Soul Sisters
The unique behaviours of textiles in motion – fluttering, rippling, folding, and unfolding – encourage a range of emotional reactions at the same time as they establish a film’s on-screen environment. Working in conjunction with the film camera, fabric enables cinematographers to control what audiences see and know: the moving fabric of a curtain thwarts our vision, constantly altering what we see. The insubstantial weight, permeability, and unfixed nature of fabric allow for a less-defined separation between inside and outside. In addition, the non-rigid material of a window covering means it can move, an important quality for adjusting and changing the audience’s view of what is presented on the film screen.
A moving curtain suggests three-dimensional space, indicates the presence of wind, and frames information for the audience. We have long associated our eyes with windows, and filmmakers often use windows to create frames, distancing effects, and reflective surfaces. Windows, like films, present their audiences with limited views of other worlds. Historically, the film has drawn on the tension between what is known and unknown to create suspense and mystery. In Western thought and culture, the unknown is often associated with traditionally “othered” groups. Cinema contributes to this prejudice toward the “unknown” by offering restricted, frequently biased, views into other worlds.
Black Narcissus (1947), for instance, explores fear and violence alongside eroticised otherness in a colonised setting. The film features wind and the presence of wind-blown fabric to paint layers of emotional depth, from desire and despair to malice and menace. The cinematography and mise-en-scène of Black Narcissus offer an aesthetically complex presentation achieved partly by the wind and textiles that create suspense in the film.
Kevin L. Ferguson points out that “air’s materiality in the film is overlooked because it is a materiality with little visuality,” adding that “there is no case of air accidentally wandering onto the set; air must be summoned up, cast, given a contract, pampered. For this reason, air is never wasted in a film – the effort alone makes it meaningful.”
The controlled nature of air in film gives its presence a heightened, deliberate meaning. On the film screen, we are often shown curtains moving to communicate the presence of wind effectively. Speaking specifically about Baroque art, Gilles Deleuze reminds us, “The fold is inseparable from the wind.” While Deleuze does not reference cinematic representation, the fabric in film recalls the long tradition in art history of suggesting wind with textile folds and drapes in painting and sculpture. Filmmakers, like photographers and painters, use blowing air to create mood and give us a sense of the actors’ environment. Textiles – flags, curtains, and dress – help make air and wind visible to audiences to create suspense and mood.
Evoking scent in its title, which refers to “Black Narcissus” perfume, the film announces that intangibility and impermanence, critical traits of airborne fragrance, are thematically significant in the film. Sound, too, is associated with air, distance, and sensory impact. Throughout the film, textiles work with sound to show us the persistence of wind and its effect on mood and character. Black Narcissus relies on carefully manipulated wind sources as it was shot on sets inside film studios. From the film’s start to the end, wind-blown fabric morphs according to the film narrative, adjusting with the plot to indicate danger, changing seasons, or erotic possibility. “Each phase of the wind has its psychology,” writes Gaston Bachelard. “The wind stirs itself up and becomes discouraged. It howls and groans. It goes from violence to distress. The very nature of the curtailed and useless gusts can give an image of anxious melancholy that is very different from oppressed melancholy.” The subtleties Bachelard describes apply to the flexibility of on-screen wind – it can be manipulated and reframed to convey different emotions.
Image: Film still from Black Narcissus, 1947. Image courtesy of Landmark Media, Alamy Stock Photo.
Image: Film still from Black Narcissus, 1947. Image courtesy of Photo 12, Alamy Stock Photo.
In Black Narcissus, a group of English nuns are sent to an abandoned palace high in the Himalayas in the hopes that they will turn it into a school/hospital (and convert the local population). Mr. Dean, the colonial agent stationed at this remote location, writes to the nuns before their arrival, warning them that the “wind blows seven days a week.” He observes of this place: “Something in the atmosphere makes everything seem exaggerated.” A significant plot point in Black Narcissus is the persistent wind encountered by the relocated nuns – and the exaggerated, hallucinogenic effect the environment has on them. Instead of repeatedly referencing the wind or including consistent blowing and whistling sounds, which would be tedious and distracting for the viewer, the filmmakers use background sets that extensively use textiles. Even in winter, the windows of the palace remain open, and the translucent fabric that covers them blows consistently behind and around the actors to show the relentless weather.
