There can’t be many more perfect ways for a cinephile to spend an afternoon, than in the company of the most knowledgeable and authoritative of film historians, talking passionately about his pet subject. Martin Scorsese starts this tribute to the twin genius of Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger with a recollection of his first encounter with their work. As an asthmatic child young Marty didn’t get out much, so he watched movies on TV. And because US filmmakers were reluctant to sell product to their deadly rival, most of the things he saw were British. The films of Hitchcock, Reed and Lean were important formative influences. But it was the strange artistic fusions from Powell, a seemingly uptight English patrician and Pressburger, a Hungarian Jew emigre with a giant intellect, that really sparked his imagination and provided such a durable inspiration for his career. This documentary from David Hinton takes a deceptively straightforward chronological approach, interspersing carefully selected clips with Scorsese’s own fascinating commentary. His comparisons were well drawn and his analysis always insightful. Of particular interest were the links he acknowledged between P&P’s work and his own. For example he identifies the duelling scene from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, as a model for his own treatment of the pivotal fight scene in Raging Bull. There are similar connections recorded in relation to Age of Innocence, Mean Streets and of course Taxi Driver. After brief biographies of the two men and their early work as independent filmmakers, Made in England really gets going with their burgeoning partnership and the creation of Archer Films. On the face of it it’s an unlikely marriage. Powell sees the world thro a lens. It’s a lens which is focussed initially on the Kent countryside. He seems to be nostalgic for a pastoral vision of England, even before it had slipped into the past. On the other hand Pressburger is a writer who has come to England from Vienna via Paris and cannot speak a word of English. Imagine that – a writer with no words. And yet the two together combine to produce a series of films which come to crystallise a sense of Englishness. They bond over the love of a country which shaped them and gave them sanctuary. We start with examples of war time propaganda, exemplified by the wonderful A Matter of Life and Death, The 49th Parallel and One of Our Aircraft is Missing (inexplicably omitted here), but progress to works of unparalleled artistic flair; all the while pushing the boundaries of technique and innovation. I was fascinated to learn for example that The Tales of Hoffman was filmed to fit a pre recorded score. Has this ever been done before or since? What was so impressive about their work and their collaboration was the sheer bravery of their radicalism and the seeming absence of egos. When Powell wanted to shoot lengthy sequences without dialogue, essentially recreating Silent Cinema, Pressburger doesn’t seem to have been offended. He’s happy to throw himself into other aspects of production. And when Pressburger wants to indulge his passion for opera and ballet, Powell doesn’t sulk about the commercially risky nature of such ventures. He redoubles his efforts to film something unique and thrillingly cinematic; hence The Red Shoes. The brief footage of the two of them talking together shows such an easy rapport and a clear mutual respect, that you really could believe this was a marriage made in heaven. If there was one small quibble with the film it was that it was perhaps skewed more towards Powell’s contributions than Pressburger’s. This may just have been an extension of Scorcese’s own directorial preferences, or it may have been that following their conscious uncoupling, the trajectory of Powell’s career was more compelling. His astonishingly autobiographical Peeping Tom was received so poorly that it made him persona non grata within the industry for almost 10 years, and he fell into poverty before being rediscovered and rehabilitated by Scorsese and Coppola. His subsequent marriage to Scorsese’s long time collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker was perhaps another personal reference point which needed to be acknowledged. The test of retrospectives like this is how much they make you want to go back and rewatch or look out films that you may have missed. Well dear reader I can report that I have already dug out and watched my old copy of Colonel Blimp and can confirm Scorsese’s view that it is both a gentle satire on the military and a rather poignant reflection on friendship and the sad reality on the emotional immaturity of a certain breed of Englishman. Churchill predictably hated it and wanted it banned. “A Great War leader, but a terrible film critic” was Marty’s mischievous summary. I have also borrowed a copy of Hoffman which I approach for the first time with great anticipation.
Rating 18/20
Viewed 20/5/2024
Screen 2 (D6)
Phoenix Films 2024 