“Black Narcissus” was a classic perfume for men and women produced by Ahmed Soliman in the 1920s. It was based on an oil extracted from flowering plants of the genus Narcissus (daffodils and jonquils) which still is used in perfumes and colognes today. The scent is said to have been dark, musky, sultry and erotic. So why is “Black Narcissus” also the title of a 1947 movie about missionary nuns in India?
You have to wait for it, but the perfume figures prominently in a key scene that relates to the budding sexual tensions within the austere religious community. But the discussion of “Black Narcissus” ends with a bluntly racist comment that also fits the film’s underlying themes.
First, it is important to understand that the nuns in question are Anglican, rather than Roman Catholic nuns. In fact, the movie was originally released only a few months before India declared its independence from British rule. The identification with a specific national church, and nationalistic form of Christianity, explains the nuns’ confusion of the Gospel with British culture, and the taming of a “barbaric” people.
As a result of a political deal, the motherhouse in Calcutta receives property on which to establish a convent, school and clinic in a remote valley of the Himalayan Mountains. The rajah of the region has little interest in Christianity, but he wants to curry favor with the British and also wants his people to have the observable benefits of western European learning and technology, especially medicine.
So a team of sisters is dispatched to the location, led by Sister Clodagh (this was a breakthrough role for English movie star, Deborah Kerr). Yes, it’s also noteworthy that Sister Clodagh is Irish, unlike the others. It turns out that the property is a fortress on a sheer cliff overlooking the village in the valley below. The rajah’s father used it as a pleasure palace, where he housed his large harem. When the nuns move in, the walls are covered with pornographic paintings (what is shown of them is surprisingly explicit for a 1947 movie). That’s interesting, because it is also noted that some monks had previously tried to set up shop in the castle, but left after only five months. No further explanation of that matter is given.
This backstory hints at perhaps some supernatural influence at work in what happens to the nuns. All experience personal breakdowns of varying degrees of severity and their group bond begins to unravel. However, the viewer may interpret this simply as the psychological effects of immersion and isolation within a foreign culture, compounded by repressed sexuality.
It also is strongly suggested that life on the rugged, windswept mountain heightens the women’s five senses, and brings to the surface memories that they had buried beneath a comfortable routine of daily prayer and hard work. The audience only gets a glimpse of Sister Clodagh’s memories of a failed romance in Ireland. These flashbacks feature a radiant, fun-loving young woman in contrast to her severe appearance as a nun. Deborah Kerr, of course, looks gorgeous, even standing in the middle of a stream in flyfishing gear.
Then there’s the movie’s homme fatale, rather than femme fatale. Mr. Dean (David Farrar) is the “British agent” (the local ruler’s liaison with the imperial government). He is a handsome Englishman who has “gone native”. That means most of the time he wears only shorts and an open shirt (in one scene he rushes to the convent without even putting on a shirt). Mr. Dean doubts that the mission will succeed where others have not, and Sister Clodagh considers him “dissolute”. All conversations between them are charged with sexual innuendo.
In a plot twist, the old rajah dies and his son takes over. Unlike his father, the young rajah (Sabu) is sincerely interested in Jesus Christ and what He taught. The sisters fail to understand this. They also fail to pick up on his equally keen interest of another type in 17-year-old Kanchi (Jean Simmons). Kanchi is a, shall we say, precocious orphan that the nuns have taken in. She performs exotic dances when the nuns aren’t looking and otherwise conveys her mutual feelings toward the young rajah. The two elope and are then absent from the movie until the very end.
But there is some dialogue between the young rajah and Sister Clodagh that is worth examining. The sister is explaining to the rajah why the convent is only a spiritual retreat for women and not for men. The rajah points to a nearby crucifix and says, “But Jesus was a man”. Sister Clodagh replies that, “Jesus only took the form of a man.”
Which is not what the Bible and the ecumenical creeds say. The fourth Gospel, that of the Apostle John, probably was written specifically to refute the heresy of the Gnostics. Part of the false teaching of the Gnostics was that the material world, the world of our five senses, is evil. It was not created by God, the Father of Jesus Christ, but by an inferior deity.
