All language subtitles for Made.in.England.The.Films.of.Powell.and.Pressburger.2024.720p.AMZN.WEBRip.900MB.x264-GalaxyRG.en

MADE IN ENGLAND THE FILMS
OF POWELL AND PRESSBURGER

PRESENTED BY MARTIN SCORSESE

DIRECTED BY DAVID HINTON

I was born in 1942

and I developed asthma
at about three years old.

And that meant that I couldn't run around
and play as much as other children,

and so I found myself

sitting in front of the
TV, watching movies.

Some of the very first moving
images that I can remember seeing

are from The Thief of Baghdad.

Whip yourself, winds of heaven!

Whip till you wail aloud!

I didn't know it then, but Michael Powell
was one of the directors on that film.

And for a kid,

there could be no
better initiation

into the Michael
Powell mysteries.

This was a picture
made by a great showman

and every image

filled me with wonder.

The power a movie can hold,

it absolutely enthralled me.

My eyes!

I'm blind!

Of course, what
I was seeing then

wasn't a glorious
Technicolor print of the film

but actually a very poor
black and white version

on a 16 inch screen
on our family TV.

And yet

it still had the
power to grip me

and stay with me
forever in my mind.

American films, yes.

Even Italian films, neorealist
films I saw on television.

But the interesting thing
about television at that time

was that many of the films
that were shown on American TV

were British films.

Because American distributors
would not sell to TV.

But apparently British
distributors would.

And that's why

British Cinema for
me, was so formative.

I used to get excited
by the different

logos of the different
British film companies.

But there was one which held
out a very special promise.

That was the target
of The Archers

A PRODUCTION OF THE ARCHERS

that heralded a Powell
Pressburger film.

And by the time I
was ten or eleven,

I'd be watching Powell
Pressburger films endlessly on TV.

They were shown a lot.

There was one called
The Tales of Hoffmann.

Which is not an obvious film
you'd say for a child to enjoy.

It's basically a
19th-century opera, but

I just didn't watch it
once, I mean, I watched it

repeatedly and obsessively.

It was on this program
called Million Dollar Movie

which showed the
same film all week,

twice every evening

and three times on the weekend.

But the thing was that
I was hypnotized by it.

And those repeated viewings
taught me pretty much

everything I know about the
relation of camera to music.

And even now,

music and images
from that picture

often run through my mind.

In fact

I think the Powell
Pressburger films have had

a profound effect on the
sensibility that I bring

to all the work
I was able to do.

I was so bewitched
by them as a child

that they make up a big part
of my film subconscious.

Now going to the
cinema with my father

was also a very important
part of my childhood.

The nicest theaters then were spectacles
in themselves, great movie palaces

and the screens were huge.

And they filled you with hope
and expectation of wonder.

And one film

that fulfilled all
those expectations

was The Red Shoes.

It was the first time I saw
The Archers logo in color.

And of course, I particularly
remember the ballet sequence.

Wanting to know how they made the
dancer turn into a scrap of newspaper.

These days I'm told
that Powell Pressburger

represents something called
'English Romanticism'

But I don't really
know what that is.

To me, the overwhelming
impression of their films

has always been
to do with color,

light

movement and a sense of music.

And even as a child,

I was certainly struck by the
theatricality of The Red Shoes.

The cinematic theatricality.

The design of
actors in the frame,

the surprising ways they
looked and they moved.

The dramatic angles
and lighting.

You got the sense that

anything could happen
in a film like this.

And I was riveted by the mystery

and the hysteria of the picture.

The experience was so intense, in fact,
that first viewing of The Red Shoes

may be one of the origins of my
own obsession with cinema itself.

When I became a student
and then a young filmmaker

Powell and Pressburger remained
a constant fascination.

But we could only see their
films in very incomplete forms.

Very degraded
versions, bad copies.

But we knew there was something
special going on with these movies.

And we became fascinated by the
distinctive signature on the films.

Written, produced and directed by
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Now a shared credit like that

was really unheard of and we
wanted to know who did what,

who said cut, who said action?

It was all a mystery.

In those days, the only sources
of information were books

and magazines, maybe.

And we read about British
directors, of course,

like David Lean and Carol
Reed and Alfred Hitchcock.

But there was rarely, rarely a
mention of Powell Pressburger.

So in effect,

they became mythical beings

to myself and my friends.

Then finally in 1970

I got to see a 35mm color
print of Peeping Tom.

Which had become a legendary work
among film students and filmmakers.

It'll be two quid.

I was an obsessive young
filmmaker watching a film

about an obsessive young filmmaker
who is also a psychopath.

It's a horror movie
with no blood.

Where the object of terror seems
to be the film camera itself.

No!

When I first saw it, it
was hard for me to believe

that such a raw and
provocative film was made

by the same Michael Powell
who had made The Red Shoes.

But indeed, it was.

And he dared to do what no one
else had really dared before him.

To show how close moviemaking
can come to madness.

How it can devour
you if you let it.

By this time, I was
making movies on my own.

And in 1974, after I made Mean
Streets, I went to England

and I found myself at a cocktail party
given by a man named Michael Kaplan.

And I was asking him
about this, this mystery.

Now, do you know of
a Michael Powell?

Does he exist?

Is there such a person?

And he said "Oh, yes, he's
living in a caravan somewhere."

Well, that turned out
to be an exaggeration.

He was actually living in a
cottage in Gloucestershire,

but he'd fallen on
very hard times.

He'd been pretty much forgotten

and abandoned by the
British film industry

and he could barely even
afford to heat his own house.

But of course, I
wanted to meet him

and a drink was arranged.

So suddenly there I was
talking to Michael Powell.

Who was amazed that someone wanted
to discuss his pictures with him.

He had no idea that his work
had been an inspiration to me,

and Brian De Palma,

and Coppola and so many
others of the new generation.

Of course, I speak fast and I was
very energetic and very excited.

I was bombarding
him with questions.

And he didn't say much.

Michael didn't say much.
He was very reserved.

Very quiet in his answers.

But later, I discovered that
he was moved by the meeting.

Because he wrote in
his autobiography

that during that meeting,

he felt the blood course
through his veins again.

The other day, I ate
a ricochet biscuit.

Well, that's the kind of
biscuit That's supposed to

Bounce off the wall
Back in your mouth

If you don't bounce back...

You go hungry!

After our meeting, I arranged
for Michael to see Mean Streets.

And he sent me a letter
praising the film.

Except...

he said that I use too much red.

I GOT TIRED OF THE RED

Too much red?

I didn't point out to him that his
films had something to do with this too.

Look at all the red he uses.

Anyway, we started to write to each
other and eventually he came to New York.

He was introduced to a lot of
people and he was invited to become

the senior director in
residence at Zoetrope,

Francis Coppola's
company in L.A.

And his life sort
of turned around.

I got a sort of
routine here. I...

I work on my autobiography
in the morning

and about 11 o'clock, I
walk over to the studio.

I stop the traffic this way.

If I did it in New York,
they'd run right over me.

You can get away with
anything in California.

Believe it or not

this magnificent building

was built by Dr
Kalmus of Technicolor,

for Technicolor.

Wonderful art deco building.

Those were the days.

Glorious Technicolor!

Morning Colonel.
Anything for me?

OK.

Michael was born in the village
of Bekesbourne, Kent in 1905,

and grew up in the countryside,

the son of a hop farmer.

His career in the movies
began when he was twenty.

Went on holiday, got a job in a
film company in the south of France

and never came back.

He started work as
a general dogsbody

at the Victorine Studios in Nice

where the American
director Rex Ingram

was making epic
silent films for MGM.

I was with a big American
company working in Europe,

discipline was lax

and I had the run of
all the departments.

And I always think it was his
apprenticeship with Ingram

that made Michael aim for
grandeur in his pictures.

Lush images, heightened emotions

and a preference for shock
and spectacle over realism.

And quote "good taste" unquote.

Now, while working with Ingram

he also did acting
and stunt work

in a series of comedy shorts that
they called The Riviera Revels.

But here he is in 1927

throwing himself into the role
of an innocent English tourist.

Michael returned
to England in 1928

and he went into partnership with
the American producer Jerry Jackson

to make 'quota quickies.'

These were short features which
were made very fast, very cheap,

Are you there Bob?

God! It's us. My light's out.

And Michael learned
his trade as a director

by hammering out
more than 20 of them.

Light's gone out.

Full astern.

Port or starboard?

My God!

It's the phantom light. The
one they all talk about.

Where the devil are we?

Wait a moment, Mr. Owen. We're
just off the North Stake rocks

Bring us down again!

Warn the engine room.

This one is The Phantom Light.

That was a near one.

You're right, Sir, it was.

By 1937 Michael had acquired the
experience and the confidence

to make his first
really personal work.

The Edge of the World.

It's about a small community on a
remote island off the coast of Scotland.

It was a great leap
forward for Michael.

A beautiful committed
and poetic film.

And on the strength of it,

he was given a contract by
the producer Alexander Korda

at Denham studios.

Korda put Michael to work on a
film called The Spy In Black.

[They whisper in German]

Introducing him at a script conference
to a writer called Emeric Pressburger.

