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Home , Hein Heckroth, Herzog Blaubarts Burg, His Lordship, Kathleen Byron, Mister Buddwing, Powell and Pressburger

September 15, 2009 (XIX:3) & (1947, 100 min)

Produced, directed and written by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger Based on a novel by Rumer Godden Original Music by Cinematography by Film Editing by Production Design by Costume Design by

Deborah Kerr...Sister Clodagh Flora Robson...Sister Philippa ...Kanchi ...Mr. Dean Sabu...The Young General ...The Old General ...Sister Ruth Jenny Laird...Sister Honey

Judith Furse...Sister Briony MICHAEL POWELL (30 September 1905, Bekesbourne, Kent, May Hallatt...Angu Ayah England, UK-- 19 February 1990, Avening, Gloucestershire, Nancy Roberts...Mother Dorothea England, UK, cancer). Return to (1978), The

Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972), Age of Consent (1969), They're a for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color Weird Mob (1966), /Bluebeard’s Castle (Alfred Junge) and Best Cinematography, Color (Jack Cardiff). (1963), The Queen's Guards (1961), Peeping Tom/Face of

Fear/The Fotographer of Panic (1960), Luna de EMERIC PRESSBURGER (5 December 1902, Miskolc, Austria- miel/Honeymoon/Luna de miel/The Lovers of Teruel (1959), 49th Hungary-- 5 February 1988, Saxstead, Suffolk, England, UK, Parallel/The Invaders (1941), An Airman's Letter to His Mother bronchial pneumonia). The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972), They're (1941), The Thief of Bagdad/The Thief of Bagdad: An Arabian a Weird Mob (1966), Operation Crossbow (1965), Atlantic Fantasy in Technicolor (1940), Contraband/Blackout (1940), The Ferry/Sons of the Sea (1941), Spy for a Day (1940), The Spy in Lion Has Wings (1939) /U-Boat 29 (1939), Smith Black/U-Boat 29 (1939), Parisian Life (1936), Mein Herz ruft nach (1939), The Edge of the World (1937), dir/My Heart Calls You (1934), Incognito (1934), Une femme au (1934), Red Ensign/Strike! (1934), (1932), C.O.D. Volant/A Woman at the Wheel (1933), A vén gazember/The Old (1932), (1932), (1932), Two Crowded Scoundrel (1932), Une jeune fille et un million/A Girl and a Million Hours (1931). Nominated for Oscar: Best Writing, Original (1932), Eine von uns/One of Us (1932), Das schöne Screenplay- One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1943). Abenteuer/Beautiful Adventure (1932), Lumpenkavaliere/ Wiener

Lumpenkavaliere (1932), Dann schon lieber Lebertran/I’d Rather PRESSBURGER/POWELL [jointly produced/directed/wrote] 'I Know Have Cod Liver Oil (1931), Das Ekel/The Scoundrel (1931), Where I'm Going!' (1945), (1944), A Matter of Abschied/Farewell (1930), Die große Sehnsucht/The Great Desire Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), (1930). Won Oscar: Best Writing, Original Story- 49th Parallel Gone to Earth (1950), Ill Met by Moonlight/Intelligence (1943); Nominated Oscar: Best Writing, Screenplay- 49th Parallel Service/Night Ambush (1957), Oh... Rosalinda!!/Fledermaus ’55 (1943); Nominated Oscar: Best Writing, Original Screenplay- One (1955), One of Our Aircraft Is Missing /One of Our Aircraft Is of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1943); Nominated Oscar: Best Writing, Missing/ The Story of ------one of Our Aircraft Is Missing Motion Picture Story- The Red Shoes (1949). (1942), The Battle of the River Plate/Graf Spee/Pursuit of the Graf