The first chapter recaps the account of creation in Genesis, emphasizing how the Word (Logos, a designation of the Second Person of the Trinity) was with God in the beginning and was God. By this Word was everything made and for this Word everything was made. And then the Word “was made flesh and dwelled among us”. The Greek word translated “was made” signifies a change in the nature of something. In this case, what was divine became fully human, although it remained divine, and dwelled among humanity.
After John’s Gospel, the Council of Nicea in 325 AD would reject not only Arianism, the idea that Jesus was a created being inferior to God the Father, but also docetism, the teaching that the human form of Jesus was only a sort of illusion. Thus, the Nicene Creed says that Jesus “was incarnate by the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father.” The story of the ascension shows that Jesus returned to the Father in both His human and divine natures, thus sanctifying forever our human nature.
The Athanasian Creed goes into even more detail. “For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess; that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God, of the substance of the Father; begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the substance of His Mother, born in the world. Perfect God; and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father, as touching His Godhead; and inferior to the Father as touching His Manhood. Who although He is God and Man; yet He is not two, but one Christ. One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by assumption of the manhood into God. One altogether; not by confusion of substance; but by unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man; so God and Man is one Christ.”
So Sister Clodagh expresses at the very least, a deficient Christology. Jesus became incarnate that he might experience every human feeling and every human temptation; yet at the same time blessing common human experience. So the nuns see human desires and pleasures as a threat to spirituality to an exaggerated degree. They are all the more vulnerable to the sensuality of the natural and cultural environment in which they find themselves
Yet they are not entirely wrong, because in one case, the unleashing of passion raises something darker than Sister Clodagh’s regrets. Again, there is the suggestion of something like demonic possession, although it could be explained away as jealousy and emotional instability.
At any rate, Mr. Dean is not really the serpent in the garden, although what he considers an offhand remark sets a tragic event in motion. And a simple gesture by the most open and friendliest of the nuns is misunderstood and turns the villagers against the mission.
“Black Narcissus” is filmed in beautiful Technicolor and the scenery emphasizes the vastness of the mountains and the dream-like state that overwhelms the sisters.
“Black Narcissus” was a classic perfume for men and women produced by Ahmed Soliman in the 1920s. It was based on an oil extracted from flowering plants of the genus Narcissus (daffodils and jonquils) which still is used in perfumes and colognes today. The scent is said to have been dark, musky, sultry and erotic. So why is “Black Narcissus” also the title of a 1947 movie about missionary nuns in India?
You have to wait for it, but the perfume figures prominently in a key scene that relates to the budding sexual tensions within the austere religious community. But the discussion of “Black Narcissus” ends with a bluntly racist comment that also fits the film’s underlying themes.
First, it is important to understand that the nuns in question are Anglican, rather than Roman Catholic nuns. In fact, the movie was originally released only a few months before India declared its independence from British rule. The identification with a specific national church, and nationalistic form of Christianity, explains the nuns’ confusion of the Gospel with British culture, and the taming of a “barbaric” people.
As a result of a political deal, the motherhouse in Calcutta receives property on which to establish a convent, school and clinic in a remote valley of the Himalayan Mountains. The rajah of the region has little interest in Christianity, but he wants to curry favor with the British and also wants his people to have the observable benefits of western European learning and technology, especially medicine.
So a team of sisters is dispatched to the location, led by Sister Clodagh (this was a breakthrough role for English movie star, Deborah Kerr). Yes, it’s also noteworthy that Sister Clodagh is Irish, unlike the others. It turns out that the property is a fortress on a sheer cliff overlooking the village in the valley below. The rajah’s father used it as a pleasure palace, where he housed his large harem. When the nuns move in, the walls are covered with pornographic paintings (what is shown of them is surprisingly explicit for a 1947 movie). That’s interesting, because it is also noted that some monks had previously tried to set up shop in the castle, but left after only five months. No further explanation of that matter is given.
This backstory hints at perhaps some supernatural influence at work in what happens to the nuns. All experience personal breakdowns of varying degrees of severity and their group bond begins to unravel. However, the viewer may interpret this simply as the psychological effects of immersion and isolation within a foreign culture, compounded by repressed sexuality.
