Black Narcissus

Free ticket with a $10 K2 minimum
1947, UK, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 100 min.
Starring Deborah Kerr, Sabu, and Jean Simmons.
Introduced by Michael Powell’s widow and three-time Academy Award winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker
Black Narcissus, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s gorgeous backlot evocation of the Himalayas returns to CabaretCinema in the context of the series “Movie Medicine”. It is when one of the nuns running the convent’s clinic makes a good-intentioned yet culturally fatal mistake in treating the illness of an infant, that this melodrama takes on near-Gothic proportions. The director’s widow Thelma Schoonmaker-Powell, herself winner of four Academy Awards for editing of four Martin Scorsese films, will introduce this cinematic masterpiece. Black Narcissus was released only a few months before India achieved independence from Britain in August 1947.
About the Speaker
Thelma Schoonmaker has edited all of Martin Scorsese’s films since Raging Bull, first working with Scorsese in his debut feature film Who’s That Knocking at My Door. At NYU Schoonmaker also met Michael Wadleigh and later edited his influential music festival documentary, Woodstock, which gained her an Academy Award nomination for Best Editing. Her use of superimpositions and freeze frames added to the movie’s wide appeal, thus helping to raise the artistry and visibility of documentary filmmaking to a new level. She is tied for the record for the most Academy Award wins in the category of Best Editing, with three for Raging Bull, The Aviator, and The Departed, and, with four other nominations (Woodstock, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, and Hugo) is the second most-nominated editor in Academy Awards history. She was married to the British film director Michael Powell until his death in 1990 and along with Martin Scorsese continues to champion his work. She has introduced five Michael Powell films at CabaretCinema, as well as Scorsese’s Kundun, which she edited.