Clayton—THE INNOCENTS—2

Spee (1956), The Elusive Pimpernel/The Fighting Pimpernel Five-O" (1 episode, 1977), Rough Night in Jericho (1967), Divorce (1950), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp/Colonel Blimp/The American Style (1967), Mister Buddwing (1966), All the Way Home Adventures of Colonel Blimp (1943), The Red Shoes (1948), The (1963), The Grass Is Greener (1960), Spartacus (1960), Elmer Small Back Room/Hour of Glory (1949), Tales of Hoffmann/ Gantry (1960), The Big Country (1958), Guys and Dolls (1955/I), Jacques Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), Volunteer Desirée (1954), The Egyptian (1954), The Robe (1953), Androcles (1943), The Wild Heart/Gypsy Blood (1952). and the Lion (1952), The Blue Lagoon (1949), Hamlet (1948), Black Narcissus (1947), Great Expectations (1946), Caesar and (30 September 1921, Cleopatra (1945). Helensburgh, Scotland, UK-- 16 Nominated Oscar: Best Actress in a Supporting Role- Hamlet October 2007, Botesdale, Suffolk, (1949); Nominated Oscar: Best Actress in a Leading Role- Happy England, UK, complications from Ending (1970). Parkinson's disease) The Assam Garden (1985), Witness for the DAVID FARRAR (21 August 1908, Forest Gate, London, England, Prosecution (1982), The Arrangement UK-- 31 August 1995, South Africa) The 300 Spartans (1962), (1969), The Gypsy Moths (1969), "The Dick Powell Show" (1 episode, 1962), Solomon and Sheba Casino Royale (1967), The Night of the (1959), Watusi (1959), The Son of Robin Hood (1958), I Accuse! Iguana (1964), The Chalk Garden (1958), The Battle of the River Plate (1956), Lost (1956), Escape to (1964), The Innocents (1961), The Burma (1955), Lilacs in the Spring (1954), The Wild Heart (1952), Naked Edge (1961), The Grass Is The Golden Horde (1951), Night Without Stars (1951), Gone to Greener (1960), The Sundowners Earth (1950), (1949), Mr. Perrin and Mr. (1960), Beloved Infidel (1959), The Traill (1948), Frieda (1947), Black Narcissus (1947), Lisbon Story Journey (1959), Separate Tables (1958), Bonjour tristesse (1958), (1946), The Trojan Brothers (1946), The Night Invader (1943), The An Affair to Remember (1957), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Dark Tower (1943), Danny Boy (1941), A Royal Divorce (1938), Tea and Sympathy (1956), The King and I (1956), The Proud and Silver Top (1938), Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror/The Profane (1956), The End of the Affair (1955), From Here to Hooded Terror (1938). Eternity (1953), Julius Caesar (1953), Young Bess (1953), The Prisoner of Zenda (1952), Quo Vadis (1951), King Solomon's SABU (27 January 1924, Karapur, Mysore, India-- 2 December Mines (1950), Edward, My Son (1949), If Winter Comes (1947), 1963, Chatsworth, California, USA, heart attack) A Tiger Walks The Hucksters (1947), Black Narcissus (1947), I See a Dark (1964), Rampage (1963), Sabu and the Magic Ring (1957), Jungle Stranger (1946), Perfect Strangers (1945), The Life and Death of Hell (1956), Buongiorno, elefante!