ianlouisiana Review of Black Narcissus

Black Narcissus (1947)

"He wears short shorts"....................

[4/10 · 18 February 2010]

I'm almost afraid to offer a dissenting opinion on "Black Narcissus",so overwhelming are the positive comments.I first saw it with my grandmother who took me to the pictures every week whilst my grandfather,a military tailor,went over to Aldershot delivering articles of uniform to the officers there.During our usual post - film inquest in "Lyons",in between mouthfuls of blackcurrant and apple pie it became clear that neither of us had "got" what it was about,but I was careful to say I had enjoyed it so as not to endanger our visit to see Humphrey Bogart in "Chain Lightning"the following Thursday. After several subsequent viewings and despite Powell and Pressburger's later elevation to giants of post-war British Cinema,after watching it again last night on "FilmFour" it still seems to me a remarkably overwrought,garishly coloured,ludicrously overacted bit of Gothic nonsense. Planter Mr D.Farrar (a second - string Stewart Granger) wanders scantily dressed will nilly (if you'll pardon the expression)around a a group of sexually - repressed nuns causing hormonal distress. Head Nun (Miss D.Kerr,posher than H.M. the queen),seduced and abandoned in her home country of Ireland is more able to cope than some,and Mr Farrar is the subject of nunlust that manifests itself when the clearly unhinged Sister Ruth throws herself at him,only to be cruelly rejected. She then tries to murder Miss Kerr and ends up falling off a cliff.The nuns all pack up and go home,it starts raining and Mr Farrar rides off on a very small horse. Read into that what you will - and a lot of people do. Mr Farrar with his well - buttered,carefully tousled locks and pipe akimbo s irritating.Miss J.Simmons,blacked up and with apparently ever changing eye colours is embarrassing.The best performance is from the rather winsome Sabu,which,considering he came a dismal second to his elephant in "Elephant Boy" may be considered by some as damning him with faint praise. In my opinion - and it is only my opinion,not a statement of fact - "Black Narcissus" is notable only for the fact that it clearly influenced Alfred Hitchcock when he came to make his masterpiece "Vertigo" a decade later.