Martin Scorsese was immensely impacted by the work of British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger, and, in his documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressberger, he explains how and why. It’s like a guest presentation in film school.
The screenwriter Pressberger wrote director Powell’s 49th Parallel, one of the very best WW II propaganda films. They found themselves to be each other’s muse. The two co-directed One of Our Airplanes Is Missing in 1942 and continued to co-direct 16 films through 1959’s Night Ambush. Their oeuvre includes several films generally acknowledged as classics of cinema: Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, and one of my personal favorites, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. The creative partnership wore itself out in 1959, but the two remained close friends, and were unashamed to describe their partnership as based on love.
Along the way, they routinely discarded cinematic conventions to make risky innovations:
- Pausing the story in The Red Shoes to mount an original ballet in its entirety.
- Using one actress to play three different roles in Colonel Blimp.
- Building the drama to the pivotal duel in Colonel Blimp and then audaciously NOT showing the actual fight.
- The humorous use of hunting trophies to mark the time passages in Colonel Blimp.
- Using filmed music in Black Narcissus.
- Evoking the set and production design of Fritz Lang’s iconic Metropolis in A Matter of Life and Death.
- Switching between black-and-white and color in A Matter of Life and Death.
- Creating Tales of Hoffman as a “composed film”, a marriage of cinematic imagery with operatic music.
After his association with Pressberger, Powell made what I consider his best film, Peeping Tom, which was released in the same year as Hitchcock’s Psycho; I find Peeping Tom to be the better film, and more shocking and disturbing..
Made in England makes a passing reference to Powell’s last film, Age of Consent, but doesn’t mention that it features a voluptuous, nubile 24-year-old Helen Mirren naked.
Here’s another random thought sparked by Made in England – Anton Walbrook, who is not in the pantheon of famous actors from the Golden Age, was a really excellent actor.
Now you might NOT want to go to film class, and, in that case, this is an Eat Your Broccoli movie. But if you’re a hardcore cinephile and/or a Scorsese fan like me, this film is for you.