When we are introduced to the Palace of Mopu (also called the House of Women), the camera pans to the side of the palace, and curtains shredded by the endless wind blow into the frame. We enter the house through a blowing curtain, and the film cuts to the shadow of a curtain on the wall, where a mural depicts women who once lived there. As we move into the building’s interior, we encounter long curtains swaying in a doorway, fabric hanging from ceilings, and leaves blowing along the surfaces of the floors. The curtains are lightweight and worn and frayed from the constant wind. Later, some nuns complained that the windows didn’t shut and the doors didn’t close. From this introductory scene, we learn that wind always moves through the entire palace; it is as if the building is a permeable surface – like a loosely woven or fraying textile – rather than a shelter protecting its inhabitants from the weather.
Throughout the film, textiles mark the transitions in mood that accompany turns in the plot. When anticipation turns to suspense or erotic suggestion turns to nostalgia, we experience a heightened awareness of sensation, along with the characters, usually accompanied by increased wind. A sudden rustling of the curtains might signal a tremor of emotion in the actors. For example, the departure of Sister Philippa coincides with a growing sense of chaos and a fear of Sister Clodagh’s loosening grip on the mountaintop community. The sound of howling wind and the image of blowing nun habits mark this moment of growing tension.
As the leader and protagonist of the film, Sister Clodagh is engaged in a fruitless struggle to control her environment. Revealing the rising hysteria of the nuns, an early scene shows us Sister Briony, robes billowing, visiting Sister Clodagh’s curtain-filled room to warn of Sister Ruth’s increasing loss of mental stability. Sister Clodagh blames Ruth’s illness on “this wind”: the unceasing blowing air surrounding them. One of the film’s concerns is weakening the physical and mental life boundaries. The permeability of the palace walls signifies the nuns’ vulnerability to the emotions they previously attempted to keep at bay, namely desire, jealousy, and violence.
The concept of exposure in Black Narcissus takes on multiple meanings. Throughout the film, we are reminded of the persistent wind on the mountain and how it disrupts and disturbs the nuns who have relocated there. Perched on the side of a mountain, the house is vulnerable to the wind in all seasons. On a less literal level, the character of Mr. Dean sparks a different kind of exposure. Often appearing in a state of partial undress, Mr. Dean catalyses Sister Clodagh’s confession of past heartbreak and Sister Ruth’s erotically charged breakdown at the film’s end.
In contrast to the nuns’ habits and robes, Mr. Dean’s costuming is carefree, comfortable, and suited to the elements. His chest and legs are often unclothed, and he accepts the lack of social and environment surrounding them. His combination of physical freedom and relaxed attitude makes Mr. Dean both tempting and threatening to the asexual, strict lives of the nuns. He and Sister Clodagh confide in each other, sharing a near-intimacy that eventually breaks the heightened tension built throughout the film. Like the palace exposed to the winds, Mr. Dean’s emotional openness forces the nuns into a vulnerability they cannot bear.
Becky Peterson Edited excerpt from Textiles on Film, Bloomsbury, 2024
A moving curtain suggests three-dimensional space, indicates the presence of wind, and frames information for the audience. We have long associated our eyes with windows, and filmmakers often use windows to create frames, distancing effects, and reflective surfaces. Windows, like films, present their audiences with limited views of other worlds. Historically, the film has drawn on the tension between what is known and unknown to create suspense and mystery. In Western thought and culture, the unknown is often associated with traditionally “othered” groups. Cinema contributes to this prejudice toward the “unknown” by offering restricted, frequently biased, views into other worlds.
Black Narcissus (1947), for instance, explores fear and violence alongside eroticised otherness in a colonised setting. The film features wind and the presence of wind-blown fabric to paint layers of emotional depth, from desire and despair to malice and menace. The cinematography and mise-en-scène of Black Narcissus offer an aesthetically complex presentation achieved partly by the wind and textiles that create suspense in the film.
Kevin L. Ferguson points out that “air’s materiality in the film is overlooked because it is a materiality with little visuality,” adding that “there is no case of air accidentally wandering onto the set; air must be summoned up, cast, given a contract, pampered. For this reason, air is never wasted in a film – the effort alone makes it meaningful.”
The controlled nature of air in film gives its presence a heightened, deliberate meaning. On the film screen, we are often shown curtains moving to communicate the presence of wind effectively. Speaking specifically about Baroque art, Gilles Deleuze reminds us, “The fold is inseparable from the wind.” While Deleuze does not reference cinematic representation, the fabric in film recalls the long tradition in art history of suggesting wind with textile folds and drapes in painting and sculpture. Filmmakers, like photographers and painters, use blowing air to create mood and give us a sense of the actors’ environment. Textiles – flags, curtains, and dress – help make air and wind visible to audiences to create suspense and mood.