Emeric felt in his pocket

and he produced his
version of the script.

This is it.

It was a nice little
rolled up piece of paper

and he unrolled it and
he read the first scene

and I was spellbound.

I just listened while
he went on reading

and unfolding it and
unfolding it and unfolding it.

He'd stood the
story on its head.

He turned a man into a
woman, a woman into a man.

He'd altered the suspense,
he'd rewritten the end.

I looked at this producer,
he was purple in the face.

I looked at the writer,
he was prepared to faint.

And I was just rejoicing

that I was going to work
with somebody like this

and that I wasn't going to let
him get away in a hurry either.

Have you heard The
Soldier's March?

I say, that medal ribbon?

I don't seem to recognize it.

What is it?

The Iron Cross, second class.

Second class.

Then you must be
a prisoner of war.

No.

You are.

Oh dear.

Emeric Pressburger,
like Alex Korda

was a Hungarian but also
very much a European.

And he went to university
in Prague, and Stuttgart.

Then my father died and my
student years have finished.

And I had nothing.

And so I came to Berlin

and I wanted to write.

I sent film story
after film story,

and everything came
back, until one day,

one story didn't come back.

Emeric was eventually hired
by the script department

of the famous UFA studios.

This was the greatest
European studio of its era.

It's the home of Fritz Lang
and German expressionism.

And Emeric spent several
happy years there.

Here he is in 1932, you can
glimpse him right on the set

here of an UFA
production in Budapest.

Emeric was however Jewish

and the rise of the Nazis
forced him to flee Berlin.

First for Paris
and then for London

where he arrived in 1935
on a stateless passport.

Emeric described his arrival in England
as like being born at the age of 33.

He knew nothing
about British life

and he had to learn the
English language from scratch.

Meeting Michael was a
great blessing for him

because he was someone
who responded immediately

to his novel script ideas.

Do you think that it was
something specifically European

or even Hungarian
that you responded to?

No, it was a beautiful
mind I responded to.

He didn't have to be Hungarian.

I have never met a person
who not only understood

what I was driving at

but guessed already half
of it before I said it.

That's Michael.

I don't think that that happens very
often in one's lifetime, but this is

how it...

how I felt.

The partners soon developed
the collaborative method that

they would use for
the next 20 years.

Emeric would always
write the original script

which established the
shape of the scenes

and the pair would then work
together on the dialogue.

They were perfectly in tune about
what they wanted to express.

And they never argued.

Do we have a go at each other?

Not really.

No, we trust time.

In a few hours time

he sees that I was right.

London is calling.

London, calling to the world.

Calling to a world at war.

When Britain went to
war with Germany in 1939

the film industry survived by
committing itself wholeheartedly

to the war effort.

These are not Hollywood
sound effects.

This is the music they
play every night in London,

the symphony of war.

For Powell and Pressburger

this was the most important event
of their professional lives,

giving a striking new depth

and a sense of
purpose to their work.

So the curtain rises on Canada.

Down!

Swines!

Filthy swine devils!

Jahner!

49th Parallel tells the
story of six fugitive Nazis

making their way across Canada.

Every British film now had
a specific propaganda aim.

And the intention here

was to urge America
into the war.

Run, Les! Run!

By bringing the horrors of the Nazi
threat right onto America's doorstep.

It was a big idea
for an epic picture.

And in production terms
it was a huge enterprise.

This brought out some of the
differences between the two men.

Emeric was the genius
of story and structure,

while Michael was the dynamo
and the man of action.

Leading his crew to
locations all over Canada.

I was moving against the
seasons all the time.

Emeric was writing the
script back home in London

and I was shooting a lot
of exteriors like this

before the autumn came down.

In one episode, the Nazi seek shelter
among a group of fellow Germans.

A religious community
of Hutterites.

Germans!

Brothers!

I asked you to join with me in
paying homage to our glorious Führer.

Heil Hitler!

Heil Hitler!

Now this film insists
on making a distinction

between being a Nazi
and being a German.

This was very
important to Emeric,

who had spent so many
happy years in Germany

and had so many German friends.

We are not your brothers.

Our children grew up against
new backgrounds, new horizons.

And they are free!

Free to grow up as children,

free to run, to laugh without
being forced into uniforms.

Without being forced to march up and
down the streets singing battle songs!

So here is Emeric making
propaganda for the British.

But instead of simplifying everything
like propaganda usually does.

He's always seeking to
complicate our sympathies.

You're Nazis aren't you?

Aren't you?

I should tell the
police about you.

Little girls should
be seen and not heard.

- That'll do.
- What's the matter with you?

That'll do.

Vogel!

Come along, Anna.

I'll take you home.

Herr Leutnant, we
can't let them go.

I'd like to see what you're
going to do about it.

- Vogel!
- Yes, Herr Leutnant?

Have you forgotten who you are?

I'll take her home,
Herr Leutnant.

Emeric even makes us feel
deeply for one of the Nazis,

a baker when he starts to
rebel against his comrades.

Engine Room Artificer Vogel.

You're under arrest.

You're accused of desertion and
treachery to the Third Reich.

In the absence of a
properly constituted court,

I assume authority as
your superior officer

and sentence you to death.

Have you anything to say?

The sentence will be carried out
immediately in the name of the Führer.

49TH PARALLEL IS WAR'S BEST FILM

49th Parallel ended up
a big commercial hit.

And it won Emeric an Oscar
too, for best original story.

Riding high on this success

the partners now decided to form
their own production company,

The Archers.

Well as far as possible, we
tried to share everything.

Of course, directing on the
floor that was entirely my job.

But as far as we could, we
shared every decision, didn't we?

Yes.

Do you have anything to add to that,
Mr Pressburger? That can't be...

Well, I don't think so.

On the whole, as a simple answer,
I would say that Michael directed

on his own.

And I was more the writer.

- And we produce together.
- Yes.

The pair signed a production
deal with the Rank Organization.

J. ARTHUR RANK PRESENTS

Which gave them the one
thing that they wanted most.

The freedom to control
their own work.

Now, for me, one of the most
exciting things about The Archers

is that they were like experimental
filmmakers working within the system.

And it was Rank who created
the conditions for that.

By now was 1942

and the worst of
the Blitz was over.

But Britain was still
faring badly in the war.

And it was at this
delicate moment

that Michael and Emeric
decided to make a film

satirizing old-fashioned ideas
within the British military.

As you would expect, they met
a lot of official opposition.

Winston Churchill himself was
quite hostile to the idea.

"I'm not prepared to allow propaganda
detrimental to the morale of the army.

Who are the people behind it?"

Churchill, such a
wonderful leader,

but he just wasn't
a good film critic.

It says a lot about Powell
and Pressburger's confidence

and attitude to authority
that they went ahead

and they made the
picture anyway.

This meant they would never get
their knighthoods, of course,

but Britain was
still a democracy

and no one actually prevented
them from making the picture.

The central figure of the film's a
British officer called Clive Candy.

He was inspired by the cartoon
character of Colonel Blimp.

You're an extremely
impudent young officer.

But let me tell you that in 40 years
time, you'll be an old gentleman too.

But over the course
of two hours,

this two-dimensional
caricature will be transformed

into a rich and
complex character.

What's that?

- VC, sir.
- Where did you get it?

South Africa. Jordaan Siding.

You're Candy!

"Sugar" Candy.

Yes, Sir.

The film transports us
back 40 years to 1902

when Candy was a
hot-tempered young officer.

On a visit to Berlin,
he succeeds in insulting

the whole of the
German Imperial army.

And as a consequence,
he must fight a duel.

Duel?

The duel is one of my favorite
Powell and Pressburger scenes.

I wish I'd brought my uniform.

Simply for the unique and
unexpected way that they present it.

Would you undo your shirt?

Thank you.

More as a matter of etiquette
than a matter of combat.

Do you want to roll up your
sleeve or will you rip it off?

What's better?

I am not permitted
to give advice.

I think I'll rip it.

It is definitely better.

Doctor your scissors, please.

I see here that
paragraph 133 says,

"A few hours previous to the duel
it is advisable to take a bath."

Only the principles,
not the seconds.

The scene also represents
the first encounter

between the two central
characters of the story,

Clive Candy and Theo
Kretschmar-Schuldorff.

They have never met before

but they must now do
battle on a point of honor.

[Soldier speaks in German]

Into fighting position, please.

Afterwards

they will become
friends for life.

Fertig?

Ready?

Los!

Just as the duel begins,

Michael has the audacity to start
pulling the camera back and up.

It's an act of terrific bravado.

After all this preparation

to retreat from showing
the actual fight.

Only a very bold film director
would make that choice.

But for Michael, the fight
itself is irrelevant.

What matters is the
meeting between the two men

and the relationship
that comes out of it.

This had a direct influence
on the way that I showed

very little of the
big championship fight

in my movie Raging Bull.

The long Steadicam shot of Jake
LaMotta's journey to the ring

comes straight from the
duel scene in Blimp.

The important thing here
is the destructive road

that Jake took to
get to the fight

rather than the fight itself.

- Kretschmar-Schuldorff.
- Yes I know.

