Black Narcissus and the Imagining of India
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
chap 1 27/9/05 3:17 pm Page 1 ‘Under control’?: Black Narcissus and the Imagining of India •Kelly Davidson and John Hill Introduction problematic aspects. In some cases, there has been a tendency simply to invert the old critical The change in the critical fortunes of the films of orthodoxy and to celebrate works of fantasy and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is well- stylistic excess simply because they are not known. Due to the strong emphasis upon conventional works of social realism, rather than documentary and realism within British film on the basis of their own artistic merits and culture, their films, particularly those made in the cultural attributes. Similarly, if earlier critical 1940s and 1950s, were seen to deviate from discourse, borne of a preference for critically favoured modes of British filmmaking. documentary and realism, tended to identify As a result, they often fell victim to either critical stylisation as content-less and ‘empty’, then the misunderstanding or hostility. Thus, for all its reclamation of the ‘non-realist’ strands of British ‘technical originality’, the critic Richard cinema has often appeared to follow suit, Winnington felt that A Matter of Life and Death placing value upon formal play and the (1946) had moved away from the ‘the essential foregrounding of film technique as ends in realism’ that was ‘the true business of the British themselves, irrespective of their consequences for 1 movie’. Similarly, the distinguished British ‘content’ or ideological outlook. In the case of producer Michael Balcon, with whom Powell the films of Powell and Pressburger, these worked during the 1930s, objected to Black developments have not been without their Narcissus (1947) on the grounds it departed peculiarities. The critical rehabilitation of Powell from the ‘national style’ that the documentary and Pressburger occurred at a time when film 2 movement had established. From the 1970s theory was not only suspicious of realism on onwards, however, the critical pendulum swung aesthetic grounds but political grounds as well. decisively. In this period, new generations of The turn against realism, in this regard, was critics began to query the privileged position characteristically associated with a search for a enjoyed by realism within British critical discourse more politically radical cinema capable of and sought to champion works – such as addressing social complexity and contradiction. Hammer horror, Gainsborough melodrama and The films of Powell and Pressburger, however, the films of Michael Powell – that could be seen clearly sit uneasily within this category. to defy the norms of a realist aesthetic. Indeed, it Described as ‘High Tory’ by one of their early could be argued that this ‘palace revolution’ has champions Raymond Durgnat, the world-view of now proved so successful that not only has the Powell and Pressburger’s films has generally been critical dismissal of works of ‘fantasy’ been at odds with the left-wing outlook of so many of successfully challenged but a critical preference their cinephile admirers.3 This is not to suggest for fantasy over works of realism has become the that Powell and Pressburger’s work is reducible dominant strain within British film writing. to simple ideological meanings. As Durgnat also However, while the challenge to the argues, Powell and Pressburger’s films may be dominance of realism within British film culture seen to defy simple interpretation in the way that has been an important and necessary they engage in an elaborate ‘game of hide-and- development, it has not been without its seek’ between ‘the patriotic and the exotic, the Film Studies • Issue 6 • Summer 2005 • 1 chap 1 27/9/05 3:17 pm Page 2 • Black Narcissus and the Imagining of India traditional and the technological, the Tory and discussion of ‘tropes of empire’, the film is simply the pagan’.4 Nevertheless, it is to make the point one of a relatively undifferentiated number of that, for all its formal exuberance and self- ‘Western films about the colonies’ that also consciousness, the cinema of Powell and includes Wee Willie Winkie (1937) and The King Pressburger does tend to draw upon and and I (1956).5 Evidently critical approaches elaborate relatively conservative discourses of concerned with the unravelling of ideological identity and place that is evident, for example, in patterns will alight upon different elements from the portrait of Englishness in A Canterbury Tale those perspectives governed by auteurist (1944) or the imagining of Scotland in I Know principles. However, the apparent disparity in the Where I’m Going (1945). It is also an issue that assessments of the film provided by the different arises in relation to any consideration of Black critical traditions is worthy of reflection. To what Narcissus. For while the film is set in India and extent does Black Narcissus depend upon the was released in 1947, the year India was finally mobilisation of orientalist