by Allan Fish
(UK 1947 100m) DVD1/2
I give you till the rains break
p Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell d Michael Powell w Emeric Pressburger novel Rumer Godden ph Jack Cardiff ed Reginald Mills m Brian Easdale art Alfred Junge cos Hein Heckroth
Deborah Kerr (Sister Clodagh), David Farrar (Mr Dean), Sabu (Dilip Rai), Flora Robson (Sister Philippa), Kathleen Byron (Sister Ruth), Jean Simmons (Kanchi), Judith Furse (Sister Briony), Esmond Knight (Gen.Toda Rai), Jenny Laird (Sister Honey), May Hallatt (Angu Ayah), Nancy Roberts, Ley On, Shaun Noble,
Black Narcissus is a thing of beauty, a film which stands alone in the Archers canon as a truly erotically charged film, one so suffused with sexual repression and tensions beneath the surface as to reach out and burn you. Like all their colour masterworks of the forties, it’s a unique film; not only a wonderful adaptation of Rumer Godden’s novel but a wonderful insight into how a foreign and mysterious atmosphere can be conducive to the appearance of hidden desires and a change in character. As Farrar’s Mr Dean says, “there’s something in the atmosphere that makes everything seem exaggerated.”
A group of nuns from the Convent of the Order of St Mary in Calcutta are sent to run a hospice (which they name St Faith’s) in the remote Indian outpost palace of Mopu, given to them by a retired Indian general. Formerly a group of monks lived there, but couldn’t hack it, while the walls are still adorned with sexual imagery from its days as a high class concubine residence. (more…)
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