After the duel, Clive
and Theo recover

from their wounds in
the same nursing home.

I'm very glad you've come.

Where they both fall in
love with the same woman.

Stop mooning about.

- I'm not mooning about!
- Keep your hair on.

I say, old girl, what's up?

Edith? I say, what's the matter?

I love your Miss Hunter.

You're cuckoo.

You cuckoo

because Miss Hunter

loves me.

Clive turns out to
be deeply romantic

and hopelessly inhibited.

A toast.

Here's to the happiness of my
fiance who was never my fiance.

And here's to the man who tried to
kill me before he was introduced to me

- May I kiss the bride?
- Why ask? I did not ask.

- Goodbye, Clive.
- Goodbye, Edith, old girl.

He doesn't even realize
until too late that

he is in love.

I hope we'll meet
again sometime.

I'm sure we shall.

And suddenly he finds
that his heart is broken.

LION, EAST AFRICA, 1903

WARTHOG, SUDAN, 1904

RHINOCEROS, EAST AFRICA, 1905

Many, many years of Candy's
life are simply written off

because they are
years without love.

It is brutal, funny,

and devastating.

HUN, FLANDERS, 1918

During the First World War

Candy finds another woman
who is the spitting image

of the Edith he has lost.

Nurse?

Do you know the name of the girl
sitting at the end of that table?

Come on, Wynne.

He marries her,

and for a while achieves
a fragile happiness.

Darling?

Don't hum.

Was I humming?

It's a little habit you've got.

There's something
important here.

Candy's professional life

is mostly treated
satirically and ironically.

What'll I do if I don't hum?

But his emotional life

is always rendered with
sincerity and tenderness.

Perhaps the most
audacious thing of all

is the way that every
important woman in Candy's life

is played by the same
actress Deborah Kerr.

She is his first love, Edith.

Then his wife Barbara.

And then later his young
driver in World War II.

Mind if we try and
beat the lights, sir?

This radical casting
idea came from Emeric.

Come on, don't be all night.

And it fills the film with a
constant sense of longing and loss.

And Deborah Kerr was only 20 years
old when she set to work on this film,

but she proved herself
already a master of her art.

And Powell and Pressburger

succeeded in what
they most loved to do.

Take a big risk
and bring it off.

I was certainly influenced by Blimp when
I came to make The Age of Innocence,

I'll write to you as soon as I'm
settled and let you know where I am.

Oh, yes, that would be lovely.

Well, I'll see you
very soon in Paris.

Oh, if you and May could come.

Because I was drawn into
that film by the love story.

An impossible love between two people
who aren't supposed to fall in love.

Good night, Newland.

Good night, Sillerton.
Good night, Larry.

And it lasts for years.

I believed it was the
same frustrated desire

tinged with regret

that I like so much in Blimp.

I think that's
what attracted me.

The fact that
emotion is repressed

and that reserve is a must.

I was in love with
her. Your wife.

She never told me.

She never knew.

But I seem to remem...

Oh, Clive, that last day
in Berlin, when I told you

you seemed genuinely happy.

Dash it, I didn't know then.

But on the train, I
started to miss her.

On the boat, it was worse.

By the time I got back to London,
well, I'd got it properly.

My Aunt Margaret got onto
the scent straight away.

Women have a nose for
these sort of things.

You may say that
she was my ideal.

Sir?

Did you feel sympathetic
to Blimp as a character?

Oh, yes, I identified
completely with him.

- Lots of things are exactly like me.
- Such as?

Couldn't be more English.

I was sentimental.

And...

love women and dogs.

I'd always felt enormously
sympathetic with that kind of man.

Honorable, puzzled, innocent.

I see myself very
much like that.

Blimp is Powell and Pressburger's first
really profound and personal film.

And for me

their first masterpiece.

I've watched it so many times
that it's become part of my life.

And the longer I live

the stronger grows my sense of
what the characters are feeling.

It's the film that says the
most to me about growing up,

growing old

and eventually,
having to let go.

The Archer's next
work, A Canterbury Tale

begins like a classic
'Merry England' film.

With Chaucer's pilgrims
on the road to Canterbury.

But then...

a famous transition.

The medieval falcon turns
into a modern Spitfire.

The film that we
are about to see

suggests that a connection
to our history is crucial

to our spiritual wellbeing.

One of the propaganda tasks
at the time was to ask,

what are we fighting for?

And Powell and Pressburger now
sought their answers to that question

in the history and traditions
of the English countryside.

Why don't you keep your beastly
carriers off the Pilgrims Road?

Michael loved his native Kent.

He loved the people
and culture of England.

And in this film, he
wanted to express all that.

Eight o'clock, Bob.

He had a specially deep feelings
for Canterbury Cathedral.

That's where he had sung as a
boy in the King's School Choir.

From the bend, at the
eastern edge of the hill,

pilgrims saw Canterbury
for the first time.

You've seen it?

Yes.

With a friend of mine.

A boy or a girl?

Boy.

I hope he writes to you.

No, he doesn't.

Maybe the mail was
lost by enemy action.

No, Bob.

As it happens,

he was lost by enemy action.

He was a pilot.

Shot down?

Yes.

I'm sorry.

The central characters of the
film are, without knowing it,

modern pilgrims.

Each on their own
journey to Canterbury.

They're lost souls,

all in some way
adrift and bereft.

All in need of a blessing
to heal and restore them.

And here

as the Land Girl Alison
walks in the Kent countryside

the place starts
to speak to her.

She hears in the landscape,
the voices and the music

of the old pilgrims.

Her ancestors.

If you stop, listen,

pay attention,

the past will speak to you.

And the voices of the past

will help you to make sense
of your life in the present.

Glorious, isn't it?

Is anybody there?

Michael and Emeric
are always trying

to set traps to capture
magic, as Emeric puts it.

They wanna go beyond the
representation of everyday experiences

and find ways to communicate what
is deep and mysterious in our lives.

There's a mysticism here that's quite
new in Powell and Pressburger's work.

There are higher courts than
the local bench of magistrates.

With a light touch

they seek to conjure up
the world of the spirit.

Pilgrims for Canterbury all
out and get your blessings.

Rum sort of pilgrimage for you.

Pilgrimage can be either
to receive a blessing

or to do penance.

I don't need either.

Perhaps you are an instrument.

Do I get a flaming sword?

Nothing would surprise me.

I'll believe that when I
see a halo around my head.

You get a very good view
of the cathedral now.

For all its strangeness,

this is the most humble of
the famous Archers films.

The most restrained and earnest,

and the one most concerned
with ordinary lives.

The central characters
are in the same condition

that most of the audience
would have been in 1944.

Separated from their loved ones.

Dutifully putting
up a brave front.

But quietly,

full of fear,
loneliness and grief.

One thing that the film
very much wants to do

is offer consolation
to the suffering.

And just when Alison
is in despair,

she gets the news that
her fiance's father

is in Canterbury
looking for her.

For over two weeks now,
he's waited for you here

in Canterbury.

Why?

Because he has news, Miss Allison,
official news about Mr Geoffrey.

He's in Gibraltar.

Miss Alison.

This is a film that says
that miracles do happen.

I must open the windows.

And at the end of
your pilgrimage,

you may indeed
receive a blessing.

The film finishes with a whole regiment
of troops marching into the cathedral.

They're about to go overseas

and we don't know how many
of them will come back.

Here, perhaps

Canterbury Cathedral represents

embattled Britain herself
as a place worth protecting.

A place worth fighting for.

Powell and Pressburger are preachers
as much as propagandists in this film.

The result was their first flop.

The film is just too strange
and elusive for a mass audience.

But the partners were
unshaken by this setback.

There was a period of
profound trust between them

and they knew exactly
where they were going next.

When Joan was only one year old, she
already knew where she was going.

Going right, left.

No, straight on.

With I Know Where I'm
Going we know right away

that we're going
to enjoy ourselves.

By now it was clear that the
Allies were going to win the war

and Michael and Emeric were
able to relax a little.

Allowing their sense
of humor to bloom.

She's 25 now.

And in one thing,
she's never changed,

she still knows
where she's going.

Good evening, Miss Webster.

Good evening, Leon.

Hello, darling.

We're introduced to a
new kind of character

in the shape of Joan Webster

Daddy?

I'm going to be married.

What?

- Your table, Miss Webster.
- Thank you, Fred.

Let's go in, darling.
Bring a drink.

It's the first Archers film to
place a woman front and center

and she is perhaps not a million
miles away from Wendy Green,

the woman who Emeric had avidly
courted and recently married.

Wendy, it seems
was strong-willed,

sophisticated and materialistic.

Charged to your account
madam, of course.

Perhaps that's why the script
seemed to flow so easily for Emeric.

He drafted the whole thing
out in less than a week.

Lady Bellinger's car!

Joans story begins
with a journey north.

You can't marry Consolidated
Chemical Industries.

Can't I?

She's on her way to a
small Scottish island

where she is due to wed
Sir Robert Bellinger,

the wealthy head of Consolidated
Chemical Industries.

Do you, Joan Webster

take Consolidated
Chemical Industries

to be your lawful
wedded husband?

