Sunday, January 30, 2011

The Shade Against Dark Blue that is Mystical Flamingo

Black Narcissus (1947)
directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

My favorite scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark occurs after Indy secures the headpiece to the Staff of Ra and visits the house of a scholar in Egypt for translation. In some ways, the set is the film's most flagrantly artificial: an antique clutter of telescopes, lanterns, dusty books, and a decrepit man in a tunic. The sky outside the window at the back of the room doesn't look like the moon over the desert so much as a painting, but at the moment of the translation's completion, the ominous wind that stirs out of nowhere is as eerie as anything else in the film.

No movie is as artificial as Black Narcissus, but nothing shot "on location" could be better. There is nothing like Technicolor for candlelight on a starry night, or composite shots of great ringing bells and endless Himalayan valleys, or faces - faces like demons, lit from beneath or from deep within - either in close-up or ringed by a thousand miles of clear sky. And the wind! At a whisper, or a gale, or a long, sad moan. I am often thrilled by movies, but rarely does my heart race. That occasional flicker in the three-strip Technicolor is like embers at the end of the perfect campfire - an elemental, magic warmth that turns one's mind to distant galaxies. Black Narcissus is one of the medium's great experiences, and the real world simply isn't as wonderful when it's over.