Black Narcissus

[Steve Crook]

Originally Posted by samper By far my favorite of P&P movie if not the best I have ever seen. I hope the R2 new blue-ray will be a stunning transfer above the French relase - which was magnificent also.

Will it stand being made in any higher resolution, or will that then start to show the joins too much?

There are a lot of scenes that use matte shots or hanging miniatures. Sometimes where you'd least expect them. The last time I saw a 35mm print it was a very good print that had had some restoration work done on it (not sure what stage they went back to, if it was a full or partial restoration) - and that was beginning to show some of the joins where the mattes were used

Steve

[christoph404]

Originally Posted by Steve Crook Will it stand being made in any higher resolution, or will that then start to show the joins too much? There are a lot of scenes that use matte shots or hanging miniatures. Sometimes where you'd least expect them. The last time I saw a 35mm print it was a very good print that had had some restoration work done on it (not sure what stage they went back to, if it was a full or partial restoration) - and that was beginning to show some of the joins where the mattes were used Steve

I think with a film like this modern technology and restoration techniques can take the film to realms of quality that never really existed in its original form. In other words you can take things too far and the illusion starts to crumble slightly because the sharpening and so on is too scientific. I would hope those involved in restoring a film like this are aware of that but I do agree that going further and further down the path of higher resolution and restoration has to be done very carefully.

[Steve Crook]

I hope they also correct the error in the archive print.

First, a bit of background:
In the "madness of Sister Ruth" sequence when she gets all agitated when she & Mr Dean are shouting at each other she famously "sees red" (and there's a wash of red across the screen) and then she faints. But the BFI archive print goes to BLUE!! Not just any blue but the bright blue of a blue screen.

I wrote to the BFI and told them that it should go to BLACK, not blue. I said in the letter that I'd heard of people having a black-out but never a blue-out :)

I also mentioned that I'd checked with Jack Cardiff and Ian Christie and they both agreed that it should go to blue not to black.

I suspect that it's because there was some modern electronic kit in the process that saw "no light" and interpreted that as "no signal" and modern kit often uses blue for "no signal".

The response from the BFI (March 2003) admitted that the fault was theirs and said that they would be looking to "have this section reprinted before we are able to allow it to be screened again". In the meantime the print will be withdrawn from circulation."

So if anyone was due to see BN they'd better check it's still going to be shown and if the BFI really have "withdrawn from circulation" all their prints - Sorry

But I'm still puzzled as to why Criterion's DVD goes to blue whereas Carlton's correctly goes to black.

Steve

[samper]

Any news on the ITV DVD BD release yet? Wondering if it will be region free ...

[Steve Crook]

Originally Posted by samper Any news on the ITV DVD BD release yet? Wondering if it will be region free ...

Amazon UK gives the release date as June 16 and don't mention any region coding - but their not mentioning it is no guarantee that it'll be region free

Steve

[julian_craster]

Unlikely, as Criterion hold the USA DVD rights, so they are likely to issue BN on Blue-Ray......

[samper]

Dvdtimes reporting that the BD is region free. Awsome news.

[Steve Crook]

Originally Posted by samper Dvdtimes reporting that the BD is region free. Awsome news.

That's one way to get us all to buy a Blu-Ray player

Steve

[blacknorth]

I always found this film fairly impenetrable, but I'm willing to have another go at it reading all the good stuff here.

[julian_craster]

I wouldn't buy BN on Blue Ray in the expectation that it will be 'region free'.......

[TimR]

I watched this for the first time last week and still have not sorted out my response to it.

It is a must-see for anyone who cares about film because of the production, thanks to the genius of Jack Cardiff and Alfred Junge.

From the first sequence, the use of color and light and the techical wizardry of the production design are so rich and dazzling that it is too much to take in. I had to watch several scenes - or at times, several specific images - a few times to even begin to appreciate them. This is true even before the nuns arrive: the mother superior deciding who will serve at the convent as the camera focuses on one after another from a high perspective and the aya running through the light and wind of the palace, preparing it for Esmond Knight's arrival.

The flashbacks are unlike anything I have ever seen in any other color film: the light on the water and the vivid green of Deborah Kerr's dress as she runs out, literally, into darkness. A Powell and Pressburger production seems to demand superlatives, and "breathtaking" is the word I would use here.

Yet having said that, I disliked the film intensely as a whole. It is the first P&P film I did not like, and it is hardly surprising that there would be one film out of so many great ones that I did not respond to.

The enomous discrepancy between the production and the content left me bewildered and surprised. At best, this material is lurid melodrama - a pop-Freud view of the religious life that is a dark mirror to the sentimentality of The Sound of Music - and equally absurd. The standard for this sort of thing is Fred Zinneman's The Nun's Story with Audrey Hepburn: a serious, thoughtful fim.

