Black Narcissus is one of the greatest films ever about nuns.
Black Narcissus is the most erotic film ever made about sexual repression.
One of these seems unlike the other—unquestionably believable—and yet both are true. From the writing/directing/producing team also responsible for The Red Shoes—Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger—came a movie released in 1947 that well over half a century later remains the standard by which cinematic examinations of the consequences of repressing sexual desire must be judged. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the Powell/Pressburger film is yet another thing: one of the most faithful and sublimely executed adaptations of a novel ever made.
Later in life after being run out of the business on a rail for making the most controversial film in British history, Peeping Tom, Michael Powell was shown a copy of A Biographical Dictionary of the Cinema in which noted film scholar David Thomsen reminded readers of the almost-forgotten legend in glowing terms. The entry also contains what remains probably the single most incisive single sentence ever written about Black Narcissus; an observation so pure and truthful in its insight that it one need not know almost anything else about the film.
“Black Narcissus is that rare thing, an erotic English film about the fantasies of nuns, startling whenever Kathleen Byron is involved.”
The unavoidable truth is that for the first eighty minutes Black Narcissus is a film the veers from mildly interesting to humorous to interesting to fascinating. Then comes the final twenty minutes when Sister Ruth—Kathleen Byron—finally is overcome by the sexual desires those first eighty minutes spent subtly building. The entire last portion of Black Narcissus presents the personification of repression ripping its way at last through the last membrane of the protective superego. What the viewer witnesses is the id taking over—after years of frustration—and Sister Ruth losing any semblance of control. For those final twenty minutes or so, Black Narcissus leaves fascinating far behind and becomes hypnotic as Sister Ruth—stripped of her nun-ness completely as she paints her lips a carnal red; the same color as the dress which shows off her form that has been non-existent to this point—meets external frustration at every turn, become so vulnerable that the superego controlling all moral authority collapse and unleashes all her repressed desires.
Deborah Kerr—still an unknown in Hollywood and six years away from lying on beach with Burt Lancaster—is nevertheless the star here and it is a testament to her professionalism that she didn’t push to play the showier role. Especially in consideration of her relationship to director Powell. Instead, Kerr gives a solid, quietly powerful portrayal of repressed desires trying with all their might to burst through the gate, but being pushed right back down into the unconscious by the gatekeeper. It is a fantastically subtle performance.
But let us not kid ourselves. Kathleen Byron owns Black Narcissus and it is her devastatingly powerful deterioration (for which those in the make-up department deserve equal credit) as Sister Ruth that pulls all the other admirable qualities of the movie up to the peak of brilliance.
