As maligned as she is, she’s never a reducible idea or a source of one-note villainy. The fact that she bears a resemblance to Sister Clodagh automatically lends Sister Ruth more thematic weight as an extreme foil to her, yet Byron and her directors elevate Sister Ruth beyond a mere device. Sister Ruth’s status as an embodiment of repressed neuroses gone haywire couldn’t be more apparent. By making her so unwell from the out and framing her fall as so self-mediated, her arc is shorn of any tragic or overtly sympathetic edges in favor of a doomed sense of inevitability. Is she physically ill, or at least prone to illness? Is she psychologically disturbed? Is she just a bad person having a terrible time?Īs it turns out, the answer given by Byron, Powell & Pressburger, and the film’s other artists is a resounding “all of the above”, portraying Sister Ruth as an already unstable figure pushed to the brink by this Himalayan outpost. Even when we finally see Sister Ruth, her face as white as her robes and staring into the abyss as she rings the convent’s ornate, cliffside bell to signal the start of the day, her wrongness is hard to categorize but instantly present, especially once she starts grinning at an eerie horn blast that accompanies her ringing. Sister Clodagh thinks Sister Ruth coming to this convent is a bad idea, likely to exacerbate her ill health, though the Reverend Mother believes the fresh mountain air may reinvigorate her. They both seem concerned for Sister Ruth’s well-being but also a little frightened of whatever illness they’re implying, as though speaking it aloud might summon her. unwell, in a way neither Sister Clodagh nor her Reverend Mother feel quite comfortable describing in detail.
The very first thing we hear about Byron’s Sister Ruth is that she’s. This nun does not take well to this new setting but is very excited by the presence of a swarthy Englishman. particularly as an offering of great actressing?Ĭentered on a group of Anglican nuns instructed to open a school on a Himalayan mountainside already infamous for scaring off other settlers, the film maintains the directors’ penchant for overripe atmosphere and jaw-dropping spectacle.īlack Narcissus boasts an indelibly multifaceted lead performance from Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodagh, the newly annointed leader of these nuns, but for the subject of this week’s article, we’ll be discussing Kathleen Byron’s obsidian supporting turn as Sister Ruth. For instance, has any other 1947 film so formidably established itself in the canon as Powell & Pressburger’s Black Narcissus. The simplest is to call upon decades of film history to see which of any year’s most durable films have noteworthy female performances.
There are ways to find other options without awards bodies, though. Searching for alternatives to Oscar’s lineup - as we like to do when approaching a new Smackdown - is appealingly open-ended. Back when the Golden Globes only announced their winners and neither NYFCC (age 12) nor NBR (age 2) had supporting acting categories.
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