November 7, 14, 21 at 8pm ET | 15 Movies
Martin Scorsese has called the filmmaking partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, "the longest period of subversive filmmaking in a major studio, ever.” The Hollywood studio system from the 1930s to 1950s was an often confining and limiting place for artistic filmmakers. However, the Britain-based team of Powell and Pressburger found creative ways to tell stories that were truly original and even groundbreaking, but at the same time cinematic and enjoyable for the masses. Most of their 24-film collaborations have become renowned classics that have not only stood the test of time but have earned the admiration of many modern filmmakers. Throughout November, TCM presents a series of the Powell and Pressburger team’s most beloved films.
Michael Powell came from a working-class family in Northern England and first started in the film industry at just 20 years old as a general studio hand. Rising through the ranks of production by performing various tasks, such as still photography, Powell eventually was given the responsibility of directing short films and B pictures, which helped producer Alexander Korda meet the annual quota for his London Films Studios. Emeric Pressburger was a well-educated native of the Kingdom of Hungary. Beginning as a journalist and musician in Berlin in the 1920s, Jewish-raised Pressburger fled the rise of Nazism, first to Paris and then to London, where he found work as a screenwriter for a small group of Hungarian refugee filmmakers. Pressburger’s work drew the attention of Korda who hired Pressburger to do rewrites for some of his films.
Powell and Pressburger first worked together on the World War I drama The Spy in Black (1939), where Pressburger was hired to do rewrites. For their next two films together, Contraband (1940) and 49th Parallel (1941), Powell was the sole credited director and Pressburger the credited screenwriter. Though Pressburger would continue to serve as the primary story and screenwriter and Powell the visionary film director, both creators drew from and contributed to each other's talents. After their first three films, the team mutually decided to share credits on all aspects of their filmmaking. They formed their own production company, The Archers Film Productions in 1943, sharing joint titles as writer, producer and director.
Their first official collaboration under this label was One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942). Made at the height of World War II, the film tells the story of a shot-down British bomber plane whose crew receives help from the Dutch underground. Almost documentary-like in its style, the film was one of many propagandist films that the British government commissioned to increase morale in audiences during the war. This was also the first of an unofficial series of acclaimed films that addressed the war and the British military in several creative ways.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) was the team’s first film in Technicolor and their first to tell a story set across multiple times and places. These techniques quickly became trademarks of their films. Roger Livesey plays Clive, a Senior Commander in the British Army in World War II. Through a series of flashbacks to various military conflicts throughout history, we see Clive rise through his different rankings while having different experiences both as a soldier and as a man. Deborah Kerr plays three different women who have impacted the soldier’s life. The film is now regarded as a classic of not only the Powell and Pressburger collaborations but of all British cinema. Pressburger cited this as his personal favorite of all their films. However, the film was initially met with heavy criticism, including from Winston Churchill, for its depiction of sympathetic German characters. As a result, the film went unreleased in the United States until 1945 and was only available in a heavily edited, black-and-white version until it received a full restoration in 1983.
Powell and Pressburger’s films, though always glamorous and beautiful, never shied away from discussing serious subjects. Their first film after World War II, A Matter of Life and Death (1946), was a romantic fantasy, yet it was one of the very first (and is still one of the best) to address the serious issue of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The duo also used several creative techniques to tell this already quirky story about a pilot who survives death in error and falls in love, causing him to appeal to the representatives of Heaven to keep his life. Powell and Pressburger made the ingenious decision to shoot the scenes set in Heaven in black-and-white and the scenes on Earth in Technicolor. With all these innovative techniques, the film was quite expensive for its time. The gigantic Stairway to Heaven (which would become the film’s American title) featured at the end of the film was physically built and added another $4000 to the film’s budget.
Next up was one of the Archers’ most daring and edgy projects, an adaptation of the dramatic novel of the same name, Black Narcissus (1947). Kerr stars as the appointed Sister Superior of a new convent school in the Himalayan mountains. Upon arrival, the nuns volunteering to build a school and hospital in the mountains become enticed by their beautiful surroundings. David Farrar plays the British gentleman who awakens Kerr’s long-suppressed romantic feelings and also arouses the attraction of the mentally unstable Sister Ruth (played brilliantly by Kathleen Byron). Yet another of the Archers’ films to break new ground in its subject matter and technique; the film was one of the first to explore the psychology and sexuality of people of the church. The Oscar-winning cinematography by Jack Cardiff is still one of the most celebrated uses of technicolor. The film also took home an Oscar for Art Direction and Set Direction by Alfred Junge.
Powell and Pressburger reached their filmmaking zenith with their next picture. The Red Shoes (1948) tells the story of a young ballerina (Moira Shearer) who is torn between her love of dance and her love for a young composer (Marius Goring). This is the ultimate film about the art of dance. The famous 17-minute ballet sequence was the first original ballet created for film. Powell added animation and montage sequences to give it an almost supernatural effect. The Royal Ballet company member Shearer was cast in her film debut for the lead role of Victoria Page due in no small part to her red hair, something that Powell felt could have an added effect in Technicolor. Always a dancer first, Shearer was initially hesitant to accept the role, preferring instead to continue with her ballet company. She accepted the part only after receiving confirmation that she could return to her position within the company after the film’s completion. The result was a critical and commercial success which has since been adapted into many ballet and musical versions. The film is often listed as Powell and Pressburger’s masterpiece.
After conquering the world of ballet on film, Powell suggested the team create a film opera. Three years after The Red Shoes, Powell and Pressburger created a film adaptation of Jacques Offenbach’s 1881 opera The Tales of Hoffmann (1951). Faithful to both the original French libretto by Jules Barbier and the original German poems by E.T.A. Hoffmann (played here by tenor Robert Rounseville), the film tells the story of Hoffmann’s visions of three completely different women—Olympia, Antonia and Giulietta (Shearer, Ann Ayars, Ludmilla Tchérina)—and how they make up his vision of the perfect woman, Stella (also Shearer). Only Rounseville and Ayars did their own singing, and the entire soundtrack had to be prerecorded and lip-synced. Though visually spectacular and experimental, the film was the duo’s first significant critical and box-office disappointment.
This failure started an unofficial downward spiral for the legendary Powell and Pressburger partnership. The two would make only five more films together over the next 20 years. At the same time, they also chose to resume making their own films separately, with Powell as sole director and Pressburger focusing on writing. Some of these films, like Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960), have also become renowned classics.
Powell and Pressburger amicably split following their final film together, The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972). For the rest of their lives, each of them continued to praise their fellow filmmaker and looked back on their partnership with pride. Modern cinephiles and filmmakers still do the same. Just this year, the two were the subject of the new documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (2024). This admiring tribute to the filmmakers shares home movies, interviews and unreleased footage of the geniuses at work and analyzes their greatest films. No doubt the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger will continue to entertain and fascinate their viewers forever.