The theme of repression could be an interesting one, but it is not addressed seriously here, and the primary characters are certainly not repressed - Sister Cloda is projecting like a house afire from the first scene, popping her eyes and pressing her lips and making it clear she is Bitter and Angry and more than a little Power Crazy.

One painful love affair transforms her personality (and not for the better)? Really? I wanted to know more. It was just a plot device.

Sister Ruth is already unbalanced at the beginning, and by the end she is carrying on like something out of The Exorcist.

Apparently the Mother Superior did not know her job. What conceivable reason could there be to send this woman to an Indian oupost?

At worst, it is just rubbish - and the film itself degenerates into a horror movie with Sister Ruth wandering through a swamp in her Red Dress and the two woman battling on the edge of a precipice. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what to make of it. How could the creators of truly great films treat a story with such lack of depth and understanding?

The performances of Flora Robson and Judith Furse and Jean Simmons suggest the depth that might have been. They create complete characters in a few scenes. I kept waiting for the story to return to them: real human beings doing battle with an extraordinary situation. But the camera kept going back to the three main characters, with David Farrar in his Robinson Crusoe get-up with those two frenzied "nuns", and it turned into kitsch.

After it was over, I felt disoriented. I experienced something similiar when I saw Ryan's Daughter as a boy: an epic production of a pipsqueak story. But this discrepancy was much greater. I took a long walk, trying to understand it.

These two artists have given me so much sheer joy over the last few months. Twice before, I experienced a similar opening of a door: the great silent films when I was in my 20s and the epics of David Lean when I was a boy. I owe them a great deal. A few days after this, I watched Tales of Hoffman and found again the brilliance of P&P, telling a story with a generous spirit and perception.

[Steve Crook]

Originally Posted by TimR Yet having said that, I disliked the film intensely as a whole. It is the first P&P film I did not like, and it is hardly surprising that there would be one film out of so many great ones that I did not respond to. The enomous discrepancy between the production and the content left me bewildered and surprised. At best, this material is lurid melodrama - a pop-Freud view of the religious life that is a dark mirror to the sentimentality of The Sound of Music - and equally absurd. The standard for this sort of thing is Fred Zinneman's The Nun's Story with Audrey Hepburn: a serious, thoughtful fim.

Could that reaction be because it was the first film they'd done in that sequence of work from Forty-Ninth Parallel (1941) which wasn't an original story? That they didn't have as much invested in it because they hadn't watched it grow from the original idea. Maybe also because it was their first adaptation of someone else's story.

Gone to Earth (1950) has a similar problem to some extent. It's visually stunning, the landscape plays an important part in the film. But the story itself is lurid and melodramatic.

It's interesting that although BN (and to a lesser extent GTE) is admired for its technical excellence, it doesn't usually invoke the same passionate devotion that the earlier films that were original stories (Blimp, ACT, IKWIG, AMOLAD) inspire.

Steve

[samper]

I could not disagree with you more.

BN is the quintessential P&P movie. Remember that it is based on a novel by Rumer Godden. Another of her novels was The River – filmed by Renoir. Another fabulous story and movie.

BN has all of the fine traits expected of a great movie – passion, religion, horror, tragedy and perhaps even a smear of melodrama. I thought the acting was first rate from Kerr and Byron. And who can forget the youthful beauty of Simmons and the majesty of Sabu.

I agree totally on the technical value including the Technicolor print.

[Steve Crook]

Originally Posted by samper I could not disagree with you more. BN is the quintessential P&P movie. Remember that it is based on a novel by Rumer Godden. Another of her novels was The River – filmed by Renoir. Another fabulous story and movie. BN has all of the fine traits expected of a great movie – passion, religion, horror, tragedy and perhaps even a smear of melodrama. I thought the acting was first rate from Kerr and Byron. And who can forget the youthful beauty of Simmons and the majesty of Sabu. I agree totally on the technical value including the Technicolor print.

Who are you disagreeing with?

Is it more the quintessential P&P movie than one where they've created the story themselves?

Steve

[Third Man]

Soaring extravaganza comes to mind when I think about 'Black Narcissus' just like King Vidor's 'Duel In the Sun' both films indulge in such phantasmagoric visuals that all common sense seems to be lost and therefore a first viewing of this film can be discouraging to say the least but I would say watch it again--- and again---- and again, in fact watch it lots of times because this one gets better and better. The Archers were experimenters in a mainstream film industry, enjoy them for what they are artists who were allowed to wonder and make mistakes, although I don't think Black Narcissus was one of them.

Always interesting to hear someones views on this heady film after a first viewing, I think many of things you say I may of thought as well first time round but now I'm a full convert---- no pun intended.

Simon