Black Narcissus
Five Anglican nuns move from Calcutta to start up a new convent in the Himalayas. A general has given them the house in which he used to house his concubines, at the top of a mountain and on the edge of a huge precipice. Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) is made the youngest sister superior in the order, and is assisted in the move by the government official Dean (David Farrar). The lonely and exotic place and the presence of Dean awaken memories in Clodagh of what might have been had she not become a nun, and Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) goes mad with temptation, even as she takes on some of the angst and confusion experienced by the others.
Some trivia and dialogue, courtesy of imdb: The much admired Himalayan scenery was all created in the studio (with glass shots and hanging miniatures). The backdrops were blown-up black and white photographs. The art department then gave them their breathtaking colors by using pastel chalks on top of them.
SISTER CLODAGH: "We all need discipline. You said yourself they're like children. Without discipline we should all behave like children."
DEAN: "Oh. Don't you like children, Sister?"
SISTER CLODAGH: Well I really don't know what to do.
DEAN: What would Christ have done?
GENERAL: "Do you see that crate? Sausages! They will eat sausages. Europeans eat sausages wherever they go."
PRINCE: "5am to 7am, algebra with the mathematical Sister. 8am to 10am, religion, especially Christianity with the scriptural Sister. 10am, art. 1pm to 3pm, French and Russian with the French and Russian Sisters, if any. 3pm to 4pm, physics with the physical Sister."
Some trivia and dialogue, courtesy of imdb: The much admired Himalayan scenery was all created in the studio (with glass shots and hanging miniatures). The backdrops were blown-up black and white photographs. The art department then gave them their breathtaking colors by using pastel chalks on top of them.
SISTER CLODAGH: "We all need discipline. You said yourself they're like children. Without discipline we should all behave like children."
DEAN: "Oh. Don't you like children, Sister?"
SISTER CLODAGH: Well I really don't know what to do.
DEAN: What would Christ have done?
GENERAL: "Do you see that crate? Sausages! They will eat sausages. Europeans eat sausages wherever they go."
PRINCE: "5am to 7am, algebra with the mathematical Sister. 8am to 10am, religion, especially Christianity with the scriptural Sister. 10am, art. 1pm to 3pm, French and Russian with the French and Russian Sisters, if any. 3pm to 4pm, physics with the physical Sister."
posted by Quin Finnegan at 11:42 AM
3 Comments:
"Physics with the physical Sister" -- great line! Is it as funny in the movie as it reads here?
Where are your notes on "Gertrude"?
Yes! It is that funny, probably funnier, as it does much to illuminate the essential naivete of the young prince (and perhaps paganism and heathenry in general).
As for Gertrud, I was just wondering whether I should backdate an entry with reference to the Korrektiv/Quintilian summit meeting in Spokane. In the meantime, here's a (rather generous) pile of remarks from IMDb. Note the bizarre Blair Witch comment at the end.
5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Woman vows to live in uncompromising bliss or gloom, 3 October 2004
Author: mdm-11 (mdm@thursdays.com) from Liverpool Twp., Ohio
Cinema Great Carl Dreyer's final film is said to be his masterpiece as well. The innovative b&w cinematography, featuring only a handful, drawn out scenes in confined spaces, makes use of mirrors, shadows and suggested action. The story begins ca. 1900, studying several characters in depth. Gertrud, the wife of a wealthy lawyer with political aspirations, feels unappreciated by her work-consumed husband. The viewer quickly learns that Gertrud is about to end what appeared to be years of boredom as the "attache" of a man who lives mainly for his secular accomplishments. Despite his protests and assurances that he couldn't live without her, she leaves to see a lover.
Drawn to men of the arts, Gertrud herself was once a celebrated opera singer. A lengthy love affair with a man who later becomes a nationally honored poet, left the jilted author heart broken. Another man, a pioneer in the field of psychiatry, becomes Gertrud's friend and confidante, but never a lover.
The story, via flashbacks, present action and time scan forward shows Gertrud's entire adult life. The final scene offers somewhat of an explanation for why this woman has seemingly denied herself any true happiness. The men who offered her everything, even with the greatest possible concessions on their part, were told not to bother. Gertrud's extreme sense of pride, as noticed by a young musical genius who sees her as a convenient fling, leaves no wavering of the determined mind.
