The following is part of a series on Powell and Pressburger films being posted this week on Notes from the Multiplex. Monday’s post, an article on the duel scene in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, can be read here. 

The defining frame of Powell and Pressburger’s 1947 drama Black Narcissus has to be the iconic image of Deborah Kerr standing on the edge of a vertigo-inducing drop (seen above), on top of which a newly founded hospital and school in the Himalayan mountains has been established. In this awe-inspiring yet dangerous setting, Kerr’s character, Sister Clodagh, and a group of other nuns work to educate and assist the local community, hoping to spread the word of God in the process.

It is an image which immediately evokes the sublime beauty of nature whilst simultaneously putting human kind in its place. We are not the master of mother nature but a small and fragile being, easily obliterated by the power and brutality of our environment which continually threatens to overpower us.

The image itself is a brilliantly constructed blend of live action footage using Kerr, combined with a matte painting of the surrounding landscape, credited to artist Walter Day who had worked with Powell and Pressburger on numerous films before Black Narcissus. By today’s standards the effect at work is probably obvious to all who watch the film. But the fact that the perspective has been forced in such a way as to emphasise the extreme height at which Kerr’s character resides and the accompanying sense of dread and fear we feel for her character in that position, still makes for a compelling composition.

Whilst clearly highlighting the physical remoteness of the group’s hilltop establishment, the frame also seems to suggest the metaphorical depths to which they could plummet should their mission fail, having invested so much of their passion and faith. Clodagh and the other sisters, literally reside on the edge of a great abyss. It is up to them to persevere and not succumb to the temptations which surround them: potentially toppling them from the dizzying heights of the Himalayan scenery towards the depths below. Of course, the same location will play a crucial role within the film’s astonishing conclusion: a cliffhanger ending if ever there was one!