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Michael Powell: International Perspectives on an English Film-maker
The films of Michael Powell (1905-1990) and Emeric Pressburger (1902-1988), among them I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), A Matter of Life and Death (1947), and The Red Shoes (1948), are landmarks in British cinema, standing apart from the realist and comic mainstream with a highly stylized aesthetic and themes of romantic longing and spiritual crisis. Film lovers and filmmakers alike revere Powell and Pressburger; Martin Scorsese has called them "the most successful experimental filmmakers in the world."
In this first-ever collection of essays on Michael Powell, an international group of critics and scholars map out his filmmaking skills, provide new readings of individual films, and analyze recurrent techniques and themes, relating the latter to contemporary debates about gender, sexuality, nationality, and cinematic spectacle.
In this first-ever collection of essays on Michael Powell, an international group of critics and scholars map out his filmmaking skills, provide new readings of individual films, and analyze recurrent techniques and themes, relating the latter to contemporary debates about gender, sexuality, nationality, and cinematic spectacle.
- GenresFilm
303 pages, Paperback
First published July 6, 2005
27 people want to read
About the author
Ian Christie
87 books1 followerIan Christie is Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck, University of London.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 25, 2013
Michael Powell's The Red Shoes and Life and Death of Col. Blimp are two of the finest films of all time. This collection of very complicated essays suggests why, as well as making the case for other, to my mind lesser, films to join the duo on their pedestal.
As this is a collection it is a bit uneven: I found myself thinking "were all of these decisions really intentional, as presented" at times, although this hearkens back to the start of my English degree when I thought the same. My answer then, and now I guess, is yes! However, I view film as an entertainment medium as well as an intellectual one, more than I allow for books, meaning that films that fail to grab me viscerally or cerebrally really struggle to get my approval. I Know Where I'm Going is one that I didn't enjoy viewing but can see why it is so valued. Nonetheless, I think that films produced for exhibition ignore their audiences at their peril. I much prefer The Red Shoes, which excites physically, mentally and advances the form, making it the true classic to my mind.
The essay on queer readings flags itself as being based in reception rather than design so much that it is difficult to take at all seriously (excepting Black Narcissus, suppose). Compare this with the rather more overt and surely deliberate representations of gay characters in the Hitchcock 39 Steps book by the same publisher, and this really does seem like an infantile essay by comparison. Remember that scene in Goodness Gracious Me where the Indian character declares all the great an good as Indian: this is a it like that!
I am not sure I would recommend this book ahead of a rewatching of the two films mentioned before, primarily because it does not accord with my view that these are head and shoulders above the rest f their oeuvre.
As this is a collection it is a bit uneven: I found myself thinking "were all of these decisions really intentional, as presented" at times, although this hearkens back to the start of my English degree when I thought the same. My answer then, and now I guess, is yes! However, I view film as an entertainment medium as well as an intellectual one, more than I allow for books, meaning that films that fail to grab me viscerally or cerebrally really struggle to get my approval. I Know Where I'm Going is one that I didn't enjoy viewing but can see why it is so valued. Nonetheless, I think that films produced for exhibition ignore their audiences at their peril. I much prefer The Red Shoes, which excites physically, mentally and advances the form, making it the true classic to my mind.
The essay on queer readings flags itself as being based in reception rather than design so much that it is difficult to take at all seriously (excepting Black Narcissus, suppose). Compare this with the rather more overt and surely deliberate representations of gay characters in the Hitchcock 39 Steps book by the same publisher, and this really does seem like an infantile essay by comparison. Remember that scene in Goodness Gracious Me where the Indian character declares all the great an good as Indian: this is a it like that!
I am not sure I would recommend this book ahead of a rewatching of the two films mentioned before, primarily because it does not accord with my view that these are head and shoulders above the rest f their oeuvre.
Displaying 1 of 1 review