MysticalMovieGuide.com : All Films List w/synopsis (printer friendly format) (open into new window)
Matched 2 Films from 2936 entries (trouble searching? Try QUICK lists )
   credits containing: michael powell
years: 1890-2010

1.Black Narcissus (1947,UK,100mins) common good:Yes - Drama • Young Sister Clodagh is surprised to discover that she has been chosen by her Anglican order to found a new convent and hospital in a remote abandoned Himilayan palace high upon a mountain. She becomes a hard disciplinarian to fulfill her new role as mother superior to four other young nuns, but the fantastically exotic location, the ever present winds which blow through the convent, and perhaps the ghosts of the royal wives who used to be kept in the pleasure rooms, wear upon their psyches. The bizarre locals don't help either - a surly handsome British agent named Mr. Dean pushes the nuns with his rude comments and obvious hedonism, a wayward young seductress is left with the convent to protect, an effervescent young prince insists upon studying with the nuns, and a old holy man meditates silently in the cold just down the path to town. Both Sister Clodagh and Sister Ruth are tortured by dreams of their previous lives and affairs with men, but it is Sister Ruth who breaks down when Mr. Dean refuses her advances after she dresses seductively for him in clothing she secretly ordered. Sister Ruth attacks Sister Clodagh at the precipice, falling to her death, and the convent is abandoned just as Mr. Dean predicted it would be. • This exceptionally odd and somewhat dated drama plays like a thinking person's version of an old dark house film, in which foreboding setting and strange characters conspire to drive some innocents mad. I found the nuns rather difficult to tell apart in their identical habits (literal and figurative, since most share similar wariness and repression), so I half hoped a more recognizable Vincent Price would leap out among them, clutching his insane skull. Camp aside, this is a gorgeous and spectacular psychological classic, made to push the limits during a dull time in the British film industry by famed duo Powell and Pressburger (who made several great mystical films, then crossed one too many lines with a 1960 sadist study, sank into career infamy and near oblivion, but left us with the delightfully bizarre children's film "The Boy Who Turned Yellow" in 1972). Packaged with amazing sets and matte paintings to believably create the convent at the top of the world, "Black Narcissus", titled after a cheap cologne that tempts the nuns, won both Academy Awards and censorship from the Catholic Legion of Decency. Some dream scenes of Sister Clodagh continued to be cut decades later, so be sure to seek a definitive edition when viewing. There are several fine challenges to Christian dogma in the film, as the blowing wind symbolizes the restless thoughts of unsettled minds. When Sister Clodagh wants to evict the pagan holy man, Mr. Dean stops her cold with a seemingly modern "what would Jesus do?" And when Sister Clodagh bars the prince for being a man in a nunnery, he wide-eyed asks "but wasn't He a man?" and points to the cross. "He took the shape of a man" she protests, then lets him stay, only to see him seduced by the wayward girl just as Mr. Dean gleefully predicted. Atheists and apologists can and do have a field day over setups like these, but I have nothing but respect for mature religious orders, and this exploitative story is little more than a cautionary tale for beginners to not ascend the highest peaks until they have mastered the lower. In this way my favorite character was the nearly naked holy man meditating in the snow below the palace, humbly developing a more peaceful discipline of the flesh while the sterner nuns rushed past him to where angels feared to tread. Taming the innocent body's desires is a timeless mystical challenge, especially when natural or supernatural ecstasies can go straight to the second chakra. Astral explorer Robert Monroe, for example, witnessed literal piles of sex-mad spirits in the afterlife, and just to get past them he had to practice the art of nonjudgmental delayed gratification, telling himself not now, maybe later if we still feel like it. Dir./writer Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, writer Rumer Godden (novel), stars Deborah Kerr (Sister Clodagh), Kathleen Byron (Sister Ruth), David Farrar (Mr. Dean) - Themes: Contact, Evolution, Illness, Journeying, Masculine/Feminine, Mind, Myth/Religion, Nature

2.Boy Who Turned Yellow, The (1972,UK,55mins) rare good:Sometimes - Childrens, Experimental, Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Mystery/Thriller • A boy named John fell asleep during an electricity lecture in school. Sent home, he and other subway passengers within a small radius of London mysteriously turn yellow. After doctors confirm it's harmless and maybe from outer space, an alien named Nick (short for electronic) comes out of John's TV set to take him surfing at lightspeed on electromagnetic waves. Nick is all yellow, and the yellow bombing was a way to find someone he could trust. When they materialize in the Tower of London, John is arrested, but when he's allowed to watch TV again he escapes. John awakens in the class lecture again, but he finds clear evidence that it wasn't just a dream either. • goofy but well-made to be educational and imaginative by a famous film duo during a career slump. The alien is silly with yellow headlight and yellow skis for travelling, but in a dream symbol way he's a great model for children to accept visits by higher beings in altered states. This TV special is an especially surreal entry in the Childrens Film Foundation (CFF), which from 1951 to 1981 produced Disney-like adventures featuring kids versus bad guys and some moral lessons. dir. Michael Powell, writer Emeric Pressburger, stars Mark Dightam - Themes: Extraterrestrials, Higher Friends, Journeying, Mind, Powers of Spirit, Transformations



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