/Hello Elephant (1952), Baghdad Colonel Blimp (1943), Major Barbara (1941). Won Oscar: (1952), Savage Drums (1951), Song of India (1949), Black Honorary Award (1994): “An artist of impeccable grace and beauty, Narcissus (1947), Tangier (1946), Cobra Woman (1944), White a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood Savage (1943), Arabian Nights (1942), Jungle Book (1942), The for perfection, discipline and elegance”; Nominated Oscar: Best Thief of Bagdad (1940), The Drum (1938), Elephant Boy (1937). Actress in a Leading Role- Edward, My Son (1950); Nominated Oscar: Best Actress in a Leading Role- From Here to Eternity KATHLEEN BYRON (11 January (1954); Nominated Oscar: Best Actress in a Leading Role- The 1921, London—18 January 2009, King and I (1957); Nominated Oscar: Best Actress in a Leading Middlesex, England) Appeared in Role- Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1958); Nominated Oscar: Best over 100 films and TV programs Actress in a Leading Role- Separate Tables (1959); Nominated and series, the last of which was Oscar: Best Actress in a Leading Role- The Sundowners (1961). “Perfect Strangers” (2001). Some of the others were "In a Land of FLORA ROBSON (28 March 1902, South Shields, Durham, England, Plenty" (3 episodes, 2001), UK—7 July 1984, Brighton, East Sussex, England, UK, cancer) "Casualty" (2 episodes, 1989- Clash of the Titans (1981), A Tale of Two Cities (1980), Les 1999), Saving Private Ryan (1998), miserables (1978), "Heidi" (4 episodes, 1974), Alice's Adventures in Les misérables (1998), Emma Wonderland (1972), The Beloved (1970), Eye of the Devil (1966), (1996), "Reilly: Ace of Spies" (1 "David Copperfield" (8 episodes, 1966), Those Magnificent Men in episode, 1983), From a Far Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Country (1981), The Elephant Man hours 11 minutes (1965), Young Cassidy (1965), 55 Days at Peking (1980), "Edward the Seventh" (3 episodes, 1975), Craze (1974), (1963), "BBC Sunday-Night Theatre" (1 episode, 1955), Romeo "The Golden Bowl" (6 episodes, 1972), "The Portrait of a Lady" (4 and Juliet (1954), Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), Black episodes, 1968), Night of the Silvery Moon (1954), Young Bess Narcissus (1947), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), Trunk (1953), The Gambler and the Lady (1952), Tom Brown's (1945), The Sea Hawk (1940), We Are Not Alone (1939), Wuthering Schooldays (1951), Scarlet Thread (1951), The Small Back Room Heights (1939), Fire Over England (1937), I, Claudius (1937), (1949), Black Narcissus (1947), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Anna Christie (1936), A Gentleman of Paris (1931). Nominated (1943), The Young Mr. Pitt (1942), Climbing High Oscar: Best Actress in a Supporting Role- (1947). (1938; uncredited: she is the model on sofa after cream pie fight, glaring at Max). JEAN SIMMONS (31 January 1929, Crouch Hill, London, England, UK—) Shadows in the Sun (2009), Thru the Moebius Strip (2005), JACK CARDIFF (18 September 1914, Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, How to Make an American Quilt (1995), "Dark Shadows" (12 UK-- 22 April 2009, Ely, Cambridgeshire, England, UK) The Tell- episodes, 1991), "Murder, She Wrote" (2 episodes, 1989), "Hawaii Tale Heart (2004), The Magic Balloon (1990), Tai-Pan (1986), Clayton—THE INNOCENTS—3

