The Prodigal Cinephile

Although the majority of it technically falls within summer, it’s hardly any wonder that in the United States the month of September is more closely associated with fall when it marks the beginning of the school year, return of football, and appearance of pumpkin beer on grocery store endcaps. This makes the Autumn Winds created by St. Louis bartender Matt Seiter and collected in Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology a perfect cocktail to highlight right now because it uses sage, which I’ll always associate with Thanksgiving stuffing no matter how many times I combine it with ingredients like peaches and tomatoes, to whisper of the season to come while still offering up enough lemony brightness to make it a great porch sipper. Here’s how you make it:

2 ozs. Gin (Citadelle)
1/2 oz. Bénédictine
1/2 oz. Brown Butter Sage liqueur (recipe follows)
1 dash Angostura bitters

Make the Brown Butter Sage liqueur by browning 10 tablespoons of butter, stirring constantly, over medium heat. Remove from heat, add 3/4 oz. lemon juice and a chiffonade of 12-15 sage leaves, and rest for 10 minutes. Add 1 cup simple syrup and 12 ozs. vodka (Tito’s) and allow to stand at room temperature for 4-6 hours. Refrigerate overnight, skim solids from the top of the mixture, and strain into a bottle. Make the cocktail by shaking all ingredients with ice, straining into a chilled champagne coupe, and garnishing with a spanked fresh sage leaf.

If you’ve never spanked a sage leaf, it’s exactly what it sounds like, and you don’t want to skip this step as it releases odors that are essential to the way the drink works. Regan mentions that a small amount of butter solids will remain in the liqueur even after straining, which is true, and that it’s best to shake the bottle before mixing to make sure you get all of that flavor. Seiter calls for Ransom Old Tom, the first gin I ever fell in love with, in this Feast Magazine article, and I’m sure it works great, especially in late September when it actually starts to get cold! But I like Citadelle because it resonates not just with baking spices in the liqueur, but also the lemon, plus it’s an additional (along with the Bénédictine) French connection to this month’s movie. Speaking of which:

History Is Made at Night contains one of the most deliriously happy endings in cinema history, but even more than most movies made in the 1930s, its atmosphere is redolent with signs of World War II. Here’s a picture of my Criterion Collection DVD release:

It can also be streamed via The Criterion Channel with a subscription, and some people (including current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students) may have access to it through Kanopy via a license paid for by their local academic or public library as well.

Andrew Sarris famously argued in The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 that “History Is Made at Night is not only the most romantic title in the history of cinema but also a profound expression of [director Frank] Borzage’s commitment to love over probability.” The specific paramours in this case are Charles Boyer’s Paul Dumond and Jean Arthur’s Irene Vail, who as the film begins is attempting to leave her husband, Colin Clive’s sadistic and irrationally jealous shipping magnate Bruce Vail. Unwilling to accept the possibility that she hasn’t been cheating on him, but unable to prove that she has, he devises a scheme to “catch” her in his chauffeur Michael’s (Ivan Lebedeff) arms in order to prevent the divorce from becoming final (because she will no longer be “blameless” in the eyes of the law). Unfortunately for Vail, Paul just happens to be putting a drunken companion to bed (“you can’t drink all of the wine in Paris in one night–it’s practically impossible!”) next door from the apartment where the tawdry scene will play out and hears something:

He creeps out onto the balcony and peers through the neighboring window:

When Michael begins to force himself on Irene, Paul makes a split-second decision to pose as a robber. He pulls his hat down over his eyes:

Climbs inside:

And lays Michael out with what Nick Pinkerton amusingly characterizes as “one of those right-on-the-chin one-punch knockout swings so prevalent in Golden Age Hollywood filmmaking”:

Just then Vail and his lawyer Norton (George Meeker) come rushing in. Paul holds them with a pretend gun (the old finger in the coat pocket trick):

“Steals” Irene’s pearl necklace and other jewelry as they look on and then orders her to get her coat:

Finally, Paul locks Vail and his lawyer in the closet and he and Irene make their escape:

Cue the film’s first of many major tonal shifts. As described by Hervé Dumont in his book Frank Borzage: The Life and Films of a Hollywood Romantic, “after this busy, Dashiell Hammett-like aperitif, regulated like a ballet and photographed in the style of film noir (Gregg Toland), we go into an English waltz.” Once they are alone together in a cab, Paul first offers a puzzled Irene a cigarette, then returns her necklace and jewels:

He explains that he is not, in fact, a thief and merely wanted to help her out of a sticky situation, to which she says, “all I can seem to say is ‘oh!'”

