Review of Black Narcissus (1947) by Tom B — 30 Jul 2010

Margaret Rumer Godden wrote the book, Powell and Pressburger wrote and directed the film. What a great story, what a great film. Rumer Godden wrote many books about living in India. This story is about a group of women living in the highest spot in the Himalayas and the tensions that arise.

To compound matters, they are nuns. As my son put it, this is the prototypical Nun-sploitational film. Also one of the most beautiful looking films ever made, thanks in part to Jack Cardiff's deliberate evocation of the paintings of Vermeer and others.

The gorgeous light and technicolor results in a moving painting that tells a compelling, humorous, and very human story. Amazing that this is what came after Colonel Blimp, and Canterbury Tale before it.

My father did speak of Blimp often, and this one is a film I think he knew, as he spoke of Deborah Kerr often. She is, of course, magnificent, but so is everyone else. Jean Simmons, Kathleen Byron, and David Farrar with his violet eyes.

"Have you ever seen anyone with violet eyes?" asks Powell in the commentary. The fact this was shot in '47 and oozes the sensuality that it does lends it an extra weight, since we don't get around to this kind of carnal honesty on film until much later (unless you count the pre-codes, but then not in British film so much), and then in some ways later the magic is dispelled by an absence of the fleeting glimpse that makes holy the resonant energy of such awareness and recognition.

Powell and Pressburger, with their determinedly warm appreciation of all things inherently human, allow us to bask in the beautiful moment of beauty, the timed glimpse nestled in the context of lofty appreciation, the peaks of the human soul where even the earthy dramas of daily existence will eventually reach.

I can imagine the thrill of seeing a film like this projected large with an audience of hundreds, a full room hanging on the edge of tension at the cornice of a smile or a look, everyone wondering what will happen next, what emotion will emerge next as we live and breathe within the vivid color dream realized on the screen.