costumes, Alfred Junge, the art director, had three main colour schemes. The sisters were always in the white habits that he designed from a medley of medieval types. These white robes of heavy material stressed the sisters' other-worldliness amid the exotic native surroundings. The chief native characters were robed in brilliant colours, particularly the generals in jewels and in rich silks. Other native characters brought into the film for "atmosphere" were clad in more sombre colours with the usual native dress of the Nepalese, Bhutanese and Tibetan peoples toned down to prevent overloading the eye with brilliance. According to Robert Horton, Powell set the climactic sequence, a murder attempt on the cliffs of the cloister, to a pre-existing musical track, staging it as though it were a piece of visual choreography. There was some personal, behind-the-scenes tension, as Kerr was the director's ex-lover and Byron his current one. "It was a situation not uncommon in show business, I was told," Powell later wrote, "but it was new to me." The film was intended to end with an additional scene in which Sister Clodagh sobs and blames herself for the convent's failure to Mother Dorothea. Mother Dorothea touches and speaks to Sister Clodagh welcomingly as the latter's tears continue to fall. When they filmed the scene with the rainfall on the leaves in what was to have been the penultimate scene, Powell was so impressed with it that he decided to designate that the last scene and to scrap the Mother Dorothea closing scene. It was filmed but it is not known whether it was printed. Release Box office Black Narcissus had its world premiere at the Odeon Theatre in London on 4 May 1947. According to trade papers, the film was a "notable box office attraction" at British cinemas in 1947. It premiered in the United States on 13 August 1947 in New York City at the Fulton Theatre. In France, where it released in 1949, the film sold 1,388,416 tickets. In Japan, it was the fifth top-grossing film of 1950, earning in theatrical rentals. Legion of Decency condemnation In the United States, the Catholic National Legion of Decency condemned the film as "an affront to religion and religious life" for characterising it as "an escape for the abnormal, the neurotic and the frustrated". The version of the film originally shown in the United States had scenes depicting flashbacks of