The Chemistry of Emotion in Filmmakers and Their Film

When turmoil in life informs turmoil on the screen…

From Black Narcissus 1947, Written, Directed, Produced by Powell/Pressburger, Cinematographer: Jack Cardiff, Eyes: Kathleen Byron

What are some of the ways filmmakers bring their material to life? What are the resources of their process?

Telling a strong story well. ✓

Utilizing the skills of visual and auditory storytelling. ✓

Conscious art and craft of all elements of screen language. ✓

Facilitation and direction of performance. ✓

Conjuring images on the viewer’s “screen of the mind” ✓

A take on, perhaps a vision of the human condition, often sub-conscious, involuntary. ✓

Instinct, intuition. ✓

Stamina, determination, focus. ✓

Belief. ✓

Drawing on personal experience. (Whether harnessed unconsciously or deliberately.) ???

I might not have thought of including this last category were it not for my recent viewing, one of many over the years, of Black Narcissus, the Michael Powell / Emeric Pressburger masterpiece of erotic intrigue among a community of Anglican nuns who find themselves situated in a village community high up in the Himalayas.

The film, adapted from the novel by Rumer Godden, traces how Sister Superior, the young Sister Clodagh and the troubled Sister Ruth both experience forbidden desire for Mr Dean, agent for “The General”, who presides over the village. The intrigue this prompts results in uncontrollable jealousy on the part of Sister Ruth — which leads to shocking consequences.

I hadn’t been aware or the personal relationships of some of those on set until — after this viewing — I read about them.

Deborah Kerr, who plays Sister Clodagh, and Kathleen Byron, who plays Sister Ruth were both romantically involved with director Michael Powell, Kerr before, Byron during production.

So the love triangle on the screen mirrors the one on the set, the director corresponding to the fictional Dean.

(Here the triangle is comprised of two females and one male while in the Powell/Pressburger The Red Shoes, it is the other way around — two males and one female. In both cases though, it is the emotional dimension and depth of the women that is central to the drama.)

Was this parallel in the lives of the filmmakers the catalyst for the film’s erotic electricity or with such a screenplay and such a cast would that have come about regardless of the personal chemistry? Did personal emotion intensify the onscreen drama? Did Powell ensure it did? And did the cast have any choice in the matter? Were they enabled as actors or were they exploited?

Were Kerr and Byron so ‘professional’ they could block out their feelings or were they, as sensitive artists, at the mercy of their antagonism? Did they use this, either consciously or subconsciously? If so, did it help or hinder their work?

The two protagonists of Trần Anh Hùng’s 2023 The Taste of Things, Dodin Bouffant and Eugénie, played by Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche, were formerly romantic partners who had a child together. The director has commented he was uncertain as to how their connection might affect their performances as fictional lovers. In the event, he said, the ex-couple’s congenial relationship proved helpful in their approach to their characters, and perhaps to their understanding and realization of their quiet but enduring romance.

Krzysztof Kieślowski, in an interview from the early nineties, commented that, while he was giving a class in which he was using a scene from Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, he first tried two married actors, then two unmarried, finding no advantage in working with the married couple — nor, he said, did he find it detrimental.

The irony here is that in Bergman’s original TV series, the director — who based the work on his own experience — had been married to Liv Ulman, the fictional Marianne in the onscreen episodes. As in Black Narcissus, Bergman’s drama was in part, and perhaps a considerable part, auto-fictional, director and actor(s) playing out a fictional parallel to their personal emotional dynamics.

Surely, the affairs of director Michael Powell with two of his cast, and the tension on set that reportedly resulted, informed the film’s palpable sexual tension to a considerable degree. And surely, an actor must draw on emotions and experiences they know, of whatever nature, in order to bring out those of their character. A director might well enable them to do this — surely an aspect of good filmmaking.

Hitchcock said that the filmmaker should put their fears up on the screen.Taking into account these two masterpieces from Powell and Bergman, perhaps they might put on the screen the tribulations, the pain and drama of their romantic lives too. Does that entail the manipulation of the actors? Or is it a resource for them, prompting some of their best performances?

Would Black Narcissus be the dark classic it is without its tempestuous nourishment? Of that we can never be completely certain — but let’s treasure the movie we have.

Peter Markham February 2024