- I do.
- Glasgow Central!

Oh! Yes?

There's a gentleman to meet you.
And the stationmaster's with him.

You'll need all your time
to get to Buchanan Street.

Now, The Archers are
really having fun here.

Watch that top hat.

This journey north was perhaps a
gift that Emeric gave to Michael

because it was a journey that
Michael loved to make himself.

Scotland was his favorite
place to be in the world.

And whenever he finished
shooting a film,

he would refresh himself by
going on hiking trips there.

Hear ye!

For Joan Webster,

the Western Isles turn out to
be a challenging proposition.

Bad luck, no crossing today.

She'll spend much of the film
trying to get a boat to the island

where her fiance is waiting.

Would you like to wait up at
the house? I know the people.

Thank you.

But it's been arranged for
the boat to meet me here

and I better be here to meet it.

Good.

If my boat doesn't
come, will you take me?

No, I will not, m'lady.

In just three or four
intensely atmospheric shots

we get a pungent sense of how
alien the place is to her.

You'll see a wee
gate, up the brae.

Joan must accept the hospitality of
the locals until the weather improves.

And they turn out to be a bunch of
eccentric and independent people

whose outlook on life is
very different from her own.

I was just going
down to get you.

Come on in, we've lit the fire.
You met the Colonel I see.

I've had that exceptional
pleasure. My name's Barnstable.

Colonel Barnstable, the
greatest hawk trainer...

Falconer, my dear Torquil!

The greatest falconer
in the Western Isles.

In the world, old boy.

Although it's a
comedy and romance,

it's also a film about values.

And these feisty characters
stand for all sorts of qualities

that Michael and Emeric
liked and believed in.

- Catriona!
- There's the dear girl now.

Courage, kindness
and generosity,

warmth and good fellowship.

Torquil!

[They speak Gaelic]

Mrs Potts!

The character who most fully
embodies all of these qualities

is Torquil.

He's a naval officer on leave.

Have you got a
match or a lighter?

Thanks.

He clearly represents a terrible
threat to Joan's marriage plans.

And the question of
the film becomes,

can she resist him?

Thank you.

What stands in Torquil's way, of
course, is Sir Robert Bellinger.

Hello, my dear.
Robert speaking.

Cartier delivered
the ring, I hope.

Of course, Robert,
everything was lovely.

Now, listen, Joan, write down a
telephone number. Are you ready?

2-36. You got it?

It's the Robinson's number.
They've rented the castle at Sorn.

They're the only people worthwhile
knowing around here. Over.

And when we meet his friends,

the Robinsons, they are superior

and sensitive and
self-regarding.

Let's have a look at you.

Oh yes, you pass.

You're going to marry Sir
Robert Bellinger, aren't you?

Yes. Do you mind?

I don't mind.

He's rich, isn't he?

Well, I haven't
counted his money.

Are you rich?

No.

Coming after A Canterbury
Tale Emeric called this film

the second episode in The Archer's
crusade against materialism.

People around here are
very poor, I suppose.

- Not poor. They just haven't got money.
- It's the same thing.

Oh, no, something
quite different.

Better?

The longer that Joan
spends with Torquil

the more she falls under the
spell of this man and his world.

Careful.

That's a fine song. Nut
Brown Maiden. Do you know it?

Tune up, my boys!

My favorite part
is where Torquil

recites the words of a song.

"Ho ro my nut-brown maiden,

Hee ree my nut-brown maiden,

Ho ro ro ro maiden,

"You're the maid for me."

Now, this is a film that you
show to someone you care about

as a way of possibly trying to say
something that you can't put into words.

Share the experience
so to speak.

And I know I'm not the only
person to have done that.

It's a film that seems to

cast a spell over many
romantic relationships.

Is it not enough that you've been
told that you cannot sail today?

Do you think you know better than folk
who have lived here all their lives?

Ruairidh said it was going
down. Kenny said so too.

What do you expect Kenny to say?
You bought him, did you not?

There's no need to shout at me!

Oh, go ahead, then!

And drown yourself!

She's running away from you.

Say that again.

In the end, we find Joan and
Torquil together in a small boat.

Get down under the
hood and hang on!

Oh! My dress!

Don't mess about! Bail!

The motor has gone,
the weather is evil

and they're heading towards a
terrible whirlpool, Corryvreckan.

This is a film about
love as a force of nature

that can knock your life
completely off course.

And Joan's fate seems to lie,
not just in the hands of Torquil

but in the hands
of the nature gods.

The film has something which is
rather unusual for The Archers,

a conventional happy ending.

But this romance is a
truly enchanted creation.

In my view, it's one of the most
beautiful love stories ever made.

Hoy!

Hoy!

It is also a mystical
poem on the natural world.

And a sermon on correct values.

By now, the whole country
was starting to think about

what kind of place
Britain should become

once the hostilities were over.

And Michael and Emeric used this
film to offer the idealistic proposal

that it might become a nation

that values people
according to their character

rather than their money.

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION

FILM DIVISION, THEATRE

The themes of all The Archers
films during the war years

had to be agreed with the
Ministry of Information.

Well, the Ministry of
Information had a films division.

Jack Beddington
was the head of it.

And no film could be made during
the wartime without their approval.

And Jack Beddington asked
us to come and meet him

and said,

while we were losing the war,

our relations with the
Americans were very good,

but now we're winning the
war they're not so good.

So he said, would you two consider
writing an original film and making

an original film about Anglo-American
relations, to improve them?

The Archer's response
is not a combat film

but a poetic fantasy.

You seem like a nice girl. I
can't give you my position.

Instruments gone, crew gone too.

All except Bob, here,
my sparks, he's dead.

The rest bailed
out on my orders.

Time 0335, you get that?

In the first scene we meet
Peter, played by David Niven.

We've had it. And I'd
rather jump than fry.

After the first 1000 feet
what's the difference?

I shan't know anything anyway,

I say, I hope I
haven't frightened you.

- No, I'm not frightened.
- Good girl.

From the cockpit of his doomed plane he
speaks to June, played by Kim Hunter.

Are you in love with anybody?
No, no, don't answer that.

I could love a man
like you, Peter.

I love you, June, you're
life and I'm leaving you.

Peter is hurtling towards death

and falling in love,
at the same time.

I'm signing off
now, June. Goodbye.

Goodbye, June.

Hello, G for George.
Hello G-George.

Hello G-George?

Hel...

So long, Bob, I'll
see you in a minute.

You know what we wear
by now. Proper wings!

This is an emphatic expression

of why Powell and Pressburger
were not documentary filmmakers.

They wanted to achieve the
kind of heightened intensity

that is only possible
through artifice.

Peter washes up on a deserted
shore with no idea where he is.

He miraculously meets June
cycling along the beach.

Hello.

Hello yourself. What's wrong?

And the couple are instantly certain
of their love for each other.

You're June.

You're Peter.

The trouble is that according
to divine calculations,

Peter ought to be dead.

91,716 invoiced

91,715 checked in.

- Conductor 71?
- Madame,

it could have
happened to anybody.

How did it happen?

Everything was calculated
except for this accursed fog.

The pilot jumped, he got lost
in the fog, I missed him.

The heavenly conductor is now
ordered to go back to Earth,

find Peter and
rectify his mistake.

By the way, Monsieur, when you see Peter,
would you give him a message for me?

- Avec plaisir.
- Just say, “What ho.”

Bon.

One is starved for
Technicolor up there.

What a night for love.

The idea of the two worlds was
Emeric's most audacious concept yet.

And he made a bold
decision about color too

when he decided that the other world
should be a rather dry, bureaucratic,

monochrome sort of place.

Whereas this world
is the colorful one.

The home of fire and
passion, beauty, and poetry.

Peter's problem is that he's not sure
which world he belongs in anymore.

Will he be allowed to live out
his love for June here on Earth

or will he have to move
on to the other world.

In short,

does he belong among the living,

or the dead?

He's having a series of highly
organized hallucinations

comparable to an
experience of actual life.

A combination of vision
of hearing and of idea.

The film marked a big moment
for Powell Pressburger

because this is where they threw
off entirely the shackles of realism

and happily embraced surrealism.

Doc, he's here! June!

Michael, always loved the
idea of the film director

as a magician with
a box of tricks.

Doc?

Reveling in old-style
effects and illusions

It's as though he's remembering
his youth in silent movies,

working with Rex Ingram
at the Victorine studios.

The Rex Ingram influence
gave the film its scale too,

making it ambitious as
well as adventurous.

Come back!

Peter! Peter! Come back!

The film needed marvels of set design
and cinematography in order to succeed.

But by now, The Archers had
evolved into a big family

of highly skilled technicians.

One of the most important members of
the team was art director Alfred Junger,

a design wizard

who also had the practical skills
of an engineer or an architect.

We had the greatest film art
director that I think has ever lived.

He goes back, you see, to the early
days of Fritz Lang and Metropolis

and when we asked him to do
things like the moving stairway

that all had to be
worked out in perspective

and shot practically
all the same day.

Because end of the war, we
didn't have enough steel

and we didn't have
enough electric power

to work that staircase
all the time.