If this film appeared to be scandalous in 1964, how would society view this kind of real activity in the early 1900s? A strong sense of "truth", as a philosopher may call it, will always override any kind of compromise. "Love is all", the only words on Gertrud's head stone. There must be more to life than strict adherence to an ideology, especially at the high cost. A critically acclaimed film, "Gertrud" nonetheless lacks entertainment value due to its fatalistic story telling
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A difficult and complex film, to say the least, 7 September 2001
Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN
If you were to just watch this film half-heartedly or with a mind busy thinking of other matters, it would certainly seem like a dry film about infidelity and falling out of love - the kind of stuff that's been done a thousand times before, a thousand times before this film was made, even. And why did Dreyer have to make it so static, you might ask. But if you choose to delve into the matters at hand, feel the film's tenuous but painful emotions, you'll realize that there haven't been many films with more going on beneath the surface than this one. In fact, I can't think of another film that suggests so many themes, especially one with this little physical action onscreen. Most of Gertrud consists of two people at a time sitting on couches and facing opposite directions - no character in this film can bring themselves to look at someone else. These people talk about their relationships, either what could have been, what should have been, or what might be in the future. Although Gertrud is ostensibly a heroine - with the title as it is, we're almost required to believe that she is correct in her thoughts and actions and identify with her - as the film progresses it becomes more and more obvious that she is as much or more of the problem as the men whom she tends to blame. Then we're forced to backtrack and remember what things were involved in discussions earlier in the film in order to interpret it as a whole - take Axel's speech about free will, for instance, and Gertrud's response to it. I have just seen this film once, and I am positive that subsequent viewings will reveal many more layers. For the longest time, Gertrud was unavailable in the US. Now that it is readily available on both VHS and DVD, it's about time that it was completely rediscovered by the serious film watching community. 10/10.
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Calling for Ingmar Bergman...., 23 October 2004
Author: jxrich from Huntington Beach CA
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
Warning - SPOILERS. Stolid, deadly earnest, but still enjoyable Danish film which slowly reveals middle-aged Gertrud's emotional life with dull husband (politician), new lover (composer), former lover (poet), and future loving friend (art critic/writer). The actress's main expression throughout: world-weary. The film's ostensible theme: don't compromise, only love matters. Perhaps its real theme: disillusionment and disappointment matter more. None of these characters have apparently ever found the least humor in themselves or each other. In a flashback we learn that Gertrud leaves her first and arguably deepest love, the poet, because she discovers his drawing of her on which he has written (paraphrase) 'A loving woman gets in the way of work.' If only the poor girl had had had a better sense of humor -- but no, she is shattered -- it's over.
This same plot in the hands of Ingmar Bergman (as he was in the 1950's), with a Swedish cast, would have become a rueful charming comedy a la 'Lesson in Love' or 'Smiles of a Summer Night'. (For all we know, maybe the original stage play by Söderberg =was= more subtle and humorous than Dreyer's movie version.)
In conclusion here is a little question for my fellow armchair critics: if this story was adapted and directed by Ingmar Bergman (the amusing Bergman of the 1950's), how would the film have ended? My thought: hubby (Gunnar Björnstrand of course), would be getting comically drunk on the champagne served just before Gertrud left. She (Eva Dahlbeck of course) would tiptoe back in and return to her locked bedroom. But by some Bergmanesque device she makes sure that hubby gets the bedroom door key (picture Björnstrand's charming goofy self-satisfied look upon receiving it). Upon hubby unlocking the door, Gertrud smiles wrily while opening her arms.
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2 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
9/10, 9 October 2003
Author: c_t from Canada
When you first start watching it, the film feels like a bad SNL sketch where the host hasn't memorized his lines, constantly looking at cue cards. The actors here are often speaking unemotionally about incredibly emotional subjects -- sometimes appropriately (fearing the other person's reaction), sometimes inexplicably -- and tend to never be looking in each other's eyes at the same time. The film is set up with long, hypnotic takes as a staged play, with the actors sometimes moving into new positions just to appear more stage-like. At first, it takes you out of the story -- it seems like inept filmmaking, but because we know it's deliberate (it's not shoddily made, just different) I stuck with it. It takes a few to get into the style and familiarize ourselves with the bareness; it's not so much that it's boring as that it's largely silent.
The characters exist both as mouthpieces for Carl Dreyer and as people in real situations. (Aside from Erland's naturalness and Gertrud's presence, you could say the acting is generally unpleasant.) They give lengthy speeches always, they pause, their movement and reactions are not authentic life behavior or "normal" film acting. Yet this film is one of the greatest examinations of marital commitment on film. But it's more than that. It's about knowing by experience, and big ideas nothing less than Womanhood and Love, the pleasure of the flesh that results in an ignoring of the soul, the path of the artist and an argument against fatalism. The film is like a dream where all your subconscious thoughts and conscious feelings are spoken openly and plainly, as if you're possessed. Everything is open; no one, not the characters or Dreyer, insults us with any unnecessary treats. I actually watched the movie with the lights on, purposely, so I wouldn't get absorbed in the story, so I could always be aware of what was really going on.