Paul proposes dinner and instructs the driver to head to an establishment called the Château Bleu when she accepts. Unfortunately, the neon sign out front goes out right as they arrive. This doesn’t deter Paul, who addresses the gentleman locking up (Leo Carrillo): “Cesare, you are not closing!” He replies, “no, we are not closing–we are closed!”

But Paul appears to know more about this man than just his name, and by playing to his vanity (“everyone here knows that you are the greatest chef in Paris, that is no news, but would you believe that you were that famous in America?”) convinces him to reopen the kitchen for a private engagement:

The musicians and their leader (George Davis) who preceded Cesare out the door are brought back even more easily by the mere mention of a champagne party:

And with that what Dumont calls “the paradigm of sequence of seduction” is off and running. Paul orders lobster cardinale (which according to Saveur was invented in Baltimore, where I spent most of the 2010s, by the way) à la Cesare and salad chiffonnade. Then he draws a face on his hand, as one does, and introduces Irene to “the woman he lives with,” Coco:

I admit to feeling perplexed by this particular decision the first few times I watched History, but part of the shtick is that Coco doesn’t have a filter, which gives Paul a way to let Irene know that he is single and ask her what the hell precipitated the scene in her apartment earlier without technically violating societal norms. Dan Callahan further observes that when she reappears toward the end of the film, “Borzage uses this comic explosion to keep us off balance, unguarded, making us laugh so that when the lovers are reminded of their problems, we feel their pain much more deeply.”

Anyway, Paul and Irene tell Cesare to keep their food warm, much to his chagrin, and commence to dance until dawn, with Irene discarding clothing all the while. To again quote Dumont:

The camera frames Irene’s shoes, pans to her mink stole lying on the floor, and finally insistently follows the languorous steps of the dancers. The polysemy of images makes this erotic striptease–Irene is only wearing a long silk negligee–the outward expression of confidence and progressive abandonment (without saying a word, she says more to aul than she has ever said to her husband), but also one of detachment, of breaking off: jewels, shoes, and mink are signs of Bruce Vail’s property.

But although to them the night they have passed together qualifies as the year that Paul must wait as a gentleman before its in good taste for him to utter the one the “only thing important enough to say to [Irene] tonight,” they soon discover that they are not yet free to be together. Irene returns home, she thinks just to pack up her belongings, to find Vail waiting for her. He leads her and the police to believe that Paul’s blow killed Michael, when in reality he finished the poor guy off himself:

Then tells her that unless she joins him on a trans-Atlantic steamer that very afternoon, he’ll commit all of his resources to “finding the murderer.” Cut to Paul at the Château Bleu, where–surprise!–he is the head waiter. He recommends a French 75 to the man he put to bed the previous evening as a hangover cure, then writes the special du jour on a blackboard:

He’s expecting Irene to join him at five o’clock, and when his shift is over buys a newspaper to read while he waits. That’s when he sees this headline:

He resolves to follow Irene to New York, but locating her proves to be more challenging than he expected, because duh. Luckily Cesare decided to join him, and the two hatch a scheme to convince the owner of a restaurant called Victor’s to hire them to turn it into the hottest place in the city, which they do. Finally, one night Irene shows up in a dress that I’d *love* to see sparkle on a good nitrate print and claims the table he has ordered the staff to keep empty for her every night.

Sure, she’s with Vail, but yada yada yada the next thing you know she’s showing Paul how to make “eggs à la Kansas” the following morning:

And that, two-thirds of the way through History Is Made at Night, is when things *really* start to get interesting. Because, as noted by Brian Darr, screenwriters Gene Towne and Graham Baker appear to have intentionally capitalized on the 25th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic by ending the movie with a ship hitting an iceberg! There is, as yet, no hint of this in the breakfast scene depicted above, but on a postprandial stroll Irene lets it slip that the reason she and Vail were about to depart for Paris on the Hindenburg (seriously) was so that she could testify against the man arrested for the death of Michael. Paul barely hesitates: he and Irene will return to Paris on Vail’s boat the Princess Irene because he cannot allow an innocent man to go to the guillotine for a crime he believes he committed. And suddenly the stakes Borzage are gambling become clear. He is famous for placing obstacles between his romantic leads, but this one is a doozy even by his standards: the barrier is their own human decency. The film’s climax reenacts their star-crossed love affair, but on a bigger canvas to emphasize the universality of their plight. When Vail orders the captain of the Princess Irene to speed forward despite the hazardous conditions his vessel is sailing through, ostensibly to set a record but really to destroy Paul and Irene, he is no longer imperiling just their lives, but thousands of others.

