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Even in a work as revered as that of the team of producers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Black narcissus stands. Adapted from Rumer Godden’s novel, the 1947 film follows a mission of the Order of St Faith, led by the young but fearful Sister Clodagh (played by Deborah Kerr), in a doomed attempt to create a convent school. in the Himalayan palace of Mopu. . The locals are indifferent, and the palace is haunted by the indiscretions and tragedies of its harem past, while the nuns – especially the fragile sister Ruth, caught in a triangle of lust between Clodagh and the cynical expatriate planter Mr. Dean – find their faith and reason tested to the limit.
A heady mix of the earthly and the spiritual, pent-up love and religious guilt, transgression and denial, it won the Oscars for Jack Cardiff’s incredibly vivid technicolor cinematography and the superb artistic direction of Alfred Junge. . His influence has been felt everywhere since Disney Frozen (whose artistic director attributed her look to Black narcissus) to the work of the devotee of Powell Martin Scorsese. Who would dare to walk on such sacred ground?
The answer comes with a new three-part adaptation of Amanda Coe (Life in squares) for BBC, FX and DNA movies. Charlotte Bruus Christensen directs a beautiful cast directed by Gemma Arterton (Clodagh), Aisling Franciosi (Ruth), Alessandro Nivola (Mr Dean) and, in her latest onscreen role, Diana Rigg (as stern and skeptical mother Dorothea) . For the DNA and Christensen films, this is not the first time that we approach a novel previously adapted to a great success, after having worked on 2015 Far from the raging crowd.
“The lesson we learned from Hardy is that if you have good source material, you can do it over and over again,” says executive producer Andrew Macdonald. “I hadn’t thought of Black narcissus until the idea came during a meeting with the BBC. I told them no one else could do it!
Macdonald had good reason for this sense of fate: he is Pressburger’s grandson. (In another example of dynastic serendipity, one of the show’s assistant directors is Godden’s great-granddaughter.) The 1947 film was, Macdonald notes, the first adaptation of Powell and Pressburger. “My grandmother received the book and made them understand how interesting it was, especially from a female perspective. I thought it was very important from the start that our writer and director [this time] were women.
The film only grew in stature, thanks in large part to the efforts of Scorsese and his longtime editor (and Powell’s widow) Thelma Schoonmaker to ensure their restoration and careful distribution. There was considerable dismay at the prospect of a remake and, Macdonald says, “pretty awkward” conversations took place. “The main objection was: why are you doing this when it was done so well? But the conclusion was that whatever happens, it will draw attention to the original. So you can’t really lose.
Godden’s succession required little persuasion; the author had been appalled by the artifice of the Himalayan sets shot at Pinewood Studios, and her family wanted her book to be rediscovered. Still, screenwriter Coe was understandably wary. “My first response was: the film is a masterpiece – why are you creating this problem? Once I read the book I could see that there was a reason to do it. As brilliant as the movie is, it was made in another era, and there’s a lot in the book that still feels fresh.
Powell and Pressburger cast a long shadow at Pinewood; Macdonald speaks in a conference room just down the hall from a framed photo of David Niven in A matter of life and death. One floor below is found in the superbly detailed interiors of the series. The palace doubles as a symbol of spiritual confusion, its public baths converted into laundry, its erotic frescoes covered with muslin sheets and faded gold leaf a stark contrast to the nuns’ rope beds.
“We’re here because Pinewood read that we were doing it and said we couldn’t do it anywhere else,” says Allon Reich, another executive producer. “It’s incredibly difficult to secure a place on stage in the UK, but they are rightly proud of the film and keen to keep it going.
Black narcissus is far from the first TV series to follow a film adaptation of a much-loved book, outside of the myriad screen versions of familiar period classics. A 1990 adaptation by Harold Pinter of The Handmaid’s Tale lacked much of the ingenuity and seething anger of Margaret Atwood’s novel; the Hulu TV version, on the other hand, has been a cultural phenomenon. HBO is superb Guardians at least had the benefit of following a film of Alan Moore’s period graphic novel that was widely vilified (notably by the author himself), while Its dark materials came a decade after a future film franchise that sank in the wake of Harry Potter. In recent years, maybe only the team behind the 2018 Picnic at Hanging Rock showed courage on par with Macdonald and Co in adopting an equally beloved film adaptation: Its slow-burning awe and deeper plot made for a different, if not necessarily superior, experience than Peter Weir’s sinister and sexually charged original of 1975.
New Black narcissus takes crucial breaks from his predecessor. Coe’s storytelling is a bit less mature and melodramatic, punctuating the three-hour drama and giving more time to supporting characters who are overlooked or cut off entirely by the film. More importantly, it takes a more authentic approach to casting: Villager Kanchi’s central role is played by Anglo-Nepalese newcomer Dipika Kunwar, rather than Jean Simmons in blackface.
Godden, who grew up in India, could also have been thrilled with the results of a week of filming in the Himalayas. “It’s the most beautiful place I’ve been to,” says Arterton. “This beauty is a big part of the reason why the nuns unravel – the indomitable piety of the place makes them start to question God. When we came back to shoot at Pinewood it was priceless to have that in mind.
As far as it goes to the source, there are tributes to the film, from exact replicas of the nuns’ crucifixes from 1947 to a new take on the famous steeple footage. “We’ve talked about it a lot,” Coe adds. “My instinct was to create a completely different version, but as I got more comfortable with the material, I realized you had to deliver certain things, or it’s like seeing Hamlet where it does not “be or not be”.
The new adaptation also allows for a period context absent from the film but still relevant to a contemporary audience. The psychological impact of World War I, for example, explains Mr. Dean’s suspicion of the crumbling colonial project and its condescending, ultimately doomed imposition of Western values on people living harmoniously without they. Clodagh, meanwhile, is struggling to take the helm of an essentially patriarchal institution.
“A great story is always relevant,” Coe concludes. “The book and the adaptation are parables about the dangers of“ the other ”, of being exalted to the detriment of external cultures, even of the notion of one’s own history. The book is a compressed and powerful expression of it, translated into psychological horror. These concerns are now pervasive. And do the nuns lose together? We can all understand that this year.
On BBC1 (in the UK) December 27-29 at 9 p.m. and on FX in the US
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