So all the shots up the staircase
or shots down the staircase,

were all worked out in
perspective on the drawing board.

I think it's a very important
point with all these people

they are all, not only
marvelous technicians,

but they are all people

who loved solving problems.

And we loved setting them!

There are a great number of,

there are a great number of people who
are very happy when there are no problems,

but there are some
who adore problems.

And we had this big team
around us by now, you know

who just came saying,
"What's the problem?"

How do you work with actors,
Mr Powell, on the set?

I just start the day saying I've
been thinking about this sequence,

I suggest we do this,

what do you think?

And they usually say they want
to do something different.

So then we argue.

Not for long.

David Niven, just
heaven to work with.

And very punctilious. David
always leaves at 10 to 6, exactly.

Even if you're in
the middle of a shot

comes up and says, "Sorry,
old man, gotta go, you know!"

- And he's gone!
- Oh really?

It was Michael who decided that
everything that Peter experiences

must be based on solid
medical evidence.

And all the visual fireworks of the film
are underpinned by a very serious purpose.

They are means by which Michael can take
his camera inside a tormented psyche

and tell a story

about the mental
damage done by war.

He's haunted by these
visions of the dead

flowing into the other
world in an unending stream

and he's uncertain how
he himself was spared.

These days, we might
call it survivor's guilt.

This was a time
right after the war

when the primary trend in movies
was the emergence of film noir.

Bitter cynical movies, usually,

where the characters are
doomed from the start.

Peter. Peter!

Powell and Pressburger went
against the grain of all of that.

In all their major pictures of the
war years, they seek to offer help,

consolation, and the
possibility of renewal.

In A Matter of Life and Death what
they offer is a vision of love.

Permit me.

The hard won triumph of love,
surviving all and conquering all.

That's it, the only real
bit of evidence we have.

Quick. We must not
keep the court waiting.

One of the film's most
beautiful conceits

is that despite the epic
scale of the imagery,

the proof of love is
the tiniest thing.

A single tear
gathered on a rose.

Goodbye, darling.

And June provides a second proof

when she willingly takes Peter's
place on the stairway to heaven

showing that she's prepared
to give up her life for his.

In this moment of self sacrifice

the moral of the film
is bluntly stated.

Yes, Mr Farlan, nothing is stronger
than the law in the universe,

but on Earth, nothing
is stronger than love.

We cling together
in the face of power

and in the face of death.

The single tear on the
rose weighs more heavy

than the battalions of heaven.

Outside the Empire, thousands of
Londoners crowding the approaches

to see the Royal Family and
also the many film stars

and notabilities attending the
Royal Command Film Performance.

A Matter of Life and Death
represents Powell and Pressburger

at the peak of their powers.

And it was chosen for the
first-ever Royal Film Performance.

So great was the throng that the
arrival of the Royal Family was delayed.

And when they did reach their
objective, there was barely room

for them to make their way
through the crowd into the cinema.

The Archers were on top of
the world but it was 1946 now

and there was suddenly no
war effort to serve anymore.

Emeric no longer had the
impetus which had driven him on

to write one original
story after another.

And this left The Archers
with a big dilemma.

What sort of films should
they now be making?

We suddenly felt now we have
made several of our films

isn't there the time now

to make a film which has
absolutely nothing to do with war?

Black Narcissus marked a whole new
direction in Powell Pressburger's work.

It was their first
non-original story

and it was a post-war escape

into a different
and a distant world.

Rumer Godden's novel depicts
the trials and tribulations

of a small group of nuns trying

to establish a convent
in the Himalayas.

The atmosphere seems
to agitate the senses

and the nuns find
themselves troubled

by dangerous temptations
and simmering conflicts.

I found myself in the Himalayas
making a film about nuns.

And our mountains
were painted on glass.

Since the whole
film is set in India

It was a startlingly bold
decision when Michael decided

to shoot everything in England,

using ingenious sets,
trick shots, match shots

all to recreate the
Himalayan setting.

Partly this was a
practical choice

because everything to do with filmmaking
was so much less mobile, in those days.

Everything had to be fully
visualized in advance

and very little could be
spontaneous or improvised.

Black Narcissus made
a virtue of this

by making each shot into
a production in itself.

A painterly composition in
which every aspect of the image

is meticulously controlled.

This is truly a cinema of
beautifully wrought imagemaking.

And it gives the film the
vividness and the intensity

of an hallucination.

The cameraman was Jack Cardiff.

And here he consciously
drew on the example

of artists like
Rembrandt and Vermeer.

There's something special about his
very English sense of Technicolor too.

The nuns were very
deliberately dressed in white,

or off white robes, then surrounded by
cool tones of stone, and green and blue.

So that when you see
a hot color like red,

it really jumps out at you.

I still remember the first time I saw
the film in a nitrate color print.

When the rhododendrons exploded
onto the screen it was almost

a physical shock.

I'm not sure if I
know another film

where the color
contributes so much

to the story and the
emotion of a picture.

Now, right at the center
of all the elaborate design

is human faces.

In particular, the face of Deborah
Kerr who plays Sister Clodagh.

And standing in contrast and
in opposition to Sister Clodagh

is Sister Ruth played
by Kathleen Byron.

David Farrar is the
unsettling presence who...

Thank you.

Stirs up a feverish rivalry
between the two women.

I've noticed you're very
pleased to see him yourself.

If that was in your mind, it's better
said I think you're out of your senses.

In a bold move for those times,

Ferrar is presented very much
from the women's point of view

as a male sex object.

The result is a classic struggle
between flesh and the spirit.

You can't order me about

you have nothing to
do with me anymore.

When Sister Ruth puts on a
red dress and red lipstick,

it's both a brazen act

and a visual shock.

Sex erupts into the story
through the use of color.

These images were regarded as
shockingly erotic in the 1940s,

when my friends and I first
saw the film, it was on TV.

We saw it in black and white

in a version that had been
censored by the Catholic Church,

but we were still kind of taken

and kind of amazed by the
psychosexual energy of the film

that was inherent in the images
that we were allowed to see.

- Ayah, wake up!
- Oh, what is it? What is it?

It's Sister Ruth!

Stop her! She's gone mad!

Go and talk to Sister Clodagh.

She brought you here. She
can get you back again.

Sister Clodagh, Sister Clodagh!

- You know what she says about you?
- Whatever she said, it was true.

- You say that because you love her!
- I don't love anyone!

Clodagh...

At the climax of Ruth's madness,

she faints, she blacks out and the
whole screen is flooded with red.

It's a terrific way of putting into
images the intensity of her passion.

Red, burning desire.

More than any of Powell
Pressburger's previous films,

this one was an expressionistic
exercise in high style.

And the sequence which
most interested Michael

was a ten minute experiment
in what he called

"composed film."

It's a carefully choreographed
sequence of pure action,

no dialogue at all for
the whole ten minutes.

The idea was that music
would take the lead

dictating the
character's movements,

expressing their thoughts and feelings
more vividly than words ever could.

The music was written first

and then the sequence was shot

step by step

so that each shot

fitted the music, exactly.

Everything fits together
into a single organic whole.

It turns the
melodrama into opera.

It worked, it worked!

I could hardly believe my eyes.

Filmmaking was never the
same for me again after that.

And when Red Shoes came
up the year following,

we worked out the whole
ballet to be a composed film.

The Red Shoes is a story of a
girl torn between art and love.

Vicky Page is an
ambitious young ballerina

who's taken up by the
great impresario Lermontov.

But when she falls in love with
the composer Julian Craster

her life gets ripped in two.

This was a project
with a long history.

Emeric had first written a script
for a ballet film back in the 1930s.

But the main thing that Michael
was looking for now in his script

was opportunities to experiment.

His first radical decision was
that he would only do the film

if Vicky Page was played by a real
ballerina rather than an actress.

It was a tall order
to find a great dancer

who could also act well
enough to carry a big movie.

But he eventually found everything
that he wanted in Moira Shearer.

The only trouble was that she
didn't want to do the film,

and it took about a
year to convince her.

She was very much a part of
the ballet culture of her time.

And she always
thought that dancing

was a much higher art
than making movies.

Good luck!

Good luck.

The bravest idea of the film
was to place at the heart of it,

an original ballet.

All right, Ivan.

Time to go down, Craster.

- Good luck, Mr Craster.
- Thank you, Mr Lermontov.

- Nervous?
- No.

Come on!

Stopping the story of a
movie for over 15 minutes

to present a full length ballet?

This was a huge risk
they were taking.

Nobody had ever done
such a thing before

and no one had any idea how
audiences were going to react.

The Ballet of The Red Shoes is
based on a Hans Andersen fairytale

about a girl who
is mad to dance.

The magical red shoes allow
her to fulfill her dreams.

But when she wants
to stop dancing,

the shoes won't let her.

This ballet was the part of the film
that excited Michael most of all.

Released from the
constraints of dialogue

he could really go to
town with experimentation,

working freely with
music, light, images,

movement, energy.

The most radical part
of his conception

was to represent the ballet,

not as a theater
audience would see it,

but as the dancer would
experience it inside her head.

