Sister Clodagh leads four nuns on a trek through the Himalayan mountains
to establish a school and hospital in a disused palace thousands of feet
high on the edge of a cliff. But although the women are able to endure the
severe climatic conditions, they have trouble coping with the loneliness
of life in such a remote region. Several of the sisters find that their
commitment to a religious vocation has waned, and they must face up to the
difficulties posed by impure thoughts and sexual temptation.
Appropriately enough for a picture named for a flower, Black Narcissus exists
in a color-drenched, hothouse atmosphere. The setting is a nunnery in the
Himalayas, where sister Deborah Kerr has her hands full with an envious
nun (the remarkable Kathleen Byron) and a sardonic Englishman (David Farrar).
Director Michael Powell and screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, the team responsible
for the mid-forties masterpieces A Stairway to Heaven and The Red Shoes,
decided to shoot Black Narcissus entirely in the studio, so they could create
their own controlled, slightly unreal world. The choice paid off, as both
art director Alfred Junge and cinematographer Jack Cardiff won Oscars for
their blazing Technicolor work. The climactic sequence -- a murder attempt
on the cliffs of the cloister -- bears special attention, as Powell "set"
the sequence to a preexisting musical track, staging it as though it were
a piece of visual choreography. Adding a bit of behind-the-scenes tension
to the production was the fact that Kerr was the director's ex-mistress,
and Byron his current one. "It was a situation not uncommon in show business,
I was told," he later wrote, "but it was new to me."
--Robert Horton
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