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Cat's Eye (1985), Conan the visionary director’s silent productions: Mare Nostrum (1926), The Destroyer (1984), Ghost Story (1981), The Dogs of War (1980), The Magician (1926), and The Garden of Allah (1927). Working on Awakening (1980), The Fifth Musketeer (1979), Death on the Nile these films and subsequently on his own features in the 1930s, (1978), Ride a Wild Pony (1975), The Mercenaries (1968), Fanny Powell developed a penchant for expressionism that manifested (1961), The Vikings (1958), The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), itself in several rather unique ways…. The Brave One (1956), War and Peace (1956), The Barefoot Finally, the use of color, which most critics cite as a Contessa (1954), The Master of Ballantrae (1953), The Story of trademark of the Powell-Pressburger partnership, is shaped into an William Tell (1953), The Magic Box (1952), The African Queen expressionistic mode. Powell chose his hues from a broad visual (1951), Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), The Black Rose palette, and brushed them onto the screen with a calculated (1950), Scott of the Antarctic (1948), The Red Shoes (1948), Black extravagance that became integrated into the themes of the film as a Narcissus (1947), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Caesar and whole…. Cleopatra (1945), Approaches (1944), The Great Mr. Thematically, operate in a limbo Handel (1942), This Is Colour (1942), Plastic Surgery in Wartime somewhere between romance and realism. The former, (1941), Main Street of Paris (1939), Wings of the Morning (1937). characterized by technical effects, camera angles and movements, Won Oscar: Honorary Award (2001); Won Oscar: Best and the innovative use of color, often intrudes in the merest of Cinematography, Color- Black Narcissus (1948); Nominated Oscar: details in fundamentally naturalistic films. In the eyes of some, this Best Cinematography, Color- War and Peace (1957); Nominated weakens the artistic commitment to realism. On the other hand, the Oscar: Best Director- Sons and Lovers (1961); Best psychological insights embodied in serious fantasies like A Matter of Life and Death are too often dismissed as simply entertainment. Most of the Powell-Pressburger efforts are, in fact, attempts at fundamental reconciliations between modern ideas and the irrational, between science and savagery, or between religion and eroticism.

