Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger is another of those Michael Scorsese Does… affairs (see My Voyage to Italy), which is to say a hot letter from a fan to the object of his adoration, this time the British duo behind movies like A Matter of Life and Death and Black Narcissus.
So, no criticisms are to be found of the work, nor much in the way of examination of character or psyche, except where it touches the film-making. Instead, a wholesome, honest, thorough, well-researched, expertly assembled chronological run-through of what the two men did together, fronted and narrated throughout by an admiring and generous Scorsese, who regularly cross-references what P&P were attempting in some of their pictures to his own later work.
We get swift thumbnails of what Powell and Pressburger were about before they met. Director Powell the very English guy who went to work for the great Rex Ingram on silent movies in the South of France, where he learnt all about the importance of scale and spectacle, then did “quota quickies” in London, where he became adept at working work quickly and cheaply. Writer Pressburger the Hungarian Jew who found himself at UFA in Berlin, a powerhouse of European silent movie-making, before being chased out of the country by the rise of the Nazis. Pressburger never forgot the good times he’d had in Germany, or his friends there, and Scorsese claims that the sharp distinction between Germans and Nazis in the P&P films during the Second World War can be traced back to this.
They met after Powell had made 1937’s The Edge of the World and together made 1939’s The Spy in Black, a key exemplar in P&P’s “not all Germans are Nazis” canon. And from here, as war broke out, their run of unusually nuanced propaganda movies for the war effort: 49th Parallel (more bad Nazis and good Germans), One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (which Scorsese vaults over), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (more good Germans, to the infuriation of Churchill), A Canterbury Tale (a flop – pastoral sermonising wasn’t in fashion), and on to the romantic, anti-materialistic I Know Where I’m Going and A Matter of Life and Death.
Midway through that run they entered their golden period, the run of imaginative films that started with the gorgeous triumph of romanticism and Technicolor cinematography that is Blimp, followed by A Matter of Life and Death (more romanticism, more Technicolor) and then continued on to the even more painterly Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes. At which point P&P start to sputter. The Small Back Room (atypically grounded in reality, and shot in black and white), The Scarlet Pimpernel (a remake they didn’t want to do), Gone to Earth (a “gothic masterpiece” says Scorsese; producer David O Selznick was of a different view), before Tales of Hoffman saw them successfully attempting to recapture the “composed film” style of The Red Shoes.
From here it’s downhill to Oh Rosalinda, The Battle of the River Plate and Ill Met by Moonlight, before the partnership was dissolved, Pressburger going on to direct a film that flopped and Powell making Peeping Tom, the horror movie that effectively ended his career in 1960.
It’s the standard view, in other words, the one you’ll get in all the books. What makes it worth it is the brilliant archive – for instance Powell admitting that though both get the director credit he in fact is the director. Pressburger backs him up, confirming that he’s the writer (which everyone already knew). In the margin Scorsese adds notes as he goes, and these shed light on both them and him. How, for instance, Blimp‘s duel scene influenced the big fight in Raging Bull. How Lermontov in The Red Shoes and Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver share characteristics. And Scorsese’s own recollections of meeting Michael Powell after making Mean Streets, and explaining to the incredulous Brit what a beacon he was to the new crew – De Palma, Scorsese etc – then chewing up Hollywood.
Powell would go on to marry Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese’s editor, and for 16 years Powell functioned as a mentor to the younger director. Scorsese seems profoundly grateful to have known him. “Love” is the word he uses to describe the relationship between Powell and Pressburger relationship. It applies to Scorsese just as much.
Made in England: the Films of Powell and Pressburger – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