Their union was already on death row, but once the ship starts sinking and its lifeboats fill up, the sentence is extended to hundreds of other couples.

The fundamental injustice of the two soulmates being separated from one another has been compounded, their sacrifice takes on even more heroic dimensions, and the only suitable reward is a miracle: although he and Irene don’t know it yet, Paul has already been acquitted, and a pardon comes through for their fellow passengers at the eleventh hour as well: “attention everyone, attention. The forward bulkheads are holding and the ship is in no danger of sinking,” comes the unexpected announcement. “Help is on the way. The lifeboats are standing by and you will soon be with your families.” Their reactions represent the full range of emotions that Paul and Irene, who for now still think they’ve only been granted a stay of execution, will presumably soon feel:

The final image of a kiss promises that our heroes truly will live happily ever after:

…at least until the Germans march into Paris about three years later. Of course, we could take things one step further and read the suicide of Bruce Vail as anticipating the end of that conflict. This, ultimately, is what connects this month’s movie and drink in my mind: the thing to remember about autumn is that it’s followed by winter, spring, and summer, just as war follows peace follows war. So be merry, pour yourself another glass of champagne, and have another helping of lobster cardinale:

Because the worst of times must by definition eventually get better, and nothing gold can stay.

Cheers!

All original photographs in this post are by Marion Penning, aka My Loving Wife. Links to all of the entries in this series can be found here.

As I have mentioned previously, after I publish my last “Drink & a Movie” post in early 2026 I plan to edit all of them into a book. My chief model for this endeavor will be Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails by “Dr. Cocktail” Ted Haigh, which features a blend of images, drink lore, and practical advice in perfect proportions and which is spiral-bound for ease of use as all recipe books should be! Haigh’s version of the classic East India Cocktail has been in heavy rotation at our house since the end of raspberry season, so it seemed like a logical choice for this month’s drink. Here’s how we make it:

3 ozs. Brandy (Frapin VSOP)
1/2 oz. Raspberry syrup (we use the recipe below from Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s The Bar Book)
1 teaspoon Maraschino liqueur (Luxardo)
1 teaspoon Ferrand Yuzu Dry Curaçao
1 dash Angostura Bitters

Make the raspberry syrup by simmering two cups of fresh raspberries with eight ounces of water in a medium saucepan for five to ten minutes until everything is approximately the same color, then strain. Add one cup of sugar while the mixture is still hot, stir until dissolved, let cool, then bottle and refrigerate. Make the cocktail by stirring all ingredients with ice and straining into a chilled glass. Garnish with a cherry.

The East India Cocktail is an elegant beverage. Haigh explains that it “was named not for the eastern part of India but for all of it and more: India, Burma, Malaya, Singapore, and the entirety of the British colonies.” This therefore struck me as a perfect opportunity to break out the bottle of yuzu Curaçao I picked up at The Wine Source in Baltimore last winter since I associate it with that corner of the world more than its West Indian cousin. The dominant flavor is of course cognac (there are three ounces of it, after all), but the other ingredients serve the same function as the atmosphere at the palace of Mopu, where most of this month’s movie Black Narcissus takes place: they exaggerate everything. So it’s fruitier, sweeter, more mysterious cognac. Speaking of which: considering how much of it you’re going to use, it’s definitely worth splurging on a good bottle! Frapin VSOP was a recommendation by someone at Ithaca’s always reliable Cellar d’Or and we like it here and to sip on its own quite a bit.

Black Narcissus is set in the part of the British Empire that the East India Cocktail is named after, and it has been on my mind ever since I was fortunate enough to see it at last year’s Nitrate Picture Show, so it was an obvious way to complete the pairing. Here’s a picture of my Criterion Collection DVD release:

It can also be streamed via The Criterion Channel and a number of other commercial platforms for free, with a subscription, or for a rental fee. Some people (including current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students) may have access to it through Kanopy via a license paid for by their local academic or public library as well.