So it's about marriage and love and commitment on one simple level -- there's a joke about it, too: the opera Gertrud says she's going to is "Fidelio." Gertrud says she's leaving her husband; another man, Lidman, a celebrated poet, wants her; and she's having an affair with a young musician, Erland. The film is really a scrapbook for Dreyer's various theories. Gertrud tells Erland, the musician, to play a nocturne -- one of his own, though, not someone else's. Why copy or interpret someone else when you can be yourself? Sometimes you need someone like Gertrud (or Dreyer) to remind you of that simple truth. And it hits home because Dreyer is what he preaches. The characters are always talking directly to us -- a character begs Gertrud to elaborate, "Things are easier when one understands" (of course we don't), someone tells Gertrud, "How beautifully you sang. As if I had never heard the song before." Dreyer is talking about himself -- he's the artist showing us things we never saw before that we've been looking at all along.
The self-congratulatory tone that hammers us did try my patience, however. There is a musical procession for the poet, and they sing a song to his face about what a truthful artist he is, an artist who refuses false pathos, sentimentality, and derides the mediocre hidden underneath a shiny veneer. This is all fine and good, but Dreyer didn't have to make it so damn obvious he's talking about what a great artist he himself is. He could be a little more broad. He seems to be rubbing our faces in how inaccessible he knows his film will be -- the screen is constantly so bright that it whites out the actors' faces, and he has Gertrud at one point comment on the light hurting her eyes. That's my small quibble that prevents me from giving this a ten, but I wouldn't argue with those who call it a masterpiece. Myself, I rank this among my essential movies for "life," movies you return to every few years that will (or at least should) stay new, because they're about human ideas and nothing else. They may not give answers, but they deepen our feeling and understanding about life's simplest issues in very profound ways. 9/10
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One of the FINEST movies I've ever seen. A piece of TRUE ART!, 7 August 2001
Author: (uaxuctum@yahoo.es) from Madrid, Spain
I was completely shocked when I first saw this masterpiece, and I still get shocked every time I see it again.
Dreyer's long and austere takes will not, of course, be liked by many, easy-goers, because he achieved by them to tell the unspeakable, he reached true Art. But to appreciate this means to have previously developed and refined one's taste, a tough effort which unfortunately not everybody is willing to make. And I say unfortunately because when eventually getting to understand Dreyer's idiom you'll find out that what it can tell you is much greater and soul-satisfying that anything you can get via other more readily-understandable ways.
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Scandinavian sombreness has rarely been so devastatingly effective., 26 March 1999
Author: angel-113 from Verona, Italy
Dreyer's final film views as a testament to idealism, the desire to put love above everything else in life and the cruel reality which thwarts this. Gertrud is married to a wealthy lawyer, about to become a minister. However material wealth is all he can offer and spiritually she is starved. >
With a theatrical set-piece style characterized by long takes, Dreyer creates an intense and involving atmosphere. Passions are seen as the formative experiences in life in a society stifled by convention. Gertrud prefers nothing to having second best, she refuses to compromise her ideals. She resigns herself to a single life but retains in her mind the vibrancy of her chain of lost loves. A moving portrait of a strong woman. Scandinavian sombreness has rarely been so devastatingly effective.
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2 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Ambitious but terribly boring, 12 January 2002
Author: Pedro-37 from Switzerland
I like Dreyer's films. "Ordet", "Vredens Dag" and "La passion de Jeanne D'Arc" deeply moved, shocked and fascinated me. "Gertrud" however, bored me. It is ambitious, but overlong and theatrical to a degree where I didn't take it serious as a film anymore. The whole movie consists of actors sitting together and talking together - while they stare into some corner of the screen. They stare into a void to suggest meaning. It just doesn't work! It's neither natural nor interesting. It only makes the film highly artificial and ruins all emotions that might emerge from the dramatic source material.
The story itself would be a rather absorbing emancipation story. But its style reduces it to an artificial soap opera. Dryer's last film is definitely his worst. What a pity.
Rating: 5/10
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A belated challenge for die-hard Blair Witch fans., 28 October 2002
Author: semanticon from UK
This film would be the test for all those people who loved The Blair Witch Project to see if their imaginations really are as active as they make out or just pea sized. If ever a film required audience participation to provide the emotional intensity, this would be it. So I challenge anyone reading this who thought Blair Witch was a major piece of cinema to find and watch Gertrud and see if it does anything for you or if your emotional capability is as limited as we already know....
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