The Remastered "Black Narcissus"

For many months now, my friend George, the ballet dancer, has been wanting me to see the 1947 British movie "Black Narcissus," which I somehow missed during my film education. It all began when I was doing research on nuns for my role as the Head Nun in "The House of Blue Leaves" last fall. Well, what a treat is was to see the fabulous cast, including Deborah Kerr (as Sister Clodagh), David Farrar (as the local British agent), Jean Simmons (as a wayward Indian girl), and Sabu (as the glittering Indian prince) in this Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger classic about sexual repression and wacked out nuns on a misguided trip to improve the lives of Indians in the Himalayas in the Palace of Mopu, near Darjeleeng.

It was George's birthday, so a group of us, including my writers' group, had a fabulous dinner of extravagant Asian food, followed by chocolate birthday cake and coconut ice cream....but I digress. For me, it was all about the astonishing sets and lighting that gave a hyper realism to the cliffside seraglio transformed into a cloister with school and clinic, created at Pinewood Studios, the story's view of women as incomplete beings without a man by their side, and all the rest of the stew created by racism, cultural misunderstandings, power trips, and ironies of history. One of our group tonight is Chinese, and she said many of the "natives" in the picture were actually speaking Mandarin. (Seems the extras were cast from workers at the docks of Rotherhithe on a peninsula on the Thames' south bank. Aaaah...that explains it?).


Interesting to note that several scenes were shot at the home of an Indian army retiree in Leonardsless Gardens, West Sussex, where he had plants and trees from India. Matte paintings and scale models were used, and the mountains were painted on glass. "Sometimes in a film its theme or its colour are more important than the plot," said director Michael Powell. You could really see that in the nun's amazingly beautiful and complex habits and how they were shot in various scenes....in one, a character is literally green with envy, although she is ostensibly wearing the same muslin beige cloth as the other nuns. And, red is used in the hot sexual way we now call obvious - an antecedent of sorts to Powell's fantastic "The Red Shoes."

Well, I could go on...there's a lot about this film available online. Highly recommended. Would love to watch it with my Indian friends next.

Interesting tidbits:

On BBC2 in the 1980's, Marina Warner had this to say: " The suggestions continually hover on the brink of hyperbole. The film achieves its extraordinary impact by daring so much against all bounds of decorum, far in excess of realism. The crimson lipstick Sr. Ruth applies turns her into a kind of werewolf, the kittenish wiles of Jean Simmons also convey, in a different mode, a fantasy of female sexual appetite. The crazed and sometimes cruel flapping of Angu Ayah adds yet another flourish to the portrait of female hysteria. In this convent, this house of women, all the women are mad." (May Hallatt plays Angu Ayah, this sort of wicked witch of the East, who controls the abandoned seraglio before the nuns' invasion.)

The film version first shown in the United States had scenes depicting flashbacks of Sister Clodagh's life before becoming a nun edited out at the behest of the Catholic Legion of Decency.

Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodagh was the director's ex-lover, and Kathleen Byron as the jealous Sister Ruth was his current one during filming.

The movie was released just months before India gained independence from Britain in August 1947.


The novel "Black Narcissus" was written by Rumer Godden in 1939.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the poster above and for these credits:

Directed by	Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger
Produced by	Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger
Written by	Rumer Godden (novel) Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger
Starring	Deborah Kerr Sabu Jean Simmons David Farrar Flora Robson Kathleen Byron
Music by	Brian Easdale
Cinematography	Jack Cardiff
Editing by	Reginald Mills
Distributed by	General Film Distributors
Release date(s)	May 26, 1947 (1947-05-26) (UK) 13 August 1947 (US)
Running time	100 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	£280,000 (est.)