Thanks to brilliant Oscar-winning art direction by Alfred Junge and cinematography by Jack Cardiff, along with stunning matte paintings by W. Percy Day, Black Narcissus is one of the most transportative films ever shot entirely in a studio. It begins with a series of shots that establish the setting:

This is followed by an introduction to Mopu, which the Order of the Servants of Mary plans to convert into a convent, that Priya Jaikumar notes “is filtered through three people, all of whom are less than objective about the place and the nuns’ mission.” We see it first through the eyes of Reverend Mother Dorothea (Nancy Roberts), who ponders an illustration in a book:

Then Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr), who is being sent there as the order’s youngest Sister Superior, imagines it as she reads a letter from Mr. Dean (David Farrar), the British agent of The Old General Toda Raj (Esmond Knight) who has given it to them:

Mr. Dean’s letter reveals that the General’s father previously housed his concubines in Mopu:

And introduces us to the local holy man who sits motionless day in and day out with his face to the mountains:

Before seamlessly transitioning into a depiction of the General giving instructions to Mopu’s housekeeper Angu Ayah (May Hallatt) and Mr. Dean, who we see for the first time riding a pony that is absurdly small for a man of his height:

The rest of the nuns who will occupy Mopu, or Saint Faith as it is now to be called, are introduced in the next scene, which per Roderick Heath is reminiscent of “the kind of war movies where a team of talents is assembled for a dangerous mission in enemy territory.” There’s Sister Briony (Judith Furse), the strong one; Sister Philippa (Flora Robson) for the garden; and Sister Blanche or “Honey” (Jenny Laird), because Sister Clodagh will need to be popular:

As well as Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) because “she’s a problem,” but “with a smaller community, she may be better.” Sister Ruth is initially represented as an empty place at the convent’s dinner table:

But she appears very soon afterward in corporeal form at Mopu ringing a bell perched at the end of a dizzying abyss which Bertrand Tavernier calls “absolutely breathtaking” in the DVD extra The Audacious Adventurer and an example of special effects that are more impressive than those of the digital era because “these seem to have a soul: they are not just the product of technology but are infused with emotion.”

Dave Kehr observes that “despite the great wit and character of [Emeric] Pressburger’s dialogue, Black Narcissus is a film that develops almost entirely through formal rather than dramatic means.” One of my favorite examples of this is the way the past elbows its way into the sisters’ present the longer they remain at Mopu. Early on, Sister Clodagh’s flashbacks are signaled by dissolves, like this one:

Which is followed by a medium shot of Clodagh fishing amidst a shimmering disco ball of sunlight glistening on the waves that Martin Scorsese accurately lauds in his DVD commentary track as “overwhelming” for those lucky enough to see the film on the big screen in a good print:

As the film progresses and her memories become as real as whatever she’s experiencing live, though, this is replaced by straight cuts, for instance from Sister Honey’s description of a jacket worn by the Old General’s heir (Sabu) as “just like my grandmother’s footstool” to this one from Sister Clodagh’s youth:

This sequence also ends with an astonishing moment which Ryland Walker Knight describes as transitioning “in one shot from technicolor beauty to the void, the loss of grounding becoming as powerful an edit as imaginable”:

Sister Philippa’s own struggles to combat the return of the repressed are similarly conveyed more by this image of her staring off into space:

And this close-up of her blistered and calloused hands:

Than anything in the screenplay. But Kehr is right that this tendency is best exemplified in the incredible final sequence, where it’s “enough to see the bright, red lipstick that Sister Ruth has put on to know that the apocalypse is near.” He’s referring to the scene which follows her sudden appearance in a red dress to announce to put an exclamation point on her decision to not renew her vows (the Servants of Mary are only bound to their order for one year at a time):

Which was foreshadowed much earlier by a shot of her watching Sister Clodagh speak to Mr. Dean while the convent’s young translator Joseph Anthony (Eddie Whaley Jr.) teaches students how to say the names of various weapons in English:

And set up by first a fatal act of attention and kindness by Mr. Dean, who thanks her for her misguided efforts to treat a woman bleeding to death in the convent’s hospital instead of immediately fetching the much more experienced Sister Briony:

