Director – David Hinton, Producers – Nick Varley & Matthew Wells, Music – Adrian Johnston, Visual Effects – John Cox. Production Company – Ten Thousand 86/Ice Cream Films/Sikelia Productions/Altitude Film Sales/BFI National Archive/Cohen Media Group/ITV Studios Global Distribution/Park Circus Productions/Studio Canal/Turner Classic Movies.
Martin Scorsese (Presenter)
Michael Powell (1905-90) was one of the great Wartime and post-War British film directors. Powell’s stature is something that has been underrated in subsequent years but he made a series of classic films with the likes of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1945), A Matter of Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948) and Peeping Tom (1960), among others. These were extraordinary Technicolor fantasies in a time when the majority of films were still being made in black-and-white. Powell made the bulk of his films in collaboration with his co-writer and frequent co-director Emeric Pressburger (1902-88). He also made a number of works that fall into genre territory (see below for which).
Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger is a Documentary about Powell and Pressburger. It is hosted and narrated by Martin Scorsese and co-produced through Scorsese’s production company Sikelia Productions. Apart from some archival interview footage of Powell and Pressburger, Scorsese is the sole person on screen, where he sits in a theatre and narrates and offers his insight into Powell’s life and films.
Scorsese first tells us his own story, making this a much more personal film than you usually get with a documentary. The first fifteen minutes are where Scorsese tells us about his childhood and how he used to watch films on a twelve-inch black-and-white tv growing up in New York’s Little Italy in the late 1940s. At the time, Hollywood studios refused to release their films to tv but British studios had no compunctions about doing so. As a result, Scorsese grew up watching Powell’s early films and became a fan, before getting to see The Red Shoes in its original theatrical release (and in so doing finally discovering Powell’s films in colour).
Scorsese talks about the influence of Powell and Pressburger’s films on his own work. In the 1970s, after he had gained some success, he went to England and tracked Powell down where he was living in retirement and impoverished circumstances in a cottage in Gloucestershire. Scorsese was instrumental in bringing Powell to the US where he was invited to become the senior director in residence at Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope studios.
The film follows Powell and his beginnings working under the silent movie director Rex Ingram and then obtaining work in the British film industry. Powell found his calling making a series of patriotic works during World War II with the likes of The Lion Has Wings (1939), Contraband (1940), 49th Parallel (1941) and One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942). It was during this time that he met Pressburger after Pressburger came into a script conference and turned the screenwriter’s notes entirely upside down and had the story rewritten. In an interview, Powell tells how he knew from that moment that he just had to work with this person. This came about with The Spy in Black (1939) and was a relationship that lasted thirty years.
Scorsese follows through from Powell and Pressburger’s breaking into Technicolor with The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp where he goes into some depth in discussing that film’s themes and nuances. Powell and Pressburger’s desire to find a pathway beyond patriotic works in the post-War years led to the extraordinary afterlife fantasy A Matter of Life and Death, which was made at the behest of the Ministry of Information to better US/Anglo relationships. This led to other classic Technicolor fantasies such as Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman (1951). Scorsese spends some time individually analysing each of these.
Things began to fall apart in the 1950s. Powell’s insistence on complete independence led to increased difficulty obtaining financing for films. Powell and Pressburger teamed with Alexander Korda for The Tales of Hoffman but this led to a falling out between them for several years afterwards over Pressburger siding with the US distributor’s wanting to cut the final act, which Powell was vehemently against.
Powell struggled on his own throughout the 1960s. However, the savage critical reaction to his horror film Peeping Tom essentially killed his career for many years. Subsequent to this, Powell and Pressburger reunited for They’re a Weird Mob (1966), as well as The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972). Oddly, the documentary leaves the latter unmentioned, presumably because it is not feature length, and instead considers Age of Consent (1969) to be Powell’s last film.
Michael Powell’s other films of genre note are:– The Phantom Light (1935), a little-seen comedy-thriller set in a supposedly haunted lighthouse; as co-director of The Thief of Bagdad (1940); the afterlife fantasy A Matter of Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven (1946); the ballet fantasy The Red Shoes (1948); the ballet fantasy portmanteau The Tales of Hoffmann (1951); the classic psycho film Peeping Tom (1960); and the children’s film The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972). was a documentary about Powell and Pressburger.
Trailer here