It also features a couple of captivating performances from Deborah Kerr as the head of the convent, and Kathleen Byron as the smoulderingly unstable Sister Ruth, who gradually and then finally - but look, I'm not gonna give away the plot, am I? But safe to say it's quite dramatic - and was a bit of a shocker for audiences at the time. It's one of Powell and Pressburger's best ever, winning Oscars for cinematography and art direction, and featuring some of the most startling uses of colour in film history. This classic British film about a convent of Anglican nuns living in the Himalayas is a visual feast. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 April 2018 ) Silly, to be sure, but also sublime at times and as curiously entertaining as it is picturesque. ( Black Narcissus features the greatest scene involving a nun and a high place this side of Hitchcock's Vertigo and Jacques Rivette's La Religieuse. The wind blows, the drums pound, the Old Gods stir, and one by one the celibate sisters succumb to unchaste thoughts, above all Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron, terrific in the role), so consumed by erotic yearning for the one Englishman in sight (David Farraar) she puts on crimson lipstick, wears her wimple-free tresses like an early Goth and takes a downward turn. A group of five Anglican nuns, led by Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) establish a school and hospital in a former harem among the Himalayan peaks. No wonder it took the Oscar for colour cinematography (shot by Jack Cardiff) as well as for art direction and set decoration (created by Alfred Junge).Īudiences loved it on its first release, but the critics were cooler: hadn't the story been upstaged by the baroque images? Well, probably, but that's not altogether a bad thing, since the plot-quite faithful to Rumer Godden's popular novel -isn't wholly free of corn. It has a good claim to being the high watermark of lushness in the British cinema (and, incidentally, every original foot of it was actually shot in Britain). Their film is almost ridiculously gorgeous-a procession of saturated Technicolor, Expressionist angles, theatrical lighting and overwrought design. It's not hard to see why he felt let down. Somehow, the real thing didn't quite live up to what he'd been led to expect by Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus. When Bernardo Bertolucci went to the Himalayas to film Little Buddha, so the anecdote runs, he was disappointed by the scenery. Whilst the young Mother Superior, Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr), fights a losing battle for order, the jaunty David Farrar falls in love with her, sparking uncontrollable jealousy in another nun, Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron). The clear mountain air, the unfamiliar culture and the unbridled sensuality of a young prince (Sabu) and his beggar-girl lover (Jean Simmons) begin to play havoc with the nuns' long-suppressed emotions. A group of British nuns are sent into the Himalayas to set up a mission in what was once the harem's quarters of an ancient palace. A classic Powell/Pressburger tale of sexual awakening based on the Rumer Godden novel.
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