Although such mergings of reality and fantasy met with approval by the moviegoing public, Powell and Pressburger were less successful with the British film establishment. In a sense they were alienated from it through their exercise of a decidedly non- British flamboyance….The film Peeping Tom was perhaps ahead of its time–a problem that plagued the director and his collaborator for most of their careers.

From World Film Directors V.I, ed. John Wakeman, H.H. Wilson Co., NY 1987.

In 1925, on his way to visit his father, who had acquired a hotel on the Riviera, he stopped off in Paris to catch up with the Cinematography, Color- Fanny (1962). work of Buñuel and Dali and “that lot, involved in surrealism,” as he put it to an interviewer, adding that “of course, all films are from The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia ed. Andrew surrealist . . . because they are making something that looks like a Sarris. Visible Ink Press, NY, 1998. “Powell & Pressburger” real world but isn’t.” He entered the film industry the same year [combined entry signed by Stephen L. Hanson] when his father introduced him at a party to Harry Lachman, an artist and filmmaker then working with Rex Ingram on Mare Between the years 1942 and 1957, English director Michael Powell Nostrum at the Nice studio. and his Hungarian partner, Emeric Pressburger, formed one of the Powell joined the unit and “worked all through” Mare Nostrum, most remarkable partnerships in cinema. Under the collaborative an extravagant spy story. He says “it was a great film to come in on pseudonym “The Archers,” the two created a series of highly visual because, being a spectacular film, full of enormous tricks with a and imaginative treatments of romantic and supernatural themes great theme and an international cast, it gave you ideas which that have defied easy categorization by film historians. Although stayed with you all through your life. . . .My first job was really to both were listed jointly as director, screenwriter, and frequently as stick around–that was how Harry Lachman put it. Then I was a grip, producer, and the extent of each one’s participation on any given but I was unofficially attached to Lachman as the strange, cultured film is difficult to measure, it is probably most accurate to credit young Englishman who had a remarkable gift for falling over Powell with the actual visualization of the films while Pressburger things.” functioned primarily as a writer. The latter, in fact, had no Some of these qualities were put to work in Ingram’s next background as a director before joining Powell. He had drifted two films, The Magician (1926) and The Garden of Allah (1927), in through the Austrian, German, and French film industries as a both of which Powell had small roles providing “comic relief.” screenwriter before traveling to England in 1936. These were great days in the film industry in France: “everyone was mad about the cinema,”and in Nice Powell met celebrated painters, Many of the gothic, highly expressionistic characteristic of sculptors and writers all eager to contribute to the medium. Then the films produced by the partnership seem to trace their origins to Ingram decided to take a break from films. Lachman launched a Powell’s apprenticeship at Rex Ingram’s studio in Nice in the series of comedy travelogues featuring Powell, but this project was 1920s. There he performed various roles on at least three of the ended after a few months by the arrival of the talkies and, Powell Clayton—THE INNOCENTS—4 says, “we closed up the studio, said goodbye to the sun and headed naturally interested in how to present it, how to create the actual for the fogbelt.” Lachman joined British International at the Elstree atmosphere of the place, and how to get over Emeric’s story line in studios, where he found work for Powell also, first as stills the most effective way.”... photographer on Hitchcock’s Champagne and then as a cutter on Lupu Pick’s A Knight in London. Powell’s last assignment at Black Narcissus (1947), in which Anglican nuns set up a Elstree was as an uncredited contributor to the script of Hitchcock’s new mission in the Himalayas, was also shot in the studio, Powell Blackmail—he says it was he who having decided that pictures made partly on suggested the final chase over the roof of location “are nearly always pastiche or hotch- the British Museum: “Being an East End potch.” Like I Know Where I’m Going, the boy, Hitch had never been there.” film centers on the conflict between a In 1930 Powell joined a young “civilized” (here specifically Christian) American producer named Jerome notion of order and pagan nature, personified Jackson, then entering the the British in the flailing Himalayan winds, local “quota quickie” market. Alarmed by the superstition, and a naked holy man. Nature fact that only about five percent of movies wins when one of the nuns (Kathleen Byron) shown in Britain were made there, the is driven to homicidal madness by her government had instituted a quota