Evoking scent in its title, which refers to “Black Narcissus” perfume, the film announces that intangibility and impermanence, critical traits of airborne fragrance, are thematically significant in the film. Sound, too, is associated with air, distance, and sensory impact. Throughout the film, textiles work with sound to show us the persistence of wind and its effect on mood and character. Black Narcissus relies on carefully manipulated wind sources as it was shot on sets inside film studios. From the film’s start to the end, wind-blown fabric morphs according to the film narrative, adjusting with the plot to indicate danger, changing seasons, or erotic possibility. “Each phase of the wind has its psychology,” writes Gaston Bachelard. “The wind stirs itself up and becomes discouraged. It howls and groans. It goes from violence to distress. The very nature of the curtailed and useless gusts can give an image of anxious melancholy that is very different from oppressed melancholy.” The subtleties Bachelard describes apply to the flexibility of on-screen wind – it can be manipulated and reframed to convey different emotions.
Image: Film still from Black Narcissus, 1947. Image courtesy of Photo 12, Alamy Stock Photo.
In Black Narcissus, a group of English nuns are sent to an abandoned palace high in the Himalayas in the hopes that they will turn it into a school/hospital (and convert the local population). Mr. Dean, the colonial agent stationed at this remote location, writes to the nuns before their arrival, warning them that the “wind blows seven days a week.” He observes of this place: “Something in the atmosphere makes everything seem exaggerated.” A significant plot point in Black Narcissus is the persistent wind encountered by the relocated nuns – and the exaggerated, hallucinogenic effect the environment has on them. Instead of repeatedly referencing the wind or including consistent blowing and whistling sounds, which would be tedious and distracting for the viewer, the filmmakers use background sets that extensively use textiles. Even in winter, the windows of the palace remain open, and the translucent fabric that covers them blows consistently behind and around the actors to show the relentless weather.
When we are introduced to the Palace of Mopu (also called the House of Women), the camera pans to the side of the palace, and curtains shredded by the endless wind blow into the frame. We enter the house through a blowing curtain, and the film cuts to the shadow of a curtain on the wall, where a mural depicts women who once lived there. As we move into the building’s interior, we encounter long curtains swaying in a doorway, fabric hanging from ceilings, and leaves blowing along the surfaces of the floors. The curtains are lightweight and worn and frayed from the constant wind. Later, some nuns complained that the windows didn’t shut and the doors didn’t close. From this introductory scene, we learn that wind always moves through the entire palace; it is as if the building is a permeable surface – like a loosely woven or fraying textile – rather than a shelter protecting its inhabitants from the weather.
Throughout the film, textiles mark the transitions in mood that accompany turns in the plot. When anticipation turns to suspense or erotic suggestion turns to nostalgia, we experience a heightened awareness of sensation, along with the characters, usually accompanied by increased wind. A sudden rustling of the curtains might signal a tremor of emotion in the actors. For example, the departure of Sister Philippa coincides with a growing sense of chaos and a fear of Sister Clodagh’s loosening grip on the mountaintop community. The sound of howling wind and the image of blowing nun habits mark this moment of growing tension.
As the leader and protagonist of the film, Sister Clodagh is engaged in a fruitless struggle to control her environment. Revealing the rising hysteria of the nuns, an early scene shows us Sister Briony, robes billowing, visiting Sister Clodagh’s curtain-filled room to warn of Sister Ruth’s increasing loss of mental stability. Sister Clodagh blames Ruth’s illness on “this wind”: the unceasing blowing air surrounding them. One of the film’s concerns is weakening the physical and mental life boundaries. The permeability of the palace walls signifies the nuns’ vulnerability to the emotions they previously attempted to keep at bay, namely desire, jealousy, and violence.
The concept of exposure in Black Narcissus takes on multiple meanings. Throughout the film, we are reminded of the persistent wind on the mountain and how it disrupts and disturbs the nuns who have relocated there. Perched on the side of a mountain, the house is vulnerable to the wind in all seasons. On a less literal level, the character of Mr. Dean sparks a different kind of exposure. Often appearing in a state of partial undress, Mr. Dean catalyses Sister Clodagh’s confession of past heartbreak and Sister Ruth’s erotically charged breakdown at the film’s end.
In contrast to the nuns’ habits and robes, Mr. Dean’s costuming is carefree, comfortable, and suited to the elements. His chest and legs are often unclothed, and he accepts the lack of social and environment surrounding them. His combination of physical freedom and relaxed attitude makes Mr. Dean both tempting and threatening to the asexual, strict lives of the nuns. He and Sister Clodagh confide in each other, sharing a near-intimacy that eventually breaks the heightened tension built throughout the film. Like the palace exposed to the winds, Mr. Dean’s emotional openness forces the nuns into a vulnerability they cannot bear.
Becky Peterson Edited excerpt from Textiles on Film, Bloomsbury, 2024