WORLD CINEMA TREASURES: The Forbidden Delights of BLACK NARCISSUS (dir by Powell & Pressburger, UK, 1947) by Craig Hammill

A group of Calcutta Nuns headed by headstrong Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr, all controlled passion) take over a Himalayan Palace (formerly used to house the local General’s mistresses/consorts) high in the mountains with the intention of bringing reform and Christianity to the locals. Instead, the Nuns are overwhelmed by the ageless life forces, uncorseted by western society, that pulsate all around them.

Black Narcissus is one of those movies that is unique unto itself. There is no OTHER movie ever made quite like it (except maybe other movies by the Archers-writer/director team Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger- who also made The Red Shoes, Tales of Hoffman, I Know Where I’m Going, Stairway to Heaven, A Canterbury Tale, among other jaw dropping fusions of cinema, music, dance, engaging narrative, and idiosyncrasy).

This movie has so much inventive cinema going for it, it’s like an entire graduate film school in one movie. Though the movie takes place in India, it was shot entirely on soundstages (and one park garden) in England. The Archers use every cinematic trick in the book-gorgeous matte paintings, models, forced perspective, incredible production design/cinematography/editing-to sell the illusion.

This programmer didn’t realize the movie was entirely shot on a sound stage until he watched a behind the scenes doc; it’s that good. The Archers are helped tremendously by incredible cinematographer Jack Cardiff, who uses all his skill and craft to throw shadows, atmosphere, bold and muted color, to tell this story psychologically.

And in fact, it’s really here, at the intersection of style and content, that Black Narcissus rises to the very top of the cinematic pantheon. The movie dares, from the beginning, to be boldly sexual. The production design shows us a palace with murals that are essentially Kama Sutra frescoes. Mr. Dean (played almost to camp yet virile perfection by David Farrar) is a Brit who has decided to give in to the sensual temptations of the locale, and is constantly showing up sweaty, shirtless, shirt undone, and driving the Nuns to distraction.

But the Archers are careful not to oversimplify. This is not a movie as simple as west vs east or Christianity vs Paganism or restraint vs. abandon or celibacy vs consumation. Instead, the movie seems to be about the very irreducible, irresolvable tension AND necessity of all these things at once. And how those folks who can accept these contradictions co-existing in our soul can endure and those who can’t, break.

If anything, the movie, ultimately is about a kind of necessary humility and acceptance of raw, jagged unboundedness. The Nuns suffer from hubris because they think THEY can change a society that has been operating the way it has for thousands of years. Rather than having the humility to learn about the culture, understand it, and see how that culture and their culture can marry (like a new hybrid strain of flower), they try to IMPOSE a mono-system.

The movie is also a Beethoven symphony of tonal movements. It starts as an epic, moves into a kind of intense character study, dips into comedy, before veering wildly into an almost horror movie like third act that nevertheless rises back up again to something transcendent. Kathleen Bryon as the neurotic Sister Ruth deserves special mention as we watch her slowly unravel. Beset by impatience, a kind of colonial racism, an unsublimated and unreciprocated sexual desire, Sister Ruth descends into madness before our eyes. And we get it-if we refuse to be brutally introspective about our ugly traits (and we all have them) and we continue to be willfully ignorant or hostile to others, we will be CONSUMED by the self-destructive beast that lives in all of us.

Black Narcissus also has one of the great all time movie sequences in its third act which we won’t go into detail here(it should be watched not explained) but will synopsize quickly as one character pursuing another through the nunnery out of jealousy and rage at dawn. Director Michael Powell actually had the script supervisor play music on the set and TIME each shot so that all the component parts would cut together with perfect pre-thought out precision.

There have been many movies influenced by Black Narcissus, most recently Martin Scorsese’s Silence and Ari Aster’s Midsommar. It is, in many ways, the go-to reference for any Western moviemaker making a movie about the violent clash of diametrically opposed cultures or societies.

But in Black Narcissus, the local culture isn’t opposed or antagonistic to Christianity or the Nuns. In fact, they are excited to have them. But the Nuns aren’t willing to meet the locals halfway or even consider the clearly time-tested benefits/necessities of the locals way of living.

In the end, Black Narcissus may be a kind of cautionary tale. But it’s one with a kind of implicit plea. Why do we feel the need to think in terms of opposition and binary choices? Might not this be the biggest psychological error of all?

It may be, in the end, as the Sufi poet Rumi said:

“Each holy man appears to have his own doctrine and practice, but there is really only one work.”

Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club.