Black Narcissus

Wow. That's my first reaction after seeing Black Narcissus, a 1947 film from the great team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Set in a convent in the Himalayas, the film is best know today for the stunning Technicolor photography by Jack Cardiff (who won an Oscar for it), but for a new viewer like myself today, it's bracing for its vivid images of beauty and madness.

Deborah Kerr stars as Sister Clodagh, who is assigned to be the sister superior at a mountaintop palace in India, high in the mountains. The palace is given to them by an Indian general. It has long been known as "The House of Women," because it was used a seraglio by his father, and the walls are covered with racy paintings. The local land agent (David Farrar) doubts the nuns can last.

Kerr has four other sisters with her. One is a stolid nurse, another an older gardener (Flora Robson), another a schoolteacher, and the fifth the mentally and physically unstable Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) who is an overall pain in the ass. They are taken by the beauty, and to begin with are very busy, as the general has paid the villagers to come to the school and dispensary.

Later, a baby will die, and the villagers will blame the nuns. Also at this time, Byron snaps, having fallen in love with Farrar. She thinks Kerr also loves him, and the ending is very shocking for its almost Grand Guignol horror.

Cardiff, as I mentioned, was the real star of this film. What's amazing is that it was shot entirely on a sound stage at Pinewood Studios; not a frame was shot in India. The scenes of Kerr ringing the bell, poised on the cliff overlooking what looks like a thousand-foot drop, are not very realistic, but compelling for their artistry. Cardiff based the look of the film on painters such as Vermeer and Caravaggio.

Without getting too much into spoilers, there is a scene in which Byron, having lost her marbles, puts on a red dress, ready to go to her supposed lover. Kerr tries to stop her, but Byron puts on crimson lipstick while Kerr watches helplessly. This scene, so simple in its telling, is charged with eroticism. Who would figure that a film about nuns would be so sexually charged? But then surely women (or men) who push aside passion are liable to become brought down by it.

There are few things that made me kind of chuckle. Farrar, while very good, is presented as six-foot slab of testosterone. He wears shorts that would today be right at home at a gay nightclub. Byron's scenes of madness are great, but push the envelope on being over the top. And as the hot-to-trot Kanchi, a teenage girl brought into the convent, Jean Simmons is miscast. Sabu, as the son of the general, is the only ethnic Indian in the cast.

But there's so much to admire here. The editing is sublime, particularly the use of quick close-ups of the nuns (Martin Scorsese, a great admirer of the film, would steal this), and the nun's habits, waving in the breeze, white as snow, are gripping sights. Truly, Black Narcissus was and remains a landmark film.