FILM CLUB - Black Narcissus

Powell & Pressburger Season - 1947

Black Narcissus is set in the Himalayas. A group of nuns are sent to transform an old palace into a school and dispensary, to minister to the needs of the local population. The only other English person is Mr Dean ( David Farrar ) an independent cynically minded man, who has seen this sort of endeavour before. He gives it til the rainy season before it all falls apart. Each of the nun's, though on the surface devout, has their own demons they struggle with. None more so than Sister Clodagh ( Deborah Kerr ) who from the moment she arrives remembers the pain of her early love life in Eniskillin. Are they each choosing to revel in their own inner world, or is it the mountain landscape itself that is bringing this to the surface. Is there something spiritually malevolent about this place?

So expertly do Powell & Pressburger conjure up their claustrophobic atmosphere, one completely forgets that this film was entirely shot in England, mostly at Pinewood Studios. The backgrounds are Matt shots of photos and paintings of the Himalayas. Fully embracing the limitations placed upon them, they turn them into a triumphant achievement. The richly coloured sensuousness of the cinematography by Jack Cardiff, The Archers regular cameraman ( he won an Oscar for it) and the heightened acting, lighting and music, transport this tale to an other worldly version of the Himalayas. One ungrounded and gasping for air. Black Narcissus exists in this archetypal interpretation within which its inhabitants live, breath and expire.

Powell & Pressburger called the way they made films 'composed cinema''. This never aimed to be realistic in either presentation or acting. It bears all the muscular expressive tropes of high melodrama and silent films, one might be tempted to call them overwrought and hammy. But that would be to entirely miss its point, and more importantly its effect. Everything is being presented in this heightened form because it reflects the nun's internal experience, of unruly emotions flourishing and running amok.  As though their drab monochrome existence has suddenly transformed itself into the most gloriously tempting technicolour. One sees, as much as feels, the religiously oppressed nature of their internal lives, being challenged by external reality. Revealing what they feel in their heart of hearts, and that this could be enough to drive anyone of them mad. This is fabulously potent cinema by anyone's book.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8