ideas and images and granted independence, there has been relatively to what extent does it depart from them? How, little discussion amongst writers on Powell and in turn, does this relate to the film’s authorship Pressburger of the film’s representation of India and the aesthetic strategies which are employed or assessment of the significance of this. On the and are these distinguishable from other films other hand, writers with an interest in concerned with the East-West encounter? orientalism and the cinematic portrait of India have tended to downplay the importance of the Black Narcissus as Critique film’s authorship and have simply identified the film in terms of ongoing patterns of orientalist Given the timing of the film’s production and imagery. Thus, in Ella Shohat and Robert Stam’s release, it is perhaps not surprising that Black Narcissus should reveal an anxiety about the British presence in India. Indeed, in some respects, the film may be read as providing a critique of British rule in India and an exposure of some of its inadequacies. Based on Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel, the film tells the story of a group of British nuns whose vocation sends them to educate and administer medicine to a community of Himalayan hill-tribes. The eventual failure of the mission, and departure of the nuns, however, highlights the ill-conceived nature of their enterprise. British rule in India did not, of course, rest upon military might or economic power alone but the encouragement of cultural attitudes and outlooks congenial to the maintenance of colonial rule. As J. Farish, a member of the Bombay government, observed in 1938, ‘the Natives must either be kept down by a sense of our power, or they must willingly submit from a conviction that we are more wise, more just, more humane, and more anxious to improve their condition than any other rulers they could have’.6 In paternalistic British India, education was regarded as particularly important • Hollywood orientalism?: Wee Willie Winkie (1937). in sustaining a sense of British cultural and 2 • Film Studies • Issue 6 • Summer 2005 chap 1 27/9/05 3:17 pm Page 3 Black Narcissus and the Imagining of India • • Black Narcissus: Calling the imperialist civilising mission into question. intellectual superiority and in ensuring that missionary work was more politically Indian subjects would work for, and not against, contentious, it too was seen to have a role to their imperial masters. While the value of play in rescuing natives from ‘backwardness’ and Film Studies • Issue 6 • Summer 2005 • 3 chap 1 27/9/05 3:17 pm Page 4 • Black Narcissus and the Imagining of India ‘immorality’. Women missionaries occupied a General puts it) but also those around them. special place in this arena since the early Indeed, left to their own devices, the sisters nineteenth century, taking an active role in prove entirely ill-suited to the completion of their spreading education for Indian women and, by mission. Sister Philippa (Flora Robson) turns the extension, emphasising the benefits of a superior, vegetable plot from a labour of self-sufficiency English-language schooling for native families. into a flower garden. Sister Briony (Judith Furse) Furthermore, since the Victorian era, this fails to heal the sick villagers and her dispensary civilising mission was embraced and cultivated by becomes little more than a circus tent where the English women because of the emancipatory villagers come to enjoy the chemical reactions of position it offered them. More than angels of her medicinal ‘magic’. Imperial education, hearth and home they could preside as “eve- believed to be so important in the inculcation angels” of the vast English empire itself’.7 and maintenance of British ideas and attitudes, is In Black Narcissus, however, the imperial also revealed to be shallow and irrelevant. In one civilising mission supposedly represented by scene, the children mimic the language of British these ‘eve-angels’ is repeatedly called into militarism, repeating the words ‘cannon . question. Macaulay’s notorious ‘Minute on warship . bayonet. dagger . gun’ that Education’ (1835) indicated that in order to are spelt out on a blackboard, while the teacher establish the Raj in India, the British required herself Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) is shown to indigenous interlocutors to act as cultural have lost interest in the class and to be looking mediators between the colonisers and colonised: out of the window at the British agent Mr Dean ‘We must at present do our best to form a class (David Farrar). In conversation with Mr Dean, who may be interpreters between us and the Sister Clodagh had stressed the importance of millions whom we govern; a class of persons, ‘discipline’ in their dealings with the natives; by Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, the film’s end it is clear that any ambition to in opinions, in morals, and in intellect’.8 It is one impose discipline upon the local population has such intermediary – the Old General Toda Rai entirely failed.