Black Narcissus – Paperback

Nasheed Qamar Faruqi’s compelling exploration of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 tale of sexual obsession among a community of nuns in the Himalayas takes as its starting point the author’s engagement with Black Narcissus, firstly as a young British/Pakistani girl, and later as a filmmaker herself. She draws on research in the BFI National Archive and a wealth of primary sources to understand the formal features and creative decisions that underpin the film’s narrative and aesthetics. Addressing the recreation of a Himalayan village in Pinewood Studios, Faruqi explores the contribution of The Archers’ collaborators Alfred Junge, Hein Heckroth, Reginald Mills, Jack Cardiff, Brian Easdale and W. Percy Day to the film’s visual impact. She considers Black Narcissus‘s female characters – Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) and her clash with the headstrong Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron), a rivalry that played out both on and off screen, as well as the local girl Kanchi, played by a white actress, Jean Simmons. She also addresses the film’s male leads – the local agent, Mr Dean (David Farrar) and Sabu as the Young General, tracing the narratives of race and sexuality that thread through the film. Highlighting the moral and ethical conflict that lies at the heart of Black Narcissus, Faruqi explores how themes of vanity and narcissism in relation to ideas of culpability, guilt and religion are central to the film and links them to the historical contexts of the film’s making, well as other Archers films that told stories of war, duty and desire – such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and I Know Where I’mGoing.