[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

applying today s values to the past is akin to cladding an historic building in plastic
and provokes a comparable response from historians.
Mopu is a place of colour, poverty and primitive beliefs, where steamy jungle and
snow-capped peaks are unconvincingly juxtaposed. In Purkayastha s judgement, the
scenery resembles no particular place in India. This is symptomatic of a generalized
vision of the East out of Lost Horizon (Frank Capra, US, 1938) and still persisting in
The King and I (Walter Lang, US, 1957), where Deborah Kerr again played the visi-
tor from the West. Black Narcissus is in danger of dwindling into a Rank travelogue
as Dean intones over shots of smiling locals:  The people are like mountain peasants
everywhere simple and independent. They work because they must, they smile
when they feel like it and they re no respecters of persons. The men are men no
better than anywhere else. The women are women, the children, children. Andrew
Moor interprets this as parody, but its purpose is unclear given that Rank financed
the film.16
Myth also wins over reality in the presentation of the palace. The book stresses
that Mopu is designed to withstand the elements, the single storey reducing exposure
to the wind, and the windows having thick glass. The palace in the film resembles a
summer residence on two floors (staircases allow dramatic camera angles), with no
glass in the windows to obstruct the mountain vistas. The sisters introduce the trap-
pings of religious life, but they never manage to change the character of the place.
Dean helps them, but at heart he prefers to leave things as they were. The film hints
at the palace s louche past by contrasting the bright decor with the bleached robes of
the sisters. But religious life need not be pallid, as the sisters demonstrate by intro-
ducing statuettes and candles.
Black Narcissus prefigures the Bollywood movie in its emphasis on colour. The
significance accorded to Sister Ruth s lipstick and her red dress is only possible in
Black Narcissus (GB, 1947) " 77
colour film. Both are additions for the screen version. The trouble is that the satu-
rated hues evoke Hollywood s worst excesses. John Huntley worked on the film and
wrote of attempting to keep the dreamlike strangeness without garish colour.17 But
garishness intrudes, though transfers between media may have distorted the tonal
balance.18 There is no reason why audiences from the 1940s should have interpreted
Powell and Pressburger s exuberance as anything other than escapism in the same
vein as American Technicolor offerings. What Durgnat calls  philosophy by Tech-
nicolour has overtaken the film.19 Even David Thomson waxes lyrical:  They en-
joyed the glory days of Technicolor, before the process opted for high fidelity, cool
accuracy, and anonymity, when every color was exaggerated and it was possible to
paint with light. 20 Colour may delight an audience, but it cannot move them, how-
ever ruby red Sister Ruth s lips might be. For this we need engagement with real
emotions.
An audience s sense of watching a Hollywood product is enhanced by the music,
which replaces dialogue in some scenes. It is analysed in Alton Jerome McFarland s
paper on the use of sound in the film.21 The problem lies in the music s quality. Brian
Easdale s score makes obvious emotional points, never rising above the mundane.
One example occurs when Sister Clodagh encounters Sister Ruth wearing the red
dress. A wordless female chorus rises over the orchestra in some clichéd scoring.
A similar modal approach and comparable forces are apparent in Flos Campi (1925)
by Vaughan Williams. Here the composer uses a viola to spin an astringent melodic
line over spare accompaniment, creating a sense of wonderment which eludes Eas-
dale, who studied with Vaughan Williams s friend and pupil, Gordon Jacob. Sister
Ruth walks through the jungle to Dean s home to the accompaniment of rhythmic
drumming. A solo string melody is introduced over the drums as she enters the build-
ing, but the oily tone conveys the same superficial emotionalism as the chorus, which
is reintroduced as she faints. What should be overpowering is rendered sentimental,
neutralizing genuine feeling. A comparison with Joe Losey s The Go-Between makes
the point. Michel Legrand s score is out of period and recycled from The Happy
Ending (Richard Brooks, US, 1969), but by employing dissonance against insistent
rhythm, it catches the tension between the ordered, upper-class world and the covert
relationship which crosses class barriers. The emotional impact of events on screen
is enhanced rather than echoed.
The Go-Between relies on naturalistic acting; Black Narcissus has an equally
cathartic ending but displays contrasting acting styles. Deborah Kerr s performance
as Sister Clodagh is as buttoned up as her costume: her look of horror when Sister
Ruth falls to her death is one of the few moments when her character s emotions
break through. This is someone who takes her vows and her position as head of
the mission seriously. Flora Robson and Judith Furse are equally naturalistic. The
contrast is with the overwrought performances of May Hallatt, Jenny Laird, Jean
Simmons and especially Kathleen Byron, whose staring eyes and flaring nostrils
hark back to German Expressionism but sit uneasily with 1940s production values.
78 " Movie Greats
Diana Dors wrote that Powell considered her for a role.22 It is intriguing to speculate
on the result had she opted for the Grand Guignol school of acting. How her sultry
presence (as Sister Honey?) would have changed the film. Whether the clash of act-
ing styles was deliberate is unclear, but it must have been sanctioned by Powell. It
makes the film unusual in a period when realism was ascendant, but this is distinct
from quality. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]