Line #24 YMMV/BlackNarcissus


1	!!1947 Film
2
3	* AdaptationDisplacement: The film is far better-known than the book.
4	* AlternateCharacterInterpretation:
5	** Was Sister Ruth really just driven mad by the new environment? Or was it because she received barely any kindness or friendship from her fellow sisters? They are a bit dismissive of her, notably the incident where she does stop a patient from bleeding out and Clodagh tells her she should have summoned Briony. But she does display an mental disorder that suggests the other nuns already know her limits and have given up trying.
6	** Some fans think that Clodagh may have actually slept with Conn during their 'romance' back in Ireland, and that she had expected him to marry her for this reason. When he opted to go to America, she was DefiledForever and chose to become a nun. Another possibility is that they didn't sleep together but everyone in her village assumed they had - which had much the same effect.
7	** Did Mr. Dean ask Clodagh to take in Kanchi simply because he got tired of the girl trying to seduce him and having to rebuff her? Or is she actually his lover whom he's decided to end things with, again because he's getting tired of their relationship, while possibly trying to salvage Kanchi's reputation? Or, is there a possibility that she's actually his illegitimate ''daughter?'' Clodagh firmly refuses to enquire further, even when Mr Dean, cheerfully mocking, says "You're sure there's no question you're ''dying'' to ask me?"
8	** We never actually find out the result of the Young General's tryst with Kanchi. The story of the prince and the beggar maid does end with the beggar marrying the prince and becoming queen. But we don't see Kanchi herself at the end, so it's possible she ran off and the Young General is apologising for a youthful indiscretion.
9	* AwardSnub: Although the film itself managed to get well-deserved nominations for its cinematography and art direction (which it won), neither Creator/DeborahKerr nor Kathleen Byron got any recognition for their performances at the UsefulNotes/{{Academy Award}}s. However, Deborah did win a New York Film Critics Circle award.
10	* DesignatedVillain: Clodagh's former beau Conn was this to her. She had only assumed they would marry, as did the rest of the town. So when he took off for America, she had to become a nun to escape the humiliation.
11	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Kanchi has no lines, only appears in a few scenes and disappears after the second act. But Creator/JeanSimmons is ''very'' memorable - the character's free spirited nature contrasting heavily with the chaste nuns. After Sister Ruth, Kanchi is probably the most memorable character in the story.
12	* FridgeHorror: If Sister Clodagh became a nun after Conn jilted her, it's possible she did so to escape getting sent to the Magdalene Laundries - places where women deemed 'fallen' in Ireland were sent to work after the country became independent.
13	* SugarWiki/FunnyMoments:
14	** The Young General speaks of what he intends to study - math with the mathematics sister, English with the English sister - and then says "physics with the [[AccidentalInnuendo physical sister]]". Even Sister Clodagh finds this ActuallyPrettyFunny.
15	** The Young General's final scene, where he comes to confess to doing a "very wrong thing"...several weeks ''after'' he ran off with Kanchi. Sister Clodagh deadpans "Isn't it rather late to tell me about that?"
16	* HilariousInHindsight:
17	** Creator/DeborahKerr playing an Irish nun who's NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent. About ten years later she played another Irish nun in ''Film/HeavenKnowsMrAllison'', and puts the accent on. And got an Oscar nomination for it. And in that, it's the opposite case where the man has unrequited love for Deborah's nun.
18	** Deborah Kerr's [[Film/TheKingAndI next visit to Asia]] would go slightly better. Additionally the convent was once the house for the General's harem. In ''The King & I'', Kerr's character protests at having to live alongside a harem.
19	** If you watch ''Film/FromHereToEternity'' immediately after ''Black Narcissus'' - where Deborah Kerr has a memorably steamy kiss on the beach - it gives the impression that Sister Clodagh gave into her desires eventually.
20	** In this film, Kathleen Byron plays a mentally disturbed nun who gets an insane crush on David Farrar and tries to kill another nun: in another Powell and Pressberger film, ''The Small Back Room'', Kathleen Byron plays the endlessly patient and understanding girlfriend[[note]]Well, not endlessly patient--she walks out on him in the first act, being sick of his self-destructive behaviour, although she comes back later[[/note]] to David Farrar, who's playing a [=WW2=] bomb disposal scientist cracking up under the stress of his work, an old injury and his alcoholism.
21	* JerkassWoobie: You do have to feel a little sorry for Sister Ruth, as she's ignored and written off by many of the other characters. Her actress Kathleen Byron even said that she may have been better if the nuns had been kinder to her. [[spoiler: Then she goes and tries to push Sister Clodagh off a cliff]].
22	* SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: Kathleen Byron's entire performance as Sister Ruth. It's one of the most intense and unsettling performances in cinema, and notable for the total lack of vanity on the part of the actress. Nowadays, we accept that a young, attractive actress might play a really unsympathetic and screwed-up character and it just goes to show how good she is; but back when the film was made, it was incredibly risky because these actresses were expected to play nice, pretty girls all the time. Sister Ruth starts out sickly and whiny and turns into a homicidal {{Jerkass}}, and while the role got Kathleen Byron the attention of Hollywood, she never got a role as prominent as this ever again.