system repressed lust for the hairy knees of David that was supposed to improve the Farrar. situation. The result was a flood of Powell worked out the climactic generally rubbishy cut-rate pictures, most final scene with his composer Brian Easdale of them less than an hour in length, that (who was also in charge of the film’s sound were shown as second features with effects) and prerecorded the scene’s Hollywood movies. Some were churned soundtrack before filming the images. He out by small independent producers like took this decisive step towards the Jerome Jackson and many, in fact, were development of a musical structure for his made by Hollywood companies through movie because he believes that “composers British subsidiaries…. and filmmakers think very much alike. Their One of the last of Powell’s tempos are very closely related to our cutting “quickies” was (1936), made for an tempos, their longeurs and their statements are very similar to ours. American producer named Joe Rock. Powell says that the script was Whereas, even with a writer as clever and subtle as Emeric, I very poor but “I did my best to make it into a rather German type always had this continual battle with words.” Jack Cardiff’s color expressionistic thriller….The only good that came out of it was that photography for the film won him an Oscar. I met Joe Rock.” For five years—ever since he had read a ...The Red Shoes seems to Roy Armes “Powell and newspaper report on the depopulation of the Scottish islands-Powell Pressburger’s most explicit statement of the relationship of art and had been trying to find backing for a film on that subject. Joe Rock life,” “the high point of their career in both commercial and artistic encouraged him to write a script, and then sent him off to the terms….All [their] central themes and stylistic concerns find remote Shetland island of Foula to make what became The Edge of expression in The Red Shoes: the Romantic opposition of art and the World, his first personal film. ...that has reminded some critics life, the concern with a choreography of film whereby of Visconti’s La terra treme….In 1937 it was chosen by the New overwhelming passions are acted out rather than expressed through York Film Critics as the best movie of the year…. words, and the creation of a dynamic inter-relationship of vivid At that point Powell was considering going to Hollywood, visual imagery and an immensely rhythmic soundtrack….” but , impressed by The Edge of the World, offered The Archers’ last two productions, both unexceptional war him a contract. His first film for Korda was The Spy in Black films, were The Battle of the River Plate (Pursuit of the Graf Spee, (1939), a fast-moving and often amusing spy thriller set during 1956) and Ill Met by Moonlight (Night Ambush, 1957). Working World War I….It opened just before the beginning of World War II separately, neither Powell nor Pressburger ever really established a and, Powell says, “during the run of the picture a submarine did get consistent pattern of production again. Powell’s next picture, into Scapa Flow and torpedoed one of our best battleships. It just another ballet film called Luna de Miel (Honeymoon), was made in made people go more, because at least it was about what was 1961 in Spain. Then he met a writer and former cypher expert happening. It was such a success that it was immediately retitled U- named Leo Marks, who proposed a picture in the sadistic horror- Boat 29 and sent to America where it cleaned up.” movie genre then being exploited by Anglo-Amalgamated. The More important, The Spy in Black began Powell’s result was Peeping Tom (1960). ...The movie becomes an extremely collaboration with the Hungarian-born scenarist, Emeric complex essay on the voyeurism involved in making and watching Pressburger….[In] 1942 Powell and Pressburger established their films, as Powell clearly recognized….For many Peeping Tom is own production company. The Archers, under the financial Powell’s masterpiece, though in Britain in1960 it virtually ended umbrella of J. Arthur Rank’s Independent Producers. Most of the his career, while the shortened version seen in the United States was films they made for the Archers credited Powell and Pressburger as largely ignored….Back in Britain, and re-united with Pressburger, joint directors, producers and scenarists, though it seems fairly clear Powell made a prizewinning children’s film, The Boy Who Turned that Pressburger dominated the writing, Powell the directing. The Yellow (1972)…. latter told an interviewer that “what we always did was that he Durgnat suggests that Powell “remains an upholder, would write the script and then I would rewrite in completely in my through its lean years, of the Méliès tradition...a school of ‘Cinema’ version, sometimes with very little change and sometimes with a which is always exquisitely conscious of not only its cinematic very great deal of change. The changes would be because I was effects but its cinematic nature.” Clayton—THE INNOCENTS—5

