the airy chambers and breathtaking views... the sense of place is transportive. To be sure, there is a certain air of artifice about it all, but that artifice is operationalized to intensify the characters' dreamy experience of the mountainside.
It should be clear by now that the beauty is accompanied by some classic Old Hollywood exoticization of India. There are inevitable stereotypes and inappropriate casting choices, but far less than you would expect from a production of this era. Part of what softens the grossness is that every single character in this film, even the extras, even the children, display a fierce intelligence every time they are on camera. We have no bumbling comic relief or dehumanized ignoramuses, only people who are doing the best they can to live within their social position. If anything, the nuns are ultimately portrayed as the fools of the film. There is a throughline commentary about foreigners setting down sterile roots that edges Black Narcissus into anticolonialist terrain.
The racial casting is wildly uneven. Amongst all the Indian characters, there are:
-a couple of white actors in brownface, including the sexually aggressive seventeen-year-old Kanchi (Jean Simmons)
-many Indian actors working as extras, and at least one Indian main character, the aforementioned Young General
-at least one African-American playing an Indian
I became a bit obsessed with the last of these, a tiny child who, in his character's words, is "between six and eleven" years old. He delivers my favorite performance of the film, which I understand is a bit sacrilegious to say about a movie that features Kathleen Byron acting the hell out of the increasingly unhinged nun Sister Ruth. But I am always captivated by talented child acting, especially in older films. This boy's role is to live at the convent and translate for the sisters. He is adorable, yes, but he's also shrewd. Although he is relegated to the edge of the plot, he is always watching, learning, supporting, and playing in his own small ways. I found it to be tremendously sophisticated work for such a small human in such a small role.
Digging up information on the actor was difficult. He didn't go on to have a career, and there isn't much documentation about small actors from this time. I did find one source that I thought was interesting, so I'll replicate it here.
Black Narcissus's story got criticized by some contemporary reviewers for its melodrama and fractured focus. (It also majorly pissed off the Catholic Church which is a win.) To be fair, there are some dead end arcs like the Young General, who shows up to learn from the nuns, hangs around a while, then disappears from the third act to shack up with Kanchi. Some of those critics are mistaking stylistic choices for shallowness. The movie does neglect to walk us through the disintegration of the nuns step by step, but this swerve away from realism works in tandem with the visuals to create a woozier reality, not unlike what we would see from the Italian giallo films a few decades later.
The nuns stare off into the endless horizon, no longer shackled by the tight disciplined confines of their former life. The wind never stops blowing, omnipresent in the sound mix, constantly ruffling their white robes. Musings dissolve into flashbacks, expressions become vacant, eyes red-rimmed. They eyeball the short-shorts of charismatic heathen Mr. Dean. Conviction evaporates and work ethic deteriorates. Interactions become terse, clipped. All this culminates in some spectacular dialogue scenes maximally designed to put us on edge. The shots are precise and jarring; my favorite begins zoomed in on a pencil being held by the perspective character Sister Clodagh, then meanders across the desk to land on a Bible, and finally whips up to the scary desperate eyes of Sister Ruth. All the while we hear Clodagh cobbling together her next proclamation in real time, discovering assertiveness halfway through the sentence.
Black Narcissus is a visual feast that remains as acutely subjective and unnerving as I imagine it was 73 years ago. The thrilling climax may have been predictable, but it is the mark of a great film that I couldn't help but lean in anyway.
4 / 5 BLOBS
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