D Cairns

With Sabu. It's not generally known that Michael Powell directed most of this, uncredited. I'm keen to see it, even if everybody involved thought it a disappointment.
I have a large collection for trading.

batman

There was a VHS release a few years ago but copies of it seem pretty scarce.



This Greek edition is available on e-bay.

THE END OF THE RIVER - DVD - SABU on eBay, also, DVDs, DVD, Film TV (end time 13-Jul-08 19:01:03 BST)

THE END OF THE RIVER , Sabu , Bibi Ferreira - DVD on eBay, also, DVDs, DVD, Film TV (end time 21-Jul-08 20:10:10 BST)

ENGLISH MOVIES : THE END OF THE RIVER - Sabu -UNCUT DVD on eBay, also, DVDs, DVD, Film TV (end time 14-Jul-08 23:03:26 BST)

BRITISH CINE-THE END OF THE RIVER (SABU) +POIRO+REX (3) on eBay, also, DVDs, DVD, Film TV (end time 29-Jul-08 16:24:25 BST)

I wish I had claws.

charliekane

Don't know about Michael Powell directing this - he and Emeric produced it of course, but I doubt they had much more to do with it than that.
The wonderful Christopher Challis was cameraman on this, and told me that they made most of it on location in Brazil 'out of reach of producers for most of the picture and they only took an active part in it when it was all over,when I don't think they were all that happy with it.'
So far as I know, Mickey never claimed to have directed any of it.

barry

I have an excellent copy on dvdr. Much to trade. Barry.

Steve Crook

It's not generally known - because he didn't

Derek Twist was the editor who saved The Edge of the World and managed to put a decent film together from the miles of footage that Powell shot. So Powell always felt he owed Derek something.

When The Archers got established and were going well with hit after hit they decided to support a few other people who wanted to get into directing and P&P acted as producers. First they did it for Vernon Sewell (another Foula regular) and Gordon Wellesley with The Silver Fleet (1943). That was from a story written by Pressburger but he wasn't happy when Sewell & Wellesley didn't make the Nazis as mean as he wanted so he took his name off it as a writer. But both P&P are still credited as producers and it's a Production of The Archers.

When it came to Derek Twist's turn they did have a lot of problems, filming far along the Amazon in deepest Brazil. It was based on a novel and P&P both had an uncredited hand in the writing, as did some other people. Micky gave advice about directing to Derek Twist but he didn't actually direct any of it himself. If he had done it might have been a better film.

Even Archers stalwart Esmond Knight doesn't manage to save this one. Sabu does a reasonable job playing the Amazonian Indian brought to the big city. He always was good at a child-like (but not childish) innocence. But he's not as good when his situation gets serious. The story is a bit disjointed and doesn't flow very well. There are some individual sequences that are quite good but the film as a whole doesn't work well and is quite confusing.

Steve

D Cairns

OK, this can't be guaranteed accurate, because I wasn't there, but assistant director Lawrie Knight, who WAS there, told me that Derek Twist got ill shortly after filming began and Powell was forced to take over. "And Mickey didn't really want to do it. He ruined it. The point of the story was supposed to be about the slow pace of life on the river, and Mickey directed it like a train."

Lawrie never told me anything that hasn't turned out to be true, where I've been able to check it, so I do believe that Powell must have directed at least a substantial part of the film. Admittedly, Lawrie's job was to maintain communications from the English side, so he wasn't on location himself, but he was kept informed.

Lawrie also said that some of the best "Amazon" footage was actually shot in England. Both Powell and Challis discuss the problems in their respective autobiographies. Challis said he only realised when he was flying home that aerial shots were the only way to capture the scale of the Amazon rain forest, since up close all you can see is the nearest tree. Powell was fairly scathing, saying that Twist had managed to make the Amazon boring! Now, if Powell actually directed a lot of the film, this is rather unfair, but we know Powell's book does contain a fair few debatable claims...

Steve Crook

ISTR you, or someone, told me about this claim of Lawrie's some years back - and I've never been able to find anything to support it in any way. There isn't any part of it that is directed "like a train". It's all very slow, soporific even, especially the sequences on the river.

Steve