Michael Powell Interviews. Ed. David Lazar. University of background built at a 20 degree angle from the ground. That way, Mississippi Press, Jackson, 2003. all day long when the sun moved...there never was any shadow on the background! It was always well lit. And on the background we Does a film like Black Narcissus present certain fantastical had painted the Himalayas: Everest, the great valleys, the forests. aspects? And all of it sunlit! And when a cloud went by, it was magnificent! MP: Not so to speak. The success of the film surprised me; it’s all It was so simple! Alfred Junge: a great master. … based on a question of atmosphere; first the education of the girl, in When I was very young, before I got into the film Ireland, in a simple family, an almost religious education. The business, but still loving it, the great films in those days where the entire novel was built on the idea that the house was full of painful original work was being done—were the early German films; and things, wind, evil, etc. The fact that this made for a good movie, Alfred of course was trained by UFA and so he had all these because this was a good movie, is rather surprising. This is the first grandiose images and marvelous effects in his head. When I asked film in which the music plays an integral role in the atmosphere; him to pull them out of his head for things like Colonel Blimp and this was the first time I worked with Brian Easdale, who did the Stairway to Heaven, he was delighted. I think his masterpiece was music for The Red Shoes and a few other films. We prepared the film you’re showing here, Black Narcissus. Extraordinary. You several sequences together with the themes already composed, not give Alfred a very difficult task, he would rise to it and make the music; therefore when I filmed a scene, I knew what was going something marvelous out of it. In that case, to create an entirely on in his mind. imaginative place in the Himalayas. Always his imaginative things were dealing with naturalistic sets, if you follow me. I mean, even The image was equally very interesting? heaven in either monochrome or color in Stairway to Heaven is MP: Marvelous! This was Jack Cardiff’s second film, and one of based upon naturalism. his best. ...When Powell thought of the money it would cost to go to India to Completely unreal. . . make Black Narcissus, that simmering tale of sexually repressed MP: Yes; I think that the fact the film was filmed entirely in studios nuns in the Himalayas, he said Heigh-ho, hired Deborah Kerr and and in England, gave the film the style of a novel. When I read the shot it all on a British soundstage. The result—as designed by book, I immediately thought that we were going to the Indies and Alfred Junge, shot by Jack Cardiff and directed by Powell—is an that we would bring back some good shots to then try and match the expressionist masterpiece. others filmed in England. The result would not be brilliant. It “They said to me, But surely you’ll want to shoot some worked better to film everything in England. This is what created establishing shots in India? That’s a very insidious phrase, the atmosphere of the film…. establishing shots. They said, You can’t do Mt. Everest in a studio. I said, A studio is exactly where you can do Everest, and avalanches For Black Narcissus, you adapted for the first time a novel which and Tibetan horns. Wonderful studio stuff. And if we go and shoot was already published. a lot of real stuff to cut into the studio stuff, it’ll make all the studio MP: Yes, in fact an actress who wanted a role in the film proposed stuff look terrible. And vice versa: if we do wonderful work in the the subject to me during the war. I had been seduced by the plot and studio, the exteriors will look like something from a documentary I told her: “We should talk about it after the war.” And it’s very dragged in by the strange because after the war, Pressburger got married, and it was cat!” his wife who talked to us about it again after she read Rumer Godden’s book. from the Criterion What interested you it the story? The confrontation between the Collection Black morals of the Western world and those of the Oriental world? Narcissus. 2000. MP: It was a very beautiful love story. In an unusual setting. But I Dave Kehr didn’t want to go shot in India. Because this kind of film had always been done that way with studio scenes and link scenes on When location, with real actors, or sometimes stand-ins. I didn’t like that Black Narcissus at all.I was convinced that everything had to be done either in India opened in England or in the studio. in 1947, Great Britain was barely And you filmed it entirely in a studio? emerging from the MP: Except for a few scenes. You know,you can find anything in agony and England. And since we had been an empire for a long time, there exhaustion of were always people bringing back things from all over the world: World War II. trees, flowers, rocks! Extraordinary things! I was able to find great Nothing could be gardens with rocks, and mountains at the edges; and all the colors in further from gray, the world! And all the flowers from the Himalayas. The great hungry postwar London than the India imagined by Michael Powell vegetation and even the torrential rains! In Sussex! (Laughs.) And and Emeric Pressburger: here was a land of high mountains, lush the rest was filmed in a studio. forests, and fields of flowers exploding in deeply saturated Technicolor, a tempting landscape of overwhelming plenty. And The results in the change of scenery are astonishing. though perhaps less-renowned within their body of work than The MP: We had built the great castle outside at Pinewood. It was Red Shoes or The Tales of Hoffman, Black Narcissus’ reputation has Junge’s idea. All around this enormous décor he had a big plaster grown over time; it now stand clearly as one of the highest Clayton—THE INNOCENTS—6 achievements in British filmmaking, as witty as it is sensual, as suburban London, with a few daytrips to an Indian garden in ironic as it is sweepingly romantic. Sussex. The