And then a fatal decision by Sister Clodagh to ask Joseph Anthony to bring her a glass of milk:

Sister Ruth dumps it out, assuming that it’s poisoned:

And spots Sister Clodagh talking to Mr. Dean once again:

She rushes downstairs past a dramatic streak of sunlight on the floor that Kristin Thompson says in her video essay “Color Motifs in Black Narcissus“ Technicolor technicians lobbied Cardiff to remove from the film after they misidentified it as a lens flare:

And takes up position behind a window so that she can eavesdrop on them:

Hearing Mr. Dean console Sister Clodagh leads directly to Sister Ruth donning her red dress. Sister Clodagh implores her to at least wait until morning before departing Saint Faith. And so they settle in for a long night, Sister Ruth with her lipstick and compact and Sister Clodagh with her bible:

The camera tilts from Sister Ruth’s lips to her red eyes and a forehead dotted with beads of sweat:

She outlasts Sister Clodagh in a staring contest of sorts in which the passage of time is indicated by cutting back and forth between a shrinking candle and the wall art in Mopu:

And makes her escape when Sister Clodagh finally succumbs to fatigue:

Sister Ruth treks through the jungle in a sequence which contains a shot that reminds me of one in Suspiria that I wrote about in my October, 2022 Drink & a Movie post:

And finally arrives at Mr. Dean’s bungalow, where she tells him she loves him. He rejects her, and she literally sees red and passes out:

In his autobiography A Life in Movies, director Michael Powell describes the climax of Black Narcissus, which ensues after she comes to and returns to Mopu, as an experiment with “composed film” whereby the blocking and editing were timed to composer Brian Easdale’s music, as opposed to him creating this part of the score based on rushes. Reminiscent of a horror film, it begins with a two shot sequence of Sister Ruth watching Sister Clodagh intently in the predawn hours:

Sister Ruth stalks Sister Clodagh, her presence felt but never seen, as the latter woman attempts to go about a semblance of her morning routine:

Finally, checking her watch and realizing what time it is, Sister Clodagh steps outside to ring the convent’s bell. This is followed by perhaps the film’s single most famous image:

Sister Ruth attempts to push Sister Clodagh over Mopu’s cliffs:

But Sister Clodagh maintains her grip on the bell’s rope:

And in the ensuing struggle it is Sister Ruth who ultimately falls to her death:

Kehr notes that India achieved independence mere months after Black Narcissus‘s premiere on April 24, 1947 and suggests that the final images of a procession down from Mopu can be read as anticipating Britain’s departure.

“For Powell and Pressburger,” Kehr writes, “these are not images of defeat, but of a respectful, rational retreat from something that England never owned and never understood. It is the tribute paid by west to east, full of fear and gratitude.” This reading is complicated for me by the fact that the film doesn’t end with Sister Clodagh looking back at Mopu as it’s covered by mist:

But rather with Mr. Dean bidding a tender farewell to her:

The rains beginning to fall, proving his prediction that the sisters wouldn’t last this long correct:

And finally him looking on as they ride away:

So, yes, the last image is of a British retreat, but it’s a POV shot from the perspective of an Englishman who will remain behind and who promises to take care of Sister Ruth’s grave. It therefore doesn’t play as a farewell to Empire for me so much as an elegy for a certain idea of Britishness, one caught impossibly between the two ways of living in a colonized land previously articulated by Sister Philippa: “either you must live like Mr. Dean, or . . . or like the holy man. Either ignore it or give yourself up to it.” Sister Clodagh intuits that there must be a third way, but cannot articulate what it is, which is why she and the surviving sisters must leave. It’s also why, for all of Black Narcissus‘s gorgeous and inspired cinematography, my favorite moment of all might be the simple scene in which Sister Philippa places the flowers she planted instead of vegetables like she was supposed to on Sister Ruth’s grave:

Here, more than the film’s actual final images, is the respect, fear, and gratitude that Kehr speaks of, as well as, appropriately, sadness. Which is too somber of a note to end a post in this particular series on, so here’s a shot of a shirtless Mr. Dean:

Cheers!

All original photographs in this post are by Marion Penning, aka My Loving Wife. Links to all of the entries in this series can be found here.