23	* {{Narm}}: The WhamShot of Sister Ruth in a red dress makes sense in context, but it is a bit silly that the movie treats it as something with the same seriousness as, say, a murder.
24	* NarmCharm: The majority of Kathleen Byron's performance is pretty hammy and over-the-top, but she succeeds in being very unsettling all the same.
25	* NightmareFuel: [[spoiler: Sister Ruth]] once she's undergone her EvilCostumeSwitch. With the faces she makes and the way she stalks Sister Clodagh around the convent in the early morning, she gives one of the most unsettling {{Kubrick Stare}}s in film history.
26	* OnceOriginalNowCommon:
27	** This film's use of striking colour was shocking at the time. Crowds went wild just for the shot of pink flowers appearing. Remember that this was a British film made just at the end of World War II and it's even more shocking.
28	** As noted above, Kathleen Byron was one of the first actresses to really rebel against the standards of the era. Nowadays it's a given that an actress would forget about her own beauty and vanity for the sake of a role. But 1940s audiences expected actresses to play nice pretty girls. Her performance was shockingly daring at the time; movies like ''Film/RequiemForADream'', ''{{Film/Monster}}'', or even ''Film/SunsetBoulevard'' may have gone further in that direction since then, but ''Black Narcissus'' went there first.
29	* RetroactiveRecognition: Jean Simmons filmed this around the same time as ''{{Film/Hamlet 1948}}'' but this film came out first. The latter got her an Oscar nomination and turned her into a star.
30	* TearJerker: A village mother brings a dying baby to the convent. Sister Honey can't do anything and, despite the warnings from Mr Dean, gives the mother a placebo for her peace of mind. The child dies during the night.
31	* UnbuiltTrope: With regards to 'nunsploitation' films that would later take cues from this, ''Black Narcissus'' shows the nuns struggling to hold on to all their values as opposed to just chastity (that's reserved for Sisters Clodagh and Ruth). There's no actual sex in the film, and the nuns manage to resist the temptation by leaving the area. [[spoiler: Except for Sister Ruth, that is.]]
32	* ValuesDissonance:
33	** Jean Simmons is very obviously wearing {{Brownface}} to portray an Indian girl at a time when such things were a little more acceptable in film.
34	** Sister Ruth deciding to nickname the young general Black Narcissus and then saying that all the locals "all look the same". While it could be {{Foreshadowing}} that she's going to go off the deep end, it's still uncomfortable.
35	** Mr Dean warns the nuns not to treat any dangerously ill local people in case they die, saying that the locals are primitive and child-like and would regard medicine as magic, while generally being very patronizing. (However, he might have been pandering to the nuns' prejudices in order to keep them safe; when Sister Honey treats a sick baby regardless of Dean's warning and the baby dies, he soberly tells them that the agent before him accidentally caused the death of a child, and was murdered for it by the local people.)
36	* ValuesResonance:
37	** While Sisters Clodagh and Ruth are quite condescending and rude towards the native people, the film makes it very evident that they're in the wrong, and overall the nuns themselves are portrayed as being foolish in trying to Westernise the locals. Notably the general pays the locals to go to the convent every day, and they're not happy with the arrangement; in the meantime, while the native people are perfectly happy in the environment of the Himalayas, the nuns have a ''serious'' failure to cope with their surroundings. The young boy Joseph Anthony - there as a translator - also notices the growing attractions from Kanchi and Sister Ruth before the rest of the nuns do. Meanwhile Mr. Dean, while not precisely GoingNative, does understand and get on with the locals far better and recognises the futility of the convent's endeavours.
38	** The film scholar Ian Christie pointed out that earlier films like ''Literature/LostHorizon'' cast the "east" as a mystical paradise where white adventurers find the "meaning of life". The point of ''Black Narcissus'' is that the people of the valley are more earthy, more realistic and grounded than the nuns who simply ''can't'' or ''won't'' adjust to their surroundings and lifestyle, and ultimately fail to impose their way of life. In other words, it deconstructs the colonial project albeit using means and methods (such as the potentially dubious casting and characterization) that are products of its time.
39	* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: See all the stunning sets and scenery? All done in Creator/PinewoodStudios using matte paintings, hanging miniatures, glass artwork and other visual tricks. The result is a striking film that looks as if it was at least partially shot on location. Some scenes were shot in West Sussex Gardens - in the home of an Indian retiree who was able to lend necessary plants and trees.
40	* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical:
41	** The film was released only a few months before India gained independence from Britain. It's been suggested that the final scene of the nuns leaving the convent is a good allegory for the British bidding farewell to their fading empire. One critic described it as "a respectful, rational retreat from something England never owned and never understood".
42	** Sister Clodagh is also Irish amongst an English order of nuns. Just one year after the film came out, Ireland too would officially be independent from Britain.

Context YMMV / BlackNarcissus