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Thanks for the memories!

Awesome Movie

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Nuns form a nunnery in the Himalayan "roof the world" and quickly get swept up by the local traditions, cultures and people. Being more effected by them than the natives are by the newly arrived nuns.Films are made too often and too often for the wrong reasons for them to stumble in the world of profound art. But here they have created a masterpiece which despite passing of time rarely fails to enthral and amaze. The care and attention to detail are astonishing.(Shame the bell tower scene features on the poster and in the trailer - should be kept as a surprise. But any film maker - from Hitchcock down - could learn from it. If they haven't already.)The first thing this film needs and then gets is a great cast. Deborah Kerr is amazing as she has to play two roles: The nun and the nun in her former life. This isn't as easy as you would believe and provides insight and comparison. The locals are well cast too - and believable - in a way so few films of the period are. Fully fleshed with a life and agendas of their own.Emeric Pressburger is a genius. This film is all the evidence anyone would need. Like musicals it has all the ingredients not only to be a failure - but a complete joke. A colony of nuns in the middle of nowhere! What nerve the producers had! My final thoughts are the final thoughts of many favourite films. Flawed or otherwise. They are a deep experience. Not always a pleasant experience and not always an experience you wish to repeat, but a unique experience. Black Narcissus is a unique experience and there aren't that many films that stand on their own like that. See it.

This is one of the most beautifully filmed motion pictures ever made, filled with color in describing a colorless life. It isn't their work: its where they work, high atop in the Himalayas. The young nun Deborah Kerr is made the head of this nunnery, the youngest ever in her order, and she finds a challenge in dealing with each of those under her charge. Then there's the local villagers, loyal to the Buddhist priest and upset by the infiltration of western culture. If Kerr found life with the king of Siam an ordeal, what she finds here is a key to the door to madness.The troubled nun played by Kathleen Byron gives her the most trouble, falling in love with one of the locals (David Farrar) and getting more jealous thanks to Farrar's growing friendship with Kerr, unbeknownst to Byron completely innocent. The other nuns are minor issues, although the hardworking Flora Robson finds a bit of the truth as she reveals that long forgotten feelings which she had long suppressed were coming back into her emotions.The future star of "Guys and Dolls" and "Elmer Gantry", Jean Simmons, wears dark makeup as a native Indian girl who speaks not a word but through seductive eye movements declares her list for student Sabu. He is obviously seduced by her staring at him from underneath a chair lustfully, and the temptation grows in a way that I'm surprised got past the censors.It's the wind, high altitude and smells of the Himalayas that are blamed for the sudden neuroses and psychosis that the nuns have to deal with. They all become too distracted by their inner struggles as humans which makes their vows seem impossible to fulfill. Only after the horrifying twist at the end (quite tense to be watch, especially on a big screen with this glorious color) are the nuns able to get back to their priorities. Sabu's observations about Jesus Christ taken lightly make you think too, showing that even other cultures focusing on learning more about the world around them can see the beauty in his simple words that many Christians twist into ways that turns off many others.

BLACK NARCISSUS is one of the famous films made by the directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It's about a hilltop nunnery occupied by a fine bunch of oppressed nuns, some of whom are gradually going crazy, while others are busy falling in love and Deborah Kerr desperately attempts to hold everything together. It's a psychological case study of isolation and repression, one which is very well acted by all of the principal cast members, and well-shot in Technicolor by the directorial duo. There's no denying that the once-controversial subject matter is now tame by modern standards, but that doesn't stop BLACK NARCISSUS being a cinematic milestone and quite probably the first movie to depict nuns as real people rather than just quaint and kindly religious figures.

If you haven't seen this movie, don't bother. Although it may have had some significance in 1947, now it merely seems quaint and very dated. I don't even know why I bothered to watch the whole thing. I thought something was going to happen besides the mad nun going mad. Movies of this period quite often featured a "native" like "Sabu" the magnificent. They were considered oddities by movie goers then, exotic. Certainly his costumes were. But of course they also needed Whites, dressed up to look "Indian" to play major roles, hence Simmons in what is probably her strangest role. But I have to wonder if it is not the fault of the screenplay, not the author which makes this such an uninteresting tale. It seems to be inspired more by Fort Apache (including ominous drum beats) than anything really Indian. She lived in India most of her life and seems to have written well of it. The story of a bunch of nuns (already a dubious subject for me) is ludicrous, offering "help" to the locals and the bringing the heathens to a real religion (as opposed to Hinduism -a sort of religion/ social structure over 5,000 years older than Christianity). It's preposterous, but plausible to Brits and Americans who understand nothing of the world, particularity in 1947. And of course it did happen, to no avail. The most gratifying part of the movie is the failure of the nuns as they ride off on their Shetland ponies. But as for entertainment, better to meditate for two hours for intellectual stimulation. The cinematography was good for the time. The costumes and setting were lavish. Amusing that not one part of it was filmed in India, mostly Pinewood studios. And to offset the ringing of the bell by Kerr they presented what was surely Tibetan monks blowing dungchen, not to be found anywhere near Darjeeling, even though it is in the farthest Northern reaches of India. Usually Rank movies are quite good. This was quite a disappointment.