Wow! Such a good movie.

Best movie ever!

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Powell and Pressburger show why they are one of the great British filmmakers.This adaptation was shot in the studios, they went nowhere near India. They did go on location for some country scenes set in Ireland.Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) has been tasked to set up a school and hospital up in the Himalayan mountains. The building was a place where concubines resided and is filled with erotic images. A previous order of male priests have failed here.The nuns set about their work with the local community, the Old General pays the locals to attend the school until they get into the habit of attending. They are frequently visited by Mr Dean (David Farrar) a cynical Briton who is a contact man for the nuns and the Old General. He also is familiar with the locals and their customs.In the elevated atmosphere, repressed memories come back for Sister Clodagh, her life with her beau back home who deserted her. For the unstable Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) her hidden passions are unleashed as she desires Mr Dean and when he rejects her, she blames Sister Clodagh.An audience in 1947 would not had seen a film like Black Narcissus. Powell and Pressburger pushed the art of making movies forward. The painted backdrops and the colour cinematography by Jack Cardiff is sublime. The story is majestically told.The nuns are put in their place at times by Mr Dean who may be cynical but pragmatic, the general's son when he wants to learn in the school, even the local mystic where they are told to look into their faith time and again.The nuns order is met by a stir of emotions. Sister Clodagh recognises this. One of the nun's starts to grow flowers instead of vegetables but the most startling revelation is to see Sister Ruth in makeup and a dress as she gives up her vows. The erotic undercurrent of the film is startling leading to a violent confrontation.

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.

When I reviewed Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange", I praised Alex DeLarge's character arc for a few reasons. One of them was because it came as a surprise. When I wrote that, however, it sounded more like icing on the cake. I viewed it more as secondary. However, after watching this film, I quickly realized that surprise should be at the forefront of all character arcs. That was why I didn't care that much for this film.After 5 nuns (Sister Clodagh, Sister Briony, Sister 'Honey' Blanche, Sister Philippa, and Sister Ruth) open up a convent in the Himalayas, they encounter conflict and tension with the natives, their surroundings, and from within their own group. As they spend more time there, their conflict gradually intensifies.The film opens up with a promising start. It has great cinematography and a plot which is easy to follow. For a moment, I became intrigued by the film's plot as I wondered where it would lead to. However, that curiosity was quickly nullified. The second Mother Dorothea says the line "Yes, she's a problem. I'm afraid she'll be a problem for you too." as she refers to Ruth, my anticipation quickly faded into disappointment. At that point, I had a feeling where Ruth's character was going to head right at the start. Because I felt that, there was nothing surprising about how she ended up. I wished that her character would have started out softer. The further I got into the movie, my disappointment kept on expanding as my concerns kept on sounding more plausible. Revealing her character flaws single-handedly broke the movie down for me. Hell, even the birds eye shot of the bell tower at the edge of the cliff was enough for me to be able to predict another major aspect of the climax. However, I can at least praise Ruth's character arc for being believable.However, there are aspects to this film which make it worth watching. For instance, the cinematography. Images of the mountainous landscape are gorgeous to look at. The fact that this film was shot in Technicolor doesn't diminish its impact at all. The shots look vibrant and overwhelming. However, the architectural shots look just as fabulous as well. A wide assortment of rooms and hallways from the film look immaculate with their amusing color schemes and the layout of furniture. Artsy designs on some of the walls serve as eye candy. I felt fully immersed with the environment at all times while watching the film.Some of the shots appear menacing as well. The shot of the bell tower suspended at the edge of the cliff is enough to send chills down your spine due to the angle at which it was shot. Also, Sister Ruth's iconic crimson lipstick sends a message to the viewer that there's no turning back for her. The film also uses shadows to create a foreboding atmosphere. The scene I'm referring to comes near the end where we see Sister Ruth engulfed in shadows while wearing dark colored clothing. Sister Clodagh, on the other hand, is wearing white in that scene, and we can clearly see her. It's a simple technique, but it helps to create a foreboding atmosphere and it also gives that scene a fair amount of suspense as a result.In conclusion, this film is worth seeing for the gorgeous visuals. They look overwhelming, vibrant, and at times - foreboding. However, the visuals aren't enough to save it from its predictability throughout the film and its disappointing ending. I found this movie to be a learning experience. I got more insight on how character arcs should be handled. Even though I didn't like this film, the incredible visuals and set design interested me in checking out more of Michael Powell's filmography.

'Black Narcissus' was my first foray into the illustrious filmography of the legendary British filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The screenplay written by them is based on a novel of the same name written by Rumer Godden. The film is about a group of nuns who are sent to start a Christian convent in the beautifully exotic Himalayas.First I will comment about what I loved in the film. Without a doubt, the film looks absolutely gorgeous. The colours on the screen are visually vibrant and also thematically expressive. There are certain shots like Sister Ruth looking down the cliff while ringing the bell in the convent or the sequence of Kanchi dancing in the huge hall room which will stay with me forever. I had always heard that Powell and Pressburger made visually captivating films with the help of the Oscar winning cinematographer Jack Cardiff and watching this film just confirms those claims in my mind. Although the film has a very theatrical and operatic tone to it, Powell and Pressburger used a lot of subtle touches in their storytelling to accentuate some of the themes that are being explored. I also loved Deborah Kerr as the sister superior Sister Clodagh. I think a big theme being dealt with in the film is false pride. The convent and its nuns think that they will be able to control their new surroundings and the natives. This is expressed in a subtle way when Sister Clodagh orders the removal of a picture on the wall of a room in the palace which portrayed people having fun and being mischievous. To some extent this pride aspect can be seen to be a bit of a commentary on the philosophies of the Imperial British empire. Although they go to the Himalayas and strive to help the natives and educate them, their latent racist opinions and condescending demeanor is very noticeable. The natives are given the tag 'unreasonable children'. This pride also gets established in the fact that the convent itself is located at a very high altitude towering above the homes of the natives. Dean and the Holy Man are two important characters. Dean is someone who lives a carefree life without obeying any customs or rituals, while the Holy Man has completely given himself up to nature and 'God' and has distanced himself from everything earthly. Sister Clodagh actually gets irritated by both these mentioned characters and actually says that the sisters shouldn't allow themselves to become like either one of them. But in the end we see that not only do the sisters confront failure in trying to assert themselves in this new environment,instead it is the environment that gets the better of them and forces them to face their genuine desires, the ghosts of their past and their inner struggles.Now, I will shift to the aspects that didn't work for me. Firstly it is constantly spelled out by the characters in the film that this new environment is changing them, but I didn't get why. Never did I ever see why this new environment was having an adverse effect on the psyche of the sisters. Sister Philippa is a character that we are supposed to sympathise with, but it was a character that remained extremely underdeveloped in my opinion. Another thing that really didn't work for me was the acting by the actors playing the native characters. We see them using this stereotypical 'Indian accent' that Westerners associate Indians with and it gets a bit annoying after a while and the acting by these actors also gets very amateurish at times.So 'Black Narcissus' is a film that has a number of great aspects, but it unfortunately failed to bowl me over as a whole. I was greatly impressed by the visuals and certain aspects of the direction. But I also thought certain characters and themes remained underdeveloped and the acting from the actors playing the native characters became almost insufferably bad at times. Not the best way to start my exploration of Powell and Pressburger's work, but there are certain aspects of this film which irrespective of the negatives make me interested in further exploring them as filmmakers.