Michael used the body and
the physicality of the dancer

to express the inner
life of the dancer.

He used physical action to
represent psychological pain.

And that subjective approach

had a very big influence on

what I did with the boxing
scenes in Raging Bull.

When I watched De
Niro doing his moves,

I saw that it was dance,
it was choreography.

I also realized that I should stay
in the ring as much as possible.

And stay inside
the fighter's head.

See and hear it from
his point of view.

A right to the jaw, a hard left-hand
to the body thrown by LaMotta.

Round eight and
it's anybody's...

That way you get the
impression of the fight,

the battle, the
struggle, the suffering.

But you're also free to do
whatever you want visually,

to communicate what
Jake is feeling.

A hard left hand to the body,
Robinson is driven out of the ring...

How he perceives
things in the ring.

Which makes it very personal.

LaMotta has taken
charge of the fight,

the undefeated Sugar Ray, his
winning ways are in jeopardy.

LaMotta coming at him again.

LaMotta, feigning left hand...

At the end of the
ballet of The Red Shoes,

the dancer's passion
carries her to her doom.

The ballet is an ecstatic
celebration of the glory of art.

But it also says
that being an artist

will destroy you.

It says that a true
artist makes art

not because they want to

but because they have to.

It's not a choice,
but a compulsion.

Of course, what made Red Shoes
unique was that it was about art

and nothing but art.

And nothing but art, the
best of art, would do.

There's something of
both Michael and Emeric

in the film's most obsessive
character, Boris Lermontov

Powell Pressburger films often
deal with egocentric, volatile

addictive personalities.

But these characters speak to me
and it may be obvious that many

of the characters that I'm drawn to
are influenced by Powell's heroes.

They too are antiheroes, broken
people driven by conflicts.

Strangely, I can even see

something of an affinity
between Lermontov and Travis,

Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver

because they're both characters
on the edge of things.

Listening, observing
other people

always on the
verge of exploding.

Good evening, Mr Craster.

Won't they be missing you at
the Covent Garden tonight?

[She speaks French]

Oh, for God's sake, leave
me alone, both of you.

Please Julian, wait until
after the performance.

It'll be too late then.

You are already too
late, Mr Craster.

Tell him why you've left him.

- I haven't left him.
- Oh, yes, you have left him.

Nobody can have two lives
and your life is dancing.

What makes the drama of The Red
Shoes so compelling to me is the fact

that all three of the main characters
are driven and tortured people.

Well, Vicky...

I love you, Julian.

Nobody but you.

But you love that more.

I don't know!

I don't know...

if you go with him now, I will
never take you back. Never!

Do you want to destroy our love?

Adolescent nonsense!

Alright, go then, go with him!

Be a faithful housewife!

Of course, a scene like
this is very risky.

The performances are
pushed to the extreme

and it's easy to regard the whole
thing as trashy, pulp material.

But I see it as an impulsive and
instinctive heightening of reality.

Life is so unimportant.

And from now onwards,
you will dance!

Like nobody ever before.

Eventually life and
art come together

and the red shoes acquire
the same power in life

that they had in the ballet.

I will never forget that most vivid
image of Moira Shearer's eyes.

When the shoes begin
to take her away.

Her face, grotesque,

echoes of an
ancient tragic mask.

It's so bold and
flamboyant and extreme.

I liked, I like that it
sometimes seems out of control.

Not the emotions
of the characters,

but the emotions of the
people who made the film.

Their passion's out of control.

And their total commitment
to their fairytale story

creates an unforgettable climax.

No!

Why do you think it was so important for
you to show somebody dying for their art?

I think because I
would do it myself.

- Really?
- Mm.

You don’t believe me.

When the executives of Rank saw
The Red Shoes, they hated it.

The company was increasingly in the
hands of bureaucrats and money men

who saw it as a disastrously
uncommercial art movie.

'RED SHOES' GETS ROUSING
WELCOME FROM N.Y. CRITICS

It was two Americans, Bob
Benjamin and Arthur Krim

who transformed the
fortunes of the picture

by running it continuously in
a single theater in New York.

THE RED SHOES ARE STILL DANCING
ON BROADWAY AFTER 2 YEARS!

From there, he went on to become
The Archers' most popular film.

One of the greatest and most
successful pictures ever made.

For me, it's the ultimate
subversive commercial movie.

It's the epitome of
everything that I admire most

about Powell and Pressburger.

It is utterly satisfying
as popular entertainment

but also wildly
inventive, profound,

complex and not
at all comforting.

It's a film that has been
gloriously vindicated by history.

But back in 1949

Michael and Emeric were so disgusted by
the way that Rank treated the picture

that they split
from the company.

They crossed over to London Films and
linked up once again with Alex Korda.

Alex was the most pleasant,

fun-loving creature

who could charm money out,

not only those who had
the money, but strangely,

also of people, some people
who had no money at all.

Which, of course,
ended in disaster.

The Small Back Room was the first
film they made under their new deal.

And it represented another
startling change in direction.

Having just made a huge
Technicolor masterpiece,

Michael now decided, naturally,
that he wanted to make

a small black and white picture.

"I needed to escape from
romance into reality"

is how he put it.

The reality, of course,
is what The Archers

were always accused of avoiding.

So they now faced up
squarely to their critics

by taking a journey through a bleak
succession of blacked-out streets,

crowded pubs,

desolate flats

and stuffy offices.

What excited Michael most
about the film though,

was the troubled psychology
of the characters,

drawn from Nigel
Balchin's original novel.

I must have a drink.

Ask me to have a drink, woman.

Have a drink, Sammy.

Whiskey?

No, thanks, Susan. I'll have
some of my nice medicine.

Sammy, the central character
is a munitions expert

who's lost a foot, and
now wears a prosthetic.

Why don't you take
the thing off?

You know that helps.

No.

You do when you're alone.

Why will you keep
it on when I'm here?

It's all right now.

You must realize that you can have ideas
that'll win the war four times over...

but it still won't do anybody any
good unless you can sell them.

We're not in a university
department now.

No, nor in an advertising
agency, where you belong.

Now look here, Sammy,

You may think you're a great big scientist
and I'm just a commercial stooge...

But the plain fact is if you make a
mess of things, I have to clear it up.

And the equally plain fact

is the stuff you build a reputation
on comes chiefly out of my head!

I'm not a politician or a salesman,
but neither am I a kid of ten.

Sammy's frequently
in physical pain

and this feeds a craving for whiskey
that he struggles to control.

Sammy?

You could run the section
yourself. Even Pinker says so.

But you just won't face things.

You go on being sorry for yourself with
everything in the world to live for.

But what's so special
about only having one foot?

You just haven't got the guts!

- Will you shut up?
- Every word I said is true.

Oh, Sammy, you're such a fool.

Why don't you pull
yourself together, Sue?

You're making an
ass of yourself.

Next time you just decide to
go home when we're out together

I'd be obliged if you'd tell me.

The Archers demonstrated
here that if they chose

they could do heartfelt work

in the British
realist tradition.

Reining in their instincts
for fantasy and comedy

and focusing instead
on the emotional truth

of a complicated love story.

I've been thinking, if you really think
I'm such a poor sap as you said tonight...

we'd better get out
of each other's way.

The same thought
had occurred to me.

The finished film is full
of anger, and anguish

and the critics loved it.

Well, get out of it!

The only trouble was that
audiences just weren't interested.

They didn't want grim stories

which harked back to the
miseries of the war years.

So instead of being
a new beginning,

The Small Back Room
proved to be a dead end.

In characteristic fashion,

the pair now bounced from the
bleakest picture they had ever made

into their most
frivolous film to date.

Alexander Korda had directed
a very profitable version

of The Scarlet Pimpernel
back in the 1930s.

And he now wanted it remade
as a Technicolor spectacular.

Sam Goldwyn would bring
in the Hollywood money.

And for the first time in their
partnership, Powell and Pressburger

found themselves doing something
that neither of them wanted to do,

a remake of a worn out classic.

Nobody can help you, not
even your government.

Now, what do you say?

You seem to have
thought of everything.

Nothing is left of
me now, but to say...

congratulations.

You're very kind, Sir Percy.

They decided that the only thing to
do with the corny old Pimpernel story

was to transform it into
an exuberant entertainment

by filling it with
comedy and music.

There's an impudent cinematic
joke when Cyril Cusack

finds himself sneezing
uncontrollably,

and when he sneezes,
they cut to fireworks.

It's the most startling
imagery and editing,

it's got nothing to
do with the story.

I mean, it's not as though

there are fireworks going on
outside the walls in the movie.

It's simply a visual metaphor
coming right out of the blue.

You know, I think you...
Actually, you could trace it back

to early silent films

where often you could see
what a person's hearing.

Or it's like an experiment
in avant garde film

where anything can
happen with images.

But for Michael and Emeric
to be doing this here

in the middle of a drama,

for me, it represents their pure
enjoyment in just making movies.

But back in 1950

you didn't make fun of the
plot in an adventure story.

And Sam Goldwyn
hated them for it.

All he wanted was a color
version of the original picture.

So they had to do reshoots and
re-edits And the result was a miserable

compromise which
satisfied nobody.

