The Himalayas of Black Narcissus

This image of a mystic alone in the mountains recalls the Himalayan paintings of Nicholas Roerich that I discussed in my previous post.  It is a shot from Black Narcissus, the 1947 Technicolor film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, which can currently be seen for free on the BBC iPlayer.  Adam Scovell has written about landscape in this film in a piece for the BFI (the Mr Dean he refers to is the cynical and worldly local British agent, played by David Farrar - 'all bare, hairy legs', in Marina Warner's memorable description):

Although a large part of it was shot at Pinewood Studios, and at Leonardslee Gardens in Sussex, Black Narcissus is very much a landscape film. The Himalayan topography is a Technicolor dream – vibrant like the hidden fantasies of many of the characters. The dramatic shot of Sister Clodagh ringing the convent’s bell in desperation summarises the film perfectly. In the matte painting of the mountain chasm (by the brilliant Walter Percy Day, with assistance from his sons, Arthur and Thomas), the gulf looks as though it could descend infinitely. But it’s equally the precipice of Sister Clodagh’s inner world. The world of her past passions is an emotional chasm that the landscape around forces her to confront – alongside Mr Dean’s impossibly short shorts, of course.  The camera emphasises this gulf, highlighting the fantastical nature of the landscape and the inner female experience. It’s incredibly fitting that this gulf eventually drags one character to their rocky doom.

So who was Walter Percy Day, the painter of these mountain scenes?  Born in 1878, he began his career as a conventional painter - you can see examples of his work on the Walter Percy Day website. He turned to cinema in the 1920s, developing his methods first in Britain, then in France (where he worked on Abel Gance's Napoléon), before returning here to make films with Alexander Korda and directors like David Lean, Laurence Olivier and Carol Reed.  The history of matte painting is full of epic landscapes like the mountains of Black Narcissus: jungles and deserts, volcanic islands and alien planets.  Moviegoers could be transported back in time with panoramic shots of ancient Egypt and medieval Europe, Victorian London or Imperial Rome. There are blogs devoted to the subject, such as Matte Shot and MovieMattepainting, and many examples there of paintings by the best-known artists like Albert Whitlock, Alan Maley and Jan Domela.  These artists did not often receive publicity, although Emil Kosa Jr. won an academy award in 1964 for his work on Cleopatra.  Kosa was also a member of the California Scene Painting movement - many matte artists had a parallel career selling their own work.

Adam Scovell highlights the visual impact of Black Narcissus and of course it is easy to view these scenes in terms of the aesthetics of the Sublime.  An online article by Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard in the journal Caliban does just this, and also discusses the film's relationship with imperialism.  She mentions the way the Himalayan wind catches the nuns' wimples and cloaks, giving their figures an agitated look. The constant sound of this wind is, for me, one of the most striking aspects of the film, providing an eerie soundscape to all the scenes set on top of the mountain, where one of the nuns, Sister Ruth, slips gradually into madness.  And here there is another connection with Nicholas Roerich and his journey into the high mountains of Asia, and the book it inspired, H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.  Lovecraft describes the evil sound of the wind created by the pinnacles and cave mouths of the mountain range, and his narrator wishes he had wax-stopped ears like Ulysses' men, to keep that 'disturbing wind-piping from my consciousness.'