Dave Rattigan

Bit of a provocative title. It's not that I dislike Powell and Pressburger, but of the bits and bobs I've seen, I've just never got into them.

I've seen Black Narcissus, and started The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but after the very enjoyable prologue, I just lost interest.

However, I have the box set (9 films from HMV), and am determined to persevere. What is it that draws you to P&P?

Not trying to be contentious; would just like to hear what others have to say.

Steve Crook

There's no rule that says everyone in the world has to like them.

What's so great about them?
Well for me it's about intelligence and quality.
The quality of their productions, special effects that were state-of-the-art in the 1940s and still compare well to the best that CGI can do.
Quality of the film-making with cinematographers, set designers and other crew members that were world class and at the top of their game.
Quality of the performances with some of the best actors around.

And intelligence in that they assumed that the audience had a reasonable level of intelligence and could follow a well told story even if it was a bit more complicated than what was usually offered. They didn't dumb down at all. Even though there are some quite long passages spoken in other languages there are no subtitles used, they aren't necessary. The performances are good enough to get the message across. But most of all intelligence in the stories. I don't just mean the dialogue, but the whole story told in the film. They are beautifully constructed and allow the films to stand repeated viewing. Everyone and everything seen in the film has a point, even minor characters have a believable story. And they're not afraid to go for the emotions, in fact they embrace them in a way that was very rare in British film-making.

The strange thing is, given my love for them, why didn't I discover them sooner?
When I grew up it was before the cult of the director. It was quite rare for anyone to know the name of any director of a film. People would just know the names of the stars. And P&P films are so different from each other that there is no easily identifiable "directorial style", only the quality & intelligence that I mentioned above. It was only when I began to realise that all the films I liked the most, that moved me the most, started with that arrow in the target, that I recognized that they were all made by the same people.

But that's just me. What do others think?

Steve

Ted Holmes

I love the fact that they constantly surprise me. Even when I know what's coming it always seems fresh, always a sort of surprise. I'd say the same about most of the things I love most, whether it's a Wagner opera or a country walk I've done fifty times. Talking of which, P & P's evident reverence for the British countryside is also a big plus.

Sorry to was (a very little) lyrical.

Ted

D Cairns

Imagination is key. While P&P produced great scripts and coaxed great performances from amazing actors, what sets them truly apart from other filmmakers is the cinematic imagination, which can be seen working even in moments that don't work.

The ones that do are totally unique. The RED SHOES ballet is the absolute height of pure cinema, the combination of music, colour, light, performance, composition and movement to create pure beauty. AMOLAD is the screen's greatest combination of contemporary drama and heightened fantasy. The idea of heaven being in black and white and earth being in colour was a splendid one, but what they DO with the idea visually, technically and narratively is astonishing. Moments like the whisky-bottle hallucination in SMALL BACK ROOM, the choreographed climax of BLACK NARCISSUS, the stuffed-animal-head montage in BLIMP, are unparalleled in British cinema because they work at a level of imaginative brilliance for which there is no tradition in British film, and which is simply beyond the reach of all but the greatest filmmakers.

DB7

I like the black-and-white P&P films but my interest wanes soon after Cardiff entered the fray; Blimp and Amolad are magnificent but from then onwards I fear there's a veer into the visually self-indulgent at the expense of the storyline. Thankfully a return to more modest ambitions bookends my love of Powell with Peeping Tom. (and I've a soft spot for Gordon Harker in The Phantom Light)

Third Man

I love the way they can take the opposing view in certain films, Germans on the run in '49th Parallel' again the German perspective with a nazi submarine commander in 'The Spy in Black' sent to sink a British fleet, the intellectual German scholar in 'Blimp' who out thinks and is prepared to change with the times and adapt more than his English counterpart who is stuck in the past, of how things should and should not be done. With these films the enemy has a face, a voice and point of view rarely seen in films of the time.


I also love the way they can make the most harmless of things feel uneasy take for instance ' I Know Where I'm Going' a harmless enough film on the face of it but by the end of the film there is something very unsettling about the whole experience, was it mood, the lighting or the curse?


I'm just very happy to have found out about them and I have more or less enjoyed everything they have done to some degree.


Oh yeah!! I love the colour and the spectacle of "Tales of Hoffmann" and " Red Shoes" and the audaciousness of ‘ A Matter of Life and Death’. There is nothing quite like them.