It also is strongly suggested that life on the rugged, windswept mountain heightens the women’s five senses, and brings to the surface memories that they had buried beneath a comfortable routine of daily prayer and hard work. The audience only gets a glimpse of Sister Clodagh’s memories of a failed romance in Ireland. These flashbacks feature a radiant, fun-loving young woman in contrast to her severe appearance as a nun. Deborah Kerr, of course, looks gorgeous, even standing in the middle of a stream in flyfishing gear.
Then there’s the movie’s homme fatale, rather than femme fatale. Mr. Dean (David Farrar) is the “British agent” (the local ruler’s liaison with the imperial government). He is a handsome Englishman who has “gone native”. That means most of the time he wears only shorts and an open shirt (in one scene he rushes to the convent without even putting on a shirt). Mr. Dean doubts that the mission will succeed where others have not, and Sister Clodagh considers him “dissolute”. All conversations between them are charged with sexual innuendo.
In a plot twist, the old rajah dies and his son takes over. Unlike his father, the young rajah (Sabu) is sincerely interested in Jesus Christ and what He taught. The sisters fail to understand this. They also fail to pick up on his equally keen interest of another type in 17-year-old Kanchi (Jean Simmons). Kanchi is a, shall we say, precocious orphan that the nuns have taken in. She performs exotic dances when the nuns aren’t looking and otherwise conveys her mutual feelings toward the young rajah. The two elope and are then absent from the movie until the very end.
But there is some dialogue between the young rajah and Sister Clodagh that is worth examining. The sister is explaining to the rajah why the convent is only a spiritual retreat for women and not for men. The rajah points to a nearby crucifix and says, “But Jesus was a man”. Sister Clodagh replies that, “Jesus only took the form of a man.”
Which is not what the Bible and the ecumenical creeds say. The fourth Gospel, that of the Apostle John, probably was written specifically to refute the heresy of the Gnostics. Part of the false teaching of the Gnostics was that the material world, the world of our five senses, is evil. It was not created by God, the Father of Jesus Christ, but by an inferior deity.
The first chapter recaps the account of creation in Genesis, emphasizing how the Word (Logos, a designation of the Second Person of the Trinity) was with God in the beginning and was God. By this Word was everything made and for this Word everything was made. And then the Word “was made flesh and dwelled among us”. The Greek word translated “was made” signifies a change in the nature of something. In this case, what was divine became fully human, although it remained divine, and dwelled among humanity.
After John’s Gospel, the Council of Nicea in 325 AD would reject not only Arianism, the idea that Jesus was a created being inferior to God the Father, but also docetism, the teaching that the human form of Jesus was only a sort of illusion. Thus, the Nicene Creed says that Jesus “was incarnate by the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father.” The story of the ascension shows that Jesus returned to the Father in both His human and divine natures, thus sanctifying forever our human nature.
The Athanasian Creed goes into even more detail. “For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess; that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God, of the substance of the Father; begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the substance of His Mother, born in the world. Perfect God; and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father, as touching His Godhead; and inferior to the Father as touching His Manhood. Who although He is God and Man; yet He is not two, but one Christ. One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by assumption of the manhood into God. One altogether; not by confusion of substance; but by unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man; so God and Man is one Christ.”
So Sister Clodagh expresses at the very least, a deficient Christology. Jesus became incarnate that he might experience every human feeling and every human temptation; yet at the same time blessing common human experience. So the nuns see human desires and pleasures as a threat to spirituality to an exaggerated degree. They are all the more vulnerable to the sensuality of the natural and cultural environment in which they find themselves
Yet they are not entirely wrong, because in one case, the unleashing of passion raises something darker than Sister Clodagh’s regrets. Again, there is the suggestion of something like demonic possession, although it could be explained away as jealousy and emotional instability.
At any rate, Mr. Dean is not really the serpent in the garden, although what he considers an offhand remark sets a tragic event in motion. And a simple gesture by the most open and friendliest of the nuns is misunderstood and turns the villagers against the mission.
“Black Narcissus” is filmed in beautiful Technicolor and the scenery emphasizes the vastness of the mountains and the dream-like state that overwhelms the sisters. It may be intrepreted as a cautionary tale against sending missionaries to remote areas without proper knowledge and appreciation of the local language and culture, and a false sense of spirituality.
