BLACK NARCISSUS Movie Review

Having established a school, hospital, and religious outpost high in the Himalayas, a group of nuns finds that the tensions of daily life—physical, emotional, sexual—become magnified in their claustrophobic world in ways both deadly and revelatory. Deborah Kerr is the nun who remembers, in flashback, the pleasures of her former, worldly life—feelings that resurface in the presence of a handsome, local British official (David Farrar). His presence causes other problems, however, and soon Black Narcissus turns into a veritable pressure cooker of repressed sexuality; the tension comes from guessing how—and where—it will surface. That at least one of the film's most memorable images recalls another masterwork of a decade later—Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo—seems only natural. Black Narcissus, stunningly designed and photographed entirely in Britain's Pinewood Studios, where light and color was tightly controlled for maximum psychological impact, remains a brilliant example of how to treat remarkably controversial subject matter in a commercially acceptable manner. If co-producers/directors/writers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger had an impact on Hitchcock, and vice-versa, who can blame these great artists for respecting and for absorbing—on some level—each others’ inspired, potent images? A revelation also is Deborah Kerr, whose fully human Sister Clodagh is quietly unforgettable, as is the amazing Kathleen Byron (unforgettable, but not quietly) as Sister Ruth, the most tortured and repressed of the nuns. With Sabu, Flora Robson, and Jean Simmons in her first major screen role. Oscars went to Jack Cardiff for his color cinematography and Alfred Junge for the bold and intensely Freudian set design.

NEXT STOP … A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes, Vertigo

1947 101m/C GB Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Sabu, Jean Simmons, Kathleen Byron, Flora Robson, Esmond Knight, Jenny Laird, Judith Furse, May Hallitt, Nancy Roberts; D: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; W: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; C: Jack Cardiff; M: Brian Easdale. Academy Awards ‘47: Best Art Direction/Set Decoration (Color), Best Color Cinematography; New York Film Critics Awards ‘47: Best Actress (Kerr),VHS, LV MLB