Black Narcissus (1947)
Directed by Michael Powell
A group of Anglican nuns, led by Sister Clodagh, are sent to a mountain in the Himalayas. The climate in the region is hostile and the nuns are housed in an odd old palace. They work to establish a school and a hospital, but slowly their focus shifts. Sister Ruth falls for a government worker, Mr. Dean, and begins to question her vow of celibacy. As Sister Ruth obsesses over Mr. Dean, Sister Clodagh becomes immersed in her own memories of love.
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What critics compared Black Narcissus to
The vehicle for their reunion is the title railroad line, which will take them from the trauma of their father’s death a year before to the Black Narcissus–like convent to which their mother (Anjelica Huston) long ago fled.
He also wants the brothers to visit their mother (Anjelica Huston), who has gone off to be a nun in a "a convent in the foothills of the Himalayas," like Deborah Kerr in "Black Narcissus."
He hands out detailed daily schedules prepared by an alopecia-afflicted research assistant who's travelling in another carriage, and also has a secret agenda: to find the trio's mother – played, of course, by Anjelica Huston – who has become a Catholic nun and moved to a remote convent in the Himalayas (echoes here of Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus are just one from the usual Anderson crop of cinematic and cultural references).
The Grand Budapest Hotel is spry and sly, with tickling tributes to cinematic forebearers; there’s a sequence lifted whole cloth from Hitchcock that, no lie, made me clap in my seat, while a mountaintop set-piece put me in mind of both Black Narcissus and the 1941 Goofy short “The Art of Skiing.”
Their “Black Narcissus” comes to mind when the island is scoured for the runaway kids in a medium-long tableau of three figures that includes a barefoot nun in a knee-length white shift: who is she, why is she dressed so formally and so casually?
…and the religious ethics of “Black Narcissus”…
They both do their best to lend the film an appealingly spooky vibe that hearkens back to critically-acclaimed films with similar subjects, such as The Devils and Black Narcissus.
Written by “Annabelle” screenwriter Gary Dauberman and James Wan, it’s lush, operatic, hardcore Catholic horror from the depths of “The Omen” and “The Exorcist,” with hints of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s “Black Narcissus,” washed with medieval overtones.
The Nun could have stepped away from the rest of the franchise by fully embracing the melodramatic camp suggested by the idea of a convent full of evil nuns, much like Powell & Pressburger did with Black Narcissus (1947) and Ken Russell with The Devils (1971).
Film buffs will instantly recognize elements of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s “Black Narcissus” (1947), Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1958), William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” (1973) and Richard Donner’s “The Omen” (1976).
I don’t recall seeing one of those in Powell and Pressburger‘s nunnery drama Black Narcissus (also namechecked).
Aquí, por supuesto, la influencia de Black Narcissus (1947) es una de las más importantes referencias que Aster dio al joven fotógrafo Pawel Pogorzelski ( Hereditary ) y se nota.
Among the movie’s strengths are its glaring yet muted color palette, which thrums with pale shades of yellow and blue—a callback to the low-fi Technicolor of vintage horror flicks like Black Narcissus (1947).
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The Red Shoes and its theme of losing one’s self to a part is an obvious influence, but it’s another Powell and Pressburger film, Black Narcissus, with its sex-starved nuns, that hits closer to home.
This is the Michael Powell section of the film, evoking both the weird dreaminess of the great English filmmaker’s Black Narcissus and the rugged half-natural half-mystical landscape of his Hebrides love letter The Edge of the World.
It's great to hear Jean Simmons again, a gorgeous young woman back in the 1940s in David Lean's Great Expectations, Michael Powell's Black Narcissus and Laurence Olivier's Hamlet.
When Benedetta suddenly sprouts stigmata and is installed as Abbess in her mother’s place, Christina’s hostility flares into an all-out war which culminates in her literal downfall, in a wildly Gothic-garish scene ripped from “Black Narcissus” by way of “Vertigo.”
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It was followed in 1985 by "Rambo: First Blood Part II," directed by George P. Cosmatos (and, remarkably, shot by the great Jack Cardiff, the cinematographer behind two of the most wildly beautiful-looking pictures ever made, "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes").
Powell's collaborations with Emeric Pressburger (A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes) were among the flashiest British films of the postwar period.
The film was pulled from theaters in less than a week, and the foofaraw all but ended director Michael Powell’s big-screen career, which was built on outsize – and much more polite – successes like The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus , his collaborations with Emeric Pressburger.
Peeping Tom followed a train of successes from British filmmaker Michael Powell, who, along with scenarist Emric Pressberger, is responsible for The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp; Peeping Tom was critically rejected and banned, and although not his final film, it is seen as Powell’s career-ender.
Powell and Pressburger made some of the best and most successful films of the 1940s and '50s, including " The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp ," with Roger Livesey's great performance spanning three wars; " The Red Shoes ," with Moira Shearer as a ballet dancer; "Black Narcissus," with Deborah Kerr as a nun in the Himalayas, and " Stairway To Heaven (A Matter Of Life And Death) ," with David Niven as a dead airman.
Having established himself as a maestro of quality cinema with classics such as The Red Shoes (1948), Ill Met By Moonlight (1957), Battle of the River Plate (1956), Black Narcissus (1947) and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Powell took a sharp left turn with this shocker about a camera-wielding killer - and it cost him dearly.
Until he directed "Peeping Tom" (which is being shown in a gorgeous new 35-millimeter print), Powell was known as a consummate pictorialist whose films (often made in collaboration with Emeric Pressburger and including "The Red Shoes," "Black Narcissus" and "A Matter of Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven") were not known for outraging too many sensibilities.