Perry Kate
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Lovesusti
The Worst Film Ever
VividSimon
Simply Perfect
ghcheese
It seemed to me what they set out to due they failed at. It also seemed that most of the characters were off their rocker. I kept reading of the beauty. What I saw were obviously painted scenery. The only thing I can come up with the a bunch of artsy snobs who do nothing but find no fault in old movies just to make the selves feel superior to those who don't like it. They must have taken a film class in college. The story is dull. The characters are unrealistic. I would say laughable but I was too bored. Turn the channel.
Ivan Alexander
It is from another era. It's good, but I would not recommend, rather than for film students. Well expose the human condition and human misery. Beautiful landscapes. Exotic. Dark. The world has changed so much that it no longer makes sense this work. It's like an archaeological piece. A museum piece. It's cute, but it is for distance. Sorry for my English. It is because of Google translator and New World that refuses to come. The film starts to get interesting about 40 minutes. Good shot, good performances, quality, as they used to things. And other things I do not remember .. The mountain air fell ill nuns.
moviemaster
If you haven't seen this movie, don't bother. Although it may have had some significance in 1947, now it merely seems quaint and very dated. I don't even know why I bothered to watch the whole thing. I thought something was going to happen besides the mad nun going mad. Movies of this period quite often featured a "native" like "Sabu" the magnificent. They were considered oddities by movie goers then, exotic. Certainly his costumes were. But of course they also needed Whites, dressed up to look "Indian" to play major roles, hence Simmons in what is probably her strangest role. But I have to wonder if it is not the fault of the screenplay, not the author which makes this such an uninteresting tale. It seems to be inspired more by Fort Apache (including ominous drum beats) than anything really Indian. She lived in India most of her life and seems to have written well of it. The story of a bunch of nuns (already a dubious subject for me) is ludicrous, offering "help" to the locals and the bringing the heathens to a real religion (as opposed to Hinduism -a sort of religion/ social structure over 5,000 years older than Christianity). It's preposterous, but plausible to Brits and Americans who understand nothing of the world, particularity in 1947. And of course it did happen, to no avail. The most gratifying part of the movie is the failure of the nuns as they ride off on their Shetland ponies. But as for entertainment, better to meditate for two hours for intellectual stimulation. The cinematography was good for the time. The costumes and setting were lavish. Amusing that not one part of it was filmed in India, mostly Pinewood studios. And to offset the ringing of the bell by Kerr they presented what was surely Tibetan monks blowing dungchen, not to be found anywhere near Darjeeling, even though it is in the farthest Northern reaches of India. Usually Rank movies are quite good. This was quite a disappointment.
Ross622
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's Black Narcissus is a movie about nuns that takes every religious drama up to a whole new level. The movie tells the story about 5 nuns who are Protestants instead of Catholics led by Sister Clodagh (played by Deborah Kerr) who end up setting up a school in the Himalayas with lots of struggles of their own with lots of children wanting to learn things from them. The way that both Powell and Pressburger direct this movie reminds me of how the Coen brothers would direct their movies only that the Coen brothers movies are much more entertaining. There was a lot of other great performances in this movie from Kathleen Byron as the nun who is really sick of what Sister Clodagh is doing that she gets driven insane, a young Jean Simmons as an Indian teenager known to cause trouble frequently, Flora Robson, Jenny Laird, and Judith Furse as the three other nuns, Sabu (who was famous for playing Mowgli in the 1942 adaptation of The Jungle Book) as the young General, and David Farrar as Mr. Dean a man who would always help the nuns with their work and answer any questions they had for him. The most entertaining part of this movie is one of the final scenes in which you see Sister Clodagh is ringing the bell and then you see Sister Ruth (played by Kathleen Byron) trying to kill her when the attempt fails and especially for my first time ever seeing this film and that scene was the scene in the film that I least expected to happen. A masterpiece, as well as one of the greatest movies ever made.
