Black Narcissus (1947) on Netflix
Sister Clodagh leads four nuns to the Palace of Mopu, a former harem on a Himalayan cliff, to open a school and hospital. The climate and the local population prove difficult.
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- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Sister Clodagh becomes Sister Superior at St. Faith, the youngest in her order, and the Reverend Mother doubts she is ready for the posting. With four nuns she travels to the Palace of Mopu, a cliff-top building in the Himalayas that once served as a harem for the Old General's father. He has asked the sisters to teach the children and young women of the valley and run a dispensary for its residents. The Old General provides Joseph Anthony, a six-year-old boy, as a translator, and the palace comes with an elderly caretaker, Angu Ayah. His British agent, Mr. Dean, handles the mission's outside business and expects the nuns to leave. Kanchi, a local girl, and the Old General's son, the Young General, also seek lessons at the convent.
Cast
- Eddie Whaley Jr.as Joseph Anthony
- Shaun Nobleas Con
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Black Narcissus (1947)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Behind-the-scenes there was personal tension on set: Deborah Kerr, playing Sister Clodagh, was the director's ex-lover, while Kathleen Byron, playing Sister Ruth, was his current one. Powell later wrote that he was told this was "not uncommon in show business", but that it was new to him.
- In the United States the Catholic National Legion of Decency condemned Black Narcissus as "an affront to religion and religious life". Ten cuts of about 900 feet of film, supervised by Emeric Pressburger, removed flashbacks of Sister Clodagh's life before she became a nun, after which the Legion removed the film from its condemned list and further bookings became possible.
- Emeric Pressburger cast Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodagh even though Michael Powell thought she was too young for the part, and Powell had at one point considered Greta Garbo for the role. Kerr was paid £16,000 for fifty-five days of work.
SPOILER
Black Narcissus was intended to end with an extra scene in which Sister Clodagh sobs and blames herself before Mother Dorothea, but Powell was so impressed with a shot of rainfall on leaves, filmed as the penultimate scene, that he made it the last scene and scrapped the Mother Dorothea ending.- Martin Scorsese used the extreme close-ups of the nuns in Black Narcissus as the inspiration for how he treated Tom Cruise's character around the pool table in The Color of Money, part of the film's profound impact on later film-makers through its lighting and techniques.
- To suggest the mountainous Himalayas, the film made extensive use of matte paintings and large-scale landscape paintings, credited to W. Percy Day, along with scale models for motion shots of the convent.
- The look and cinematography of Disney's 2013 film Frozen was influenced by Black Narcissus: Frozen art director Michael Giaimo was greatly influenced by Jack Cardiff's work on it.