In the same difficult
year of 1950,

They entered into another co-production
with another big Hollywood producer,

David Selznick.

This time, the film
was Gone to Earth,

a steamy tale of Shropshire folk

based on a novel by Mary Webb.

Selznick wanted the
movie to be a showcase

for his new wife Jennifer Jones,

who turned out to be terrific.

We were delighted to
have Jennifer Jones.

Not so delighted with Selznick.

He was madly in love with her.

And intensely possessive.

And also afraid to come on
the set when she was there

because she would
throw something at him.

And so you can,

you were continually conscious of a
glaring eyeball from behind the set.

Gone to earth!

Gone to Earth is a kind
of gothic masterpiece.

It's full of Michael's
deep feeling for the land,

the natural world and the
rituals of English country life.

"When at once, a
little of midnight"

climbed to the steepest stones on
the top of God's little mountain.

Lay your shawl on
the devil's chair

and walk around it.

"Ask your wish."

If I be to go to
"Hunter's Spinney..."

If I be to go...

let me hear the fairy music.

Jennifer Jones' character
Hazel is a wild thing

in a world of traps and snares.

They're after us, Foxy.

Which way are they headin'?

"Hunter's Spinney"! This way!

- They'll pull you down!
- Drop it, they'll pull you down!

Give her to me, you little
fool, give her to me!

Gone to earth!

The trouble was that Selznick then refused
to accept the film that they delivered.

At the end, his
conception of the film...

was different.

And he wanted us to make
changes and we didn't.

And he had the film
for North America.

So he shot extra
scenes with Jennifer,

I think Rouben
Mamoulian shot them.

Selznick ended up suing them and releasing
his own version called The Wild Heart.

So The Archer's two attempts

to make commercial pictures
with Hollywood producers

both turned into a shambles
of recrimination and lawsuits.

The switch from wartime idealism
to peacetime commercialism

was proving to be very tough.

Creatively speaking,
everything was going awry

and the partners urgently needed to get
back to making their own kind of pictures.

It was the conductor
Mr Thomas Beecham

who proposed a film of Offenbach's
opera, TALES OF HOFFMANN.

And Emeric seized on the idea.

Music was always his
first love among the arts.

Emeric also found a fellow spirit
in the German writer Hoffmann.

They had a shared taste for the
magical, the morbid and the fantastical.

In the first tale, Hoffmann falls in
love with a mechanical doll, Olympia.

That young fellow there, I vow

Very soon will pop the question

My friend indeed

What excited Michael here

was the radical idea of
rethinking opera as cinema

by transforming it into dance.

Birds in woodland
ways Are winging...

He cast dancers, rather
than singers, in key parts.

This brought the
stories to life visually

and drove the production towards
Michael's ideal of a film

in which everything
is choreographed.

The whole thing was
shot like a silent movie

with music always
played back on the set.

So the performers and the crew

were all under the spell of it.

Of course, movement itself is central
to the art of motion pictures.

I love the way a
camera can move.

I love cutting from one
movement to another.

And in those special moments when
everything is moving just right,

whether you're on the set or
you're in the editing room,

you feel possessed by
a very powerful energy.

When I'm asked out of all movies,
what is your favorite scene?

I always think about
the sword fight

in the Gondola in Hoffmann.

It's so supple and fluid.

Thoroughly, physical
and entirely dreamlike.

There's no sound effects at all.

It's both very immediate

and very distant.

And it's something that
no other art form can do.

It's pure film.

Practically every technique known
to movies is employed in Hoffmann

and there's absolutely no respect
for conventional continuity.

The film keeps surpassing itself

with the surreal and surprising
nature of its imagery.

You get broad theatrical effects
combined with perfect cinematic detail.

Like the movement of
Olympia's eyes here.

And the eyes are choreographed
too, just like everything else.

I always noticed that, particularly
with Robert Helpmann's eyes

just a glance

and it's as if he
danced five steps.

One of Michael's favorite
mantras was "All Art is One".

Because he believed
that in a film,

you could bring together literature,
music, dance, drama and design

to create a kind of total cinema that
would transcend the traditional arts.

The Tales of Hoffmann is the closest
that he got to achieving that.

It also represented the fulfillment
of all his most adventurous ideas.

I mean, the whole thing
is both a composed film

like the 10 minute
experiment in Black Narcissus

and a surreal psychodrama, like
the ballet in The Red Shoes.

The result is a film that
performs like a symphony.

You can watch it
over and over again,

discovering new
things each time.

It's as close to pure
expression as cinema can get.

Just image after image

designed to communicate
feelings in a very explicit way.

History was made in
New York last weekend,

as for the first time, the
Metropolitan Opera House

was turned into a cinema.

And the reason was
Tales of Hoffmann,

a new British picture from London
Films, given its world premiere

at a gala social occasion
in aid of the Red Cross.

After the big
premiere in New York,

Powell and Pressburger got a letter of
congratulations from one of their heroes,

Cecil B DeMille.

I THANK YOU FOR OUSTANDING
COURAGE AND ARTISTRY

But a painful controversy developed
when the film was shown at Cannes,

Alex Korda thought the
third act was slow and dull

and it ought to be cut out.

Michael adamantly refused,

but he felt that Emeric
was siding with Korda.

And he took this badly.

It was the last time that
Michael would work with Korda.

Or worse than that,

it shook the firm foundations
of trust between him and Emeric.

There was now a grim
period of three years

during which the partners didn't
make a single film together.

Michael was full
of ambitious ideas,

but he insisted on
creative freedom.

And who would give him that now

that he's burned his
bridges with Korda and Rank?

Frustrated and restless, he spent
a lot of time traveling the world.

He was a celebrity,
an important man,

but he was not sure what
to do with himself anymore.

Michael dreamed of adventurous
productions with great artists,

maybe financed by television.

And one idea was a
story from the Odyssey

starring Orson Welles with
a libretto by Dylan Thomas,

and music by Stravinsky.

Emeric was always the
more practical of the two.

He went back to Korda to
direct a film on his own.

This was a tale for children
called Twice Upon a Time.

But it was not a success.

The shaken and embattled partnership
tried to recover their momentum

with all kinds of new projects.

But they couldn't get
anything off the ground.

There just wasn't much money
around for British film production

in the early fifties,
and it was hard

to make any kind of deal without
losing their independence.

I mean, you want to make a picture
and you want to get the money,

well, you know, you go everywhere you
talk to everybody, you do what you can.

But Michael and Emeric weren't
used to working that way.

They wanted to hang on
to their independence

and they suffered because of it.

The stress and strain seemed to drag
the two men in opposite directions,

with Michael becoming more
idealistic and combative

while Emeric grew more
disappointed and frustrated.

Eventually they scraped together the
wherewithal to make Oh... Rosalinda!!

An updating of Die Fledermaus

set in contemporary Vienna.

The slogan of the movie
suited their mood at the time:

"The situation is
hopeless but not serious."

It seems to me

with great respect

to have happened like this!

The film starts off promisingly
with an utterly distinctive design

and some characteristically
ambitious ideas.

But it never quite lives
up to that early promise.

Rosalinda!

It is not a composed film,
like their best musical works,

but something looser
and less disciplined.

And I think they never
really had the money

that they needed to carry through
their ideas with conviction

and the champagne that the film
offers mostly turns out to be flat

rather than sparkling.

The British public,
certainly disappointed Emeric

by refusing to share his very
European taste for operetta.

And the partners were by now desperately
in need of some kind of success.

The next job they took on was an
old-fashioned war movie called

The Battle of the River Plate.

Michael had a great time shooting
it because he was allowed

to take command of a
large fleet of warships

in order to get the film's
magnificent shots of ships at sea.

What gave the images their
spectacular impact on the screen

was the fact that they were shot in the
new widescreen format of VistaVision

which was like the
IMAX of its day.

You sat in the cinema and you
felt like you were on the deck

of one of those ships.

The scale and clarity
of it was magical.

And out of nowhere, the pair
suddenly had a box office hit again.

The Empire Theater in Leicester Square
was the magnet that drew a vast crowd

of Londoners who came
to see all they could

of those attending the
Royal Film Performance.

Young French star Brigitte
Bardot, for example.

And Mrs Arthur Miller, who you probably
know even better as Marilyn Monroe.

Her Majesty talking
with Miss Monroe

remarks that they were
neighbors at Windsor.

Dramatically speaking,
for the first time,

they had made a very
conventional movie.

With nothing surprising
or new about it.

It's suicide, she’s
tearing herself apart!

The twilight of the gods.

But the success of River Plate

meant that they suddenly had
standing in the industry again

and Rank offered them a five-year
contract for seven films.

Emeric was eager to accept,
but Michael feared that

they would end up making mediocre pictures
full of mediocre contract players.

And he couldn't stomach the idea of
giving up their dreams and their autonomy.

Eventually he agreed to
do just one film for Rank

and this would be
Ill Met by Moonlight.

The subject might have been
a great one for The Archers.

It was based on the true
story of Paddy Leigh Fermor,

a very British hero,

a gentleman amateur,

who managed to kidnap a German
general on Crete during World War II.

