Michael Powell & Martin Scorsese: The First Director’s Commentary

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:07]Do you like it, Sister Ruth?

[00:00:09]It’s called Black Narcissus.

[00:00:11]Comes from the Army & Navy Stores in London.

[00:00:16]Black Narcissus?

[00:00:18]I don’t like scent at all.

[00:00:19]Oh, Sister, don’t you think it’s rather common to smell of ourselves?

[00:00:31]Have you seen the young general today?

[00:00:33]What’s the latest?

[00:00:34]-Emeralds. -Beautiful emeralds.

[00:00:36]The deepest, most beautiful green I’ve ever seen.

[00:00:38]At that hour in the morning, they make me bilious.

[00:00:40]Have you seen his coats?

[00:00:42]He must have a different one for every day of the year.

[00:00:44]Lucky he doesn’t have to do his own laundry.

[00:00:46]Yesterday he had a coat the color of ripe corn, patterned with flowers and damask.

[00:00:50]His earrings were amethysts three inches long, and his rings were turquoise.

[00:00:54]Today he’s all jade and emeralds, and his coat is the most wonderful pattern of pale violet stripes, worked entirely in petit point just like my grandmother’s footstool.

[00:01:06]That cut was perfect.

[00:01:10]By this time, I wouldn’t allow any dissolves.

[00:01:14]It had to be direct cuts.

[00:01:15]Granny!

[00:01:18]Turn ’round.

[00:01:20]I say you have a dissolve and probably go on four frames too long.

[00:01:24]With a cut you can make it exact.

[00:01:42]Now, her movement; watch her movement here.

[00:01:44]-Goodnight, everybody. -And watch the camera move.

[00:01:52]Not too late, darling.

[00:01:54]Oh, dear, I hope they get… -Right here. -…something settled by the winter.

[00:02:01]And here.

[00:02:03]And I confess, the pay-off to this flashback is something that I’ve always loved.

[00:02:10]Just a fade to black.

[00:02:11]…at the Army & Navy Stores.

[00:02:13]Though, for me, that is such a surprising end, where she rushes off. She gets the emeralds, she puts them on and senses, oh, it’s going to be a wonderful life and she can’t wait to see him, and she goes off into nothing.

[00:02:26]I think in my film King of Comedy, for example, this was the lead.

[00:02:29]I took the lead from this and a very simple approach to the fantasy scenes in that Michael’s… the way he just so gently moved from fantasy to reality.

[00:02:44]In King of Comedy, Rupert’s fantasies should be just as simple, I thought.

[00:02:50]A direct cut.

[00:02:52]And we took that lead in a sense for King of Comedy and made the fantasy as real as the reality.

[00:03:00]In a sense, Rupert, slipping over the edge, is obviously a person who really can’t tell the difference between the fantasy and reality up to a certain point.

[00:03:08]And therefore, you should treat the fantasy just as real, maybe even more real.

[00:03:12]That all came from watching those sequences over and over.