mountains and the castle are the creations of Powell and Pressburger had been collaborators since The production designer Alfred Junge, with matte paintings executed by Spy in Black in 1939. Though Powell specialized in directing and ; the special effects were coordinated by W. Percy Pressburger in screenwriting, they felt that their contributions Day, who had apprenticed with Méliès; and the magnificent color overlapped enough to give themselves the joint credit, “Written, photography, surely among the finest work ever produced for the Produced and Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric medium, is the contribution of Jack Cardiff. (Both Junge and Pressburger.” They called their production company , founded in Cardiff won well-deserved Oscars for their work.) 1942, “The Archers,” and their logo—an arrow hitting a target— Powell builds Black Narcissus as a series of moods created was also their way of rating their work. If the arrow fell on the through space and color. He contrasts the boxy interiors and blank periphery of the target, that meant they felt they’d missed their walls of the British colonial offices with the curved multi-leveled, mark. If the arrow struck the bull’s-eye, it was their way of spatially indefinite chambers of the old palace. British certainty and signaling that they were happy with their work. Their partnership sterility cedes more and more to Eastern mysticism and sensuality; continued until 1956, and yielded some of the most distinctive and the sister in charge of the vegetable garden can’t help but plant a enduring work in the British cinema, including The Life and Death crop of flowers instead, their exploding primary colors providing a of Colonel Blimp and A Matter of Life and Death. dizzying contrast with the black and white habits of the nuns. Based on a 1939 novel by Rumer Godden, Black Narcissus Gentle, green hillsides—reminiscent of the Scottish landscapes we follows a group of British nuns, the Servants of Mary, as they see in Sister Clodagh’s flashbacks—suddenly turn into vertiginous attempt to transform the former palace of a Hindu potentate into a canyons when viewed from another angle. The ground literally dispensary and school for the local children. But the palace, perched opens beneath the feet of the characters, inviting them to take the on a mountaintop eight thousand feet above sea level, resists plunge—to abandon their twin faiths in God and the British Empire, transformation. Once the site of joyously sensual feasts And orgies, and turn themselves over to more ancient and dangerous powers. the old palace exerts its influence over the sisters, and particularly For Powell, who had always placed great value on music over Sister Clodagh (Deborah in his work, Black Narcissus is Kerr), the group’s leader, who perhaps his breakthrough to a finds herself dreaming of the musical conception of the young man she left back in medium (the Archers’ next Scotland. Less innocently romantic film would be The Red Shoes). are the reveries of Sister Ruth Building on the great wit and (Kathleen Byron), who becomes character of Pressburger’s erotically obsessed with the British dialogue, Powell worked as a overseer of the district (David cinematic composer, an artist Farrar). who used contrasts in tone and There is little surface rhythm rather than purely action in Pressburger’s script for literary or dramatic means. The Black Narcissus. The film is carefully developed tensions composed as a succession of small between monochrome and incidents and casual encounters, color, between closed, coherent each of which adds to the slowly spaces and aching, cosmic growing sense of erotic tension. voids, reach a crescendo in the Characters come and go— bravura climactic sequence. It including an impossibly beautiful Jean Simmons, as a ripe 17-year- is enough to see the bright, red lipstick that Sister Ruth has put on to old bride who has been repudiated by her husband, and Sabu (the know that the apocalypse is near. Indian child actor who was a mainstay of British movies about the British audiences in 1947 may well have seen Black Raj), as a preening local prince who forces his way into the school. Narcissus as a last farewell to their fading empire. World War II The “Black Narcissus” of the title turns out to be not some poetic had altered colonial relations forever; in its wake, nationalist allusion out of Rudyard Kipling, but the name of the pungent movements would grow and British authority would collapse. India aftershave with which the prince perfumes himself—a product he achieved independence on August 14, 1947, and the final images of imports from England. Black Narcissus of a procession down from the mountaintop, But if there is little action on the surface, emotions are seemed to anticipate the British departure. For Powell and seething just beneath it—or, more accurately, just behind it—in the Pressburger, these are not images of defeat, but of a respectful, form of fantasy landscape that the Archers and their collaborators rational retreat from something that England never owned and never have created out of purely cinematic means. Despite its dazzling understood. It is the tribute paid by West to East, full of fear and visual sweep, not one frame of Black Narcissus was filmed on gratitude. location. Instead, the film was shot at the in

Clayton—THE INNOCENTS—7

COMING UP IN BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XIX: Sept 22 Jules Dassin Du rififi chez les hommes/Rififi 1955 Sept 29 Kenji Misoguchi Akasen chitai/Street of Shame 1956 Oct 6 Richard Brooks Elmer Gantry 1960 Oct 13 Roman Polanski Nóz w wodzie/Knife in the Water 1962 Oct 20 Stanley Kubrick Lolita 1962 Oct 27 Carl Theodor Dreyer Gertrud 1964 Nov 3 Eric Rohmer Ma nuit chez Maud/My Night at Maude’s 1969 Nov 10 Andrei Tarkovsky Solaris 1972 Nov 17 Arthur Penn Night Moves 1975 Nov 24 Abbas Kiarostami Nema-ye Nazdik/Close Up 1990 Dec 1 Bela Tarr Werckmeister harmóniák/Werckmeister Harmonies 2000 Dec 8 Mike Leigh Topsy-Turvy 1999

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