“The Sisters left Darjeeling in the last week of October. They had come to settle in the General’s Palace at Mopu, which was now to be known as the Convent of St Faith.”
There is nothing in the innocent opening sentences of Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel Black Narcissus to suggest that the subsequent film version would be butchered by censors, banned, and eventually hailed as “one of the first truly erotic films” by one of the world’s great directors Martin Scorsese.
That movie was made by an English director and a Hungarian-born writer-producer: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The celebrated cinema partnership is revered for a series of groundbreaking and influential British films, of which Black Narcissus has become one of the best-loved. Now, there is a new adaptation, this time a joint BBC-FX production made for the small screen and starring Gemma Arterton and Aisling Franciosi.
Stunning: the original Black Narcissus
Powell and Pressburger’s 1947 film of Black Narcissus took decades to be fully appreciated for its storytelling, but as a deliriously lush visual achievement it was admired straightaway. Despite censorship battles in America about its quivering erotic subtext, and even the reluctance of the book’s author, Rumer Godden, to give her seal of approval, it won two Oscars – for Jack Cardiff’s groundbreaking Technicolor cinematography and Alfred Junge’s ingenious art direction.
The film transports us, in its heightened, fever-dream way, to the abandoned palace of Mopu, site of a former harem high in the Himalayas, where the Anglican mission led by Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) will try to found their convent, and will stumble, thanks to the eerie character of the place and the very air.
She Done Him Wrong: Mae West’s career died for your sins.
This week we go West, Mae West, for a pair of saucy comedies: one’s pre-code, the other isn’t.
She Done Him Wrong
(1933)
Across town at 20th Century Fox, it was child superstar Shirley Temple keeping the studio in the black, while Paramount used pre-code sex to foot the bill. At a time when monogamy governed Hollywood, Mae West had more lovers in a single picture than most did in a lifetime. Based on West’s scandalous stage play
Diamond Lil, this was to be her second feature and first starring role. For two years, West and screenwriters Harvey Thew and John Bright grappled with a way to get it past the censors. Within months of its release, the Catholic Legion of Decency was formed, largely in response to the perceived threat West posed to the male libido.
It is a tribute to the civil rights movement and its recent incarnation as Black Lives Matter that, according to recent polls, a majority of white Americans believe that Black people are not treated fairly in our society, not only by police but also by other institutions. In fact, only 10% of American voters believe that racism is “not a problem at all.” Among those who hold that opinion, 91 percent voted for Donald Trump.
If you want to understand know how people can be blinded by hatred, “No Way Out,” a forgotten gem of a film from 1950, now available on YouTube and DVD, offers some valuable clues.