Simon

Steve Crook

That's a great word to use for AMOLAD (my personal favourite), audacious.
Just after a war where millions had died, to make a film about death (& life).
But also to start it off with someone quoting poetry and then to challenge just about every assumption going, especially those about religion and the afterlife. It's no wonder that the American distributors felt nervous and changed the title.

But audacious is a word that applies well to many of their films.
As well as the representation of "the enemy" as understandable characters, it's just the scope of the films that amazes me.
In 49th Parallel they had the whole of Canada (& much of the Canadian government) at their disposal.
In The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp they were told that the government had forbidden the Army to give them any help - but they still managed to use a lot of army vehicles and uniforms.
In A Canterbury Tale they found that they couldn't film inside the cathedral. No problem, they rebuilt it in the studio!
In I Know Where I'm Going! their leading man couldn't get to the Scottish locations, so they used a double so brazenly that nobody noticed.
In Black Narcissus they decided to re-create the Himalayas in the back lot at Pinewood studios.
In The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann they created a whole ballet company and created a new art form - the cinematic ballet and opera.
In The Battle of the River Plate they had the Mediterranean fleet of the Royal Navy (& some of the US Navy) to play with

They really didn't see any limitataions in what they could do. They aimed high and usually hit that target smack in the bulls-eye. Even the ones that weren't appreciated or understood at the time, like ACT, have grown to be much loved and appreciated over the years since they were made.

Steve

Hackett

It's a passion. And Powell and Cheeseburger are without doubt Steve's Passion. Not mine, they don't get in my top ten. In fact thier only film I watch regularly is "ILL MEET BY MOONLIGHT" 1957 and I enjoy it for all the wrong reasons. Bad acting (the dentist slays me), dialogue and that bloody music. But I admire his Passion and Knowledge that can drop in a fact on any thread and detour it onto P&P. Even though It sometimes drives me mad I would defend his right with my life to continue to do so. More power to your elbow Steve.

foha80

I like any film maker who over estimates my intelligence.

Terry

ChristineCB

DR, I'm glad you asked this question and I am enjoying the replies. I only know 49TH PARALLEL, RED SHOES and A CANTERB TALE by recent repeat viewings, and I only connected them after CANTERB's DVD arrived.

The reply about "audacious" does ring true about these 3 films. 49TH struck me as an audacious - "How dare they!" - kind of story-line. From the beginning. How dare the sailors brazenly take off. How dare the film-makers envision such a start to the tale, giving those Horrid Nazis such humanity! Where ARE their tails and horns, after all?!! Ah... yes, I see some. Later.

These seem to be intricate studies of small people in small events, yet P&P seems to be answering my questions by their in-depth 'study' of the What-If's of these characters and settings.

I hope the rest of them will offer at least some of that.

penfold

You need to see The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp(1943)....the same fair attitudes, on a canvas broad in time rather than in location. The greatest film ever made IMHO....I haven't joined the full debate, despite being as fanatical as Steve C., as the other answers have expressed the peculiarities of PnP, that make their films so endlessly fascinating, so well....

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Steve Crook

And there's even a nice Nazi in 49P. But he quickly comes to a sticky end at the hands of the other nasty Nazis.

But remember that Pressburger knew the Nazis from when he was living and working in Berlin and then Paris. He lost his job at UFA because he was Jewish and the man in charge at UFA followed the decree that Jews shouldn't be employed there. He only left Berlin when a friend told him he was on a list of people to be picked up by them. He said he left the key in the door of his apartment so that they wouldn't have to kick the door in

Steve

ChristineCB

I've got COL BLIMP, CONTRABAND and BLACK NARCISSUS (sp?) on order. Mr SmartyPants has a thing for Deborah Kerr, however. I don't know how I'll address that issue - I used to stretch out on a couch with a blanket thrown over me when he came home, just to see if he'd run into rooms searching for a wheelchair.

Do I need to find a nun's habit now? Which is a shame - I'm 7 months along and even my French Upstairs Maid costume isn't quite as fetching... hmmm...

Fellwanderer

All I can say is that if I could only choose one non-JA film it would have to be ACT - pure magic for me.

All the best
FELL

A signature is no substitute for a life

Steve Crook

Add Gone to Earth to the list for another great romantic heroine in Jennifer Jones as the child of nature.

Deborah isn't actually in Contraband, her scenes were cut. There wasn't much of her anyway, she was just a girl selling cigarettes in a night club. But Contraband is still well worth watching with the lovely Valerie Hobson & Conrad Veidt flirting their way through it.

Steve