Come on!

The problem with the film is that
Emeric wanted to tell the story

in a downbeat documentary way,

while Michael wanted to
make a big romantic picture.

Once again, the VistaVision camera
afforded some big beautiful images.

But at its heart, the film was
confused and it was uninspired.

Michael felt that Emeric
had become tired and timid

and that he had lost all
his fire and ambition.

Emeric felt that
Michael had gone mad

and become wildly
unreasonable about everything.

Michael hated Rank's choice
of Dirk Bogarde as the lead.

Come on, flash the signal.

Sugar baker, SB.

How do I flash "sugar baker"?

Don't you know the Morse code?

Me? But don't you...

No.

So...

Do you know the Morse code?

But of course.

Aren't you
professional soldiers?

Good lord, no.

The Major here?

No, an amateur, distinguished
amateur, but still an amateur.

Michael was refused
permission to shoot in Crete,

and had to make the
film in France instead.

Everything added up to make a
weary and troubled production

that no one really believed in.

When Michael saw the
film 30 years later,

even he was surprised
by how poor it was.

He felt the acting was mediocre,
the camera work a mistake.

And even in 1957, the whole thing must
have looked painfully old-fashioned.

"The script was underwritten,
and weak on action", he said

"the gags were unoriginal"

and the surprises,

"not surprising."

During the editing the
Powell and Pressburger team

faced up to the fact that they no
longer saw things in the same way,

and decided to dissolve
their partnership.

I didn't like being
tied down to the facts.

Yes, I read that you resisted that
sort of realism and wanted to...

- Bit more imagination in it.
- Oh, yes. And...

and so we sort of naturally
drifted apart on this.

On this idea.

You didn't have a sort of
hammer and tongs argument and...

No, no.

Throwing down the gauntlet for realism
and you marching off in a huff about...

No, it was just a
rather sad mutual gap.

You can't have a
mutual gap, can you?

A sad gap which opened
between two loving people.

This is the way Emeric summed
up the partnership once.

"I always had the feeling that we were
amateurs in a world of professionals."

Amateurs stand so much
closer to what they are doing

and they are driven
by enthusiasm,

"which is so much more forceful than
what professionals are driven by."

People are always asking us how we
managed to work together for so long.

Something like eighteen years.

The answer is

love.

You can't have a collaboration

in anything

without love.

Emeric and Michael always
remained good friends

and neither man ever said
a bad word about the other.

I started to write novels. Very,
very few of them, only two.

And...

well, I think nice novels.

Mark, what a
beautiful little boy.

Who is he?

Me.

Course it is.

Then who took this film?

My father.

Michael went on to make one
more great film without Emeric.

Ah! What's that?

That was Peeping Tom.

And for me, it represents Michael's
determination to keep on experimenting.

Mark, what are you doing?

Wanted to photograph
you watching.

No, no!

Michael even included
himself in this story

casting himself as
the bullying father

who terrifies his own child
in order to study his fear.

What's he doing?

Giving me a present.

What is it?

Can't you guess?

A camera.

That child grows
up to be a killer.

And what's most
unsettling about it,

of course, is that he's
shown sympathetically.

As a shy and suffering person.

Switch it off, Mark!

Mark, switch it off!

His trouble is that he is
not at home in this world

and he feels truly
alive and whole

only in the images he creates built
from the destruction of others.

Every night you switch
on that film machine.

What are these films you
can't wait to look at?

What's the film
you're showing now?

Take me to your cinema.

Yes.

The atmosphere that
permeates the whole film

is one of overwhelming sadness.

What am I seeing, Mark?

Why don't you answer?

Oh!

It's no good.

I was afraid it wouldn't be.

What?

The lights fade too soon.

It's a very disturbing
and transgressive film,

but it's also very
moving because

at the heart of it is
this radical compassion,

it asks you to feel for someone

who is a madman and a murderer.

What do you think
you've spoiled?

An opportunity.

Now, I have to find another one.

Watch them, Helen.

Watch them, say goodbye,

one by one.

I have timed it so often.

Helen!

Helen!

I'm afraid.

No, no, Mark!

And I'm glad...

I'm afraid.

"I was shocked to the core to
find a director of his standing

befouling the screen with
such perverted nonsense."

"The word for Michael Powell's
Peeping Tom is, quite simply, nasty."

" Peeping Tom stinks more than
anything else in British films

since The Stranglers of Bombay."

"The only really satisfactory
way to dispose of Peeping Tom

would be to shovel it up and flush
it swiftly down the nearest sewer."

I believed in the
film, they didn't.

It vanished for 20 years.

And I vanished with it.

I was no longer bankable.

I was too independent.

I wanted my own way.

The other thing that counted against
Michael was the fact that by now

it was the 60s.

Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz,

Lindsay Anderson were
making fresh energetic,

a kind of classic films which
drew on the documentary tradition

and the ideas of the
European New Wave.

This is Ron, I want
a word with you!

For these young men, Michael
represented ancient history.

- Give me my money back!
- Call it!

Cut!

I go out of frame, you
don't follow me at all?

- No, we don't follow you.
- Oh, it’s alright then. Alright, good.

Oh, sorry...

No, I had a feeling in that
take that I was opening my mouth

and licking my lips a little too much.
I suddenly found myself doing that.

- Yes, do it again.
- Would you like to take another?

Action!

After much struggle, he
managed to put together

two low budget
pictures in Australia.

Mrs Ryan, I want
a word with you!

I want a word...

Including this one

Age of Consent with Helen
Mirren and James Mason.

- Give me that money back, it’s mine!
- You stole it from me!

Cut!

It never became a real tug of
war, with both of you tugging.

If it really is a tug of war, so that
your life is depending on the bag.

And if you lose the bag,
you've gone, you know.

Cora!

Action now.

Cut!

It was wonderful, darling.

Marvellous. Are you alright?

It was very clever.

Everybody happy?

He had no way of knowing it, but
this would be his last feature film.

He was never able to raise
the money to make another one.

She's dead.

Grandma?

Of course, it was
during the very years

that Michael was struggling
and sinking into obscurity

that people like me and Francis
Coppola were discovering

his work on the other
side of the Atlantic.

And our great fortune was that we were
watching the Powell Pressburger films

without any cultural baggage.

We had no prejudices based
on when they were made

or how they were received.

We just saw them
as enjoyable films

and sometimes
wonderful works of art.

We watched all types of British films,
whether it was Grierson or Jennings,

David Lean or Carol Reed, Hitchcock
or Powell and Pressburger.

And we didn't think of any one
style as better than the others.

For us, they all reflected
different aspects of one people.

The British.

And we were open to all of it.

When I got to know Michael well,

he certainly seemed to me imbued with
the spirit and the soul of Britain.

And it was my great good
fortune in the 1980s

to finally see him and
Emeric rediscovered

and reassessed in Britain too.

I can't begin to
describe how touched

and how happy I am to be
presenting this award tonight.

An award which I feel very
deeply is long, long overdue.

These two giants of the cinema

who had pretty much disappeared
into oblivion for 20 years

were finally granted the honor
and respect that they deserved.

In 1984, Michael got married

to my longtime film
editor, Thelma Schoonmaker,

who's edited all my
films since Raging Bull.

They lived here in New York and
Michael became a constant friend

and a constant
presence in my life.

He was a guy who hadn't made
a picture in 25-30 years.

But every day he
was planning one.

When I went through difficult
times, he was a tremendous support.

I remember when I was
finishing The King of Comedy

I was at a very low point.

But Michael somehow seemed to understand
everything I was going through.

He never...

he was never intrusive.

But he was able to
talk to me personally

from the experience that he had
of a very long creative life.

And his voice was
very different from

the voices of the others
around me at the time.

He had a spirit that
was always strong

and uncompromised.

Even when he seemed
to be a forgotten man.

That spirit supported
me in periods of doubt

and desolation.

I look back on it now

and I find it extraordinary that
I knew Michael Powell personally

for 16 years.

And he was not only a
support but a guide.

Pushing me along, giving me confidence,
keeping me bold in my own work.

It's OK, fellas, no problem.

This one's gone.
What? OK, yeah.

I'll never be able to
fully understand or express

why he meant so much to me and
why he'll always be with me.

And that current of thought

always leads back to those
films he made with Emeric.

I'm signing off now, June.

Goodbye, goodbye June.

Hello, G for George.
Hello, G-George?

Hello G-George?

David Niven saying goodbye
to Kim Hunter over the radio

in A Matter of Life and Death.

Let it ring.

The intensely erotic scenes between
Kathleen Byron and David Farrar

in The Small Back Room.

The camera moving up
and away from the duel

in The Life and Death
of Colonel Blimp.

Certain films, you simply run all
the time and you live with them.

As you grow older,
they grow deeper.

I'm not sure how it
happens, but it does.

For me, that body of work
is a wondrous presence,

a constant source of energy,

and a reminder

of what life and
art are all about.

When you look back

do you think that somehow
or other, the British

didn't appreciate you both
as much as they might have?

When did the British ever
appreciate their great men?

Cut.

I hope this will,
this will be cut.

MADE IN ENGLAND