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The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger, The Red Shoes: teasing out a filmmaking partnership

Both titles remind us of the conscious artificiality of the Archers’ six dreamy British feature films

Actors Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, Sabu, Jean Simmons and David Farrar on a poster for the film Black Narcissus, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947. Photograph: Movie Poster Image Art/Getty
Actors Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, Sabu, Jean Simmons and David Farrar on a poster for the film Black Narcissus, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947. Photograph: Movie Poster Image Art/Getty
The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger
Author: Nathalie Morris, Claire Smith
ISBN-13: 978-1838719173
Publisher: British Film Institute
Guideline Price: £30
The Red Shoes
Author: Pamela Hutchinson
ISBN-13: 978-1839026065
Publisher: British Film Institute
Guideline Price: £12.99

One striking development went underreported in the coverage of last year’s decennial poll from Sight and Sound magazine. Two filmmaking forces tied for most titles in the critics’ stab at the 250 “greatest films of all time”. Nobody will be surprised to hear Alfred Hitchcock was one of those scoring six. Bookies would have given longer odds on Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger – known professionally as The Archers – also registering so many. All six of their dreamy British features from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) to The Red Shoes (1948) were mentioned. This for a partnership which, as David Thomson has noted, “in the ‘60s and ‘70s… had hardly any adequate critical appreciation”.

Hutchinson notes how ‘brushstrokes are visible in the gore’ painted on the doomed heroine’s legs at the close of The Red Shoes

As The Red Shoes celebrates its 75th anniversary, the British Film Institute confirms total rehabilitation with a major retrospective season and the publication of two essential volumes. Edited by Nathalie Morris and Claire Smith, The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger raids the BFI’s archive to provide definitive visual gloss on the partnership’s career. Gorgeous paintings from the production-design teams. Reproductions of pages from Powell’s diary revealing his immaculately vertical penmanship. Lavish promotional stills that work subtle variations on the moving images. No coffee table is complete without it.

Reissue of the week: The Red Shoes - Powell and Pressburger’s 1948 film is still worth seeingOpens in new window ]

The text reads like an overlapping conversation between heated enthusiasts. Caitlin McDonald addresses the recurring themes of exile. Alexandra Harris’s treatment of pilgrimage re-enforces the Archers’ interest in emotional and physical distance.

Just as unmissable, Pamela Hutchinson’s monograph on The Red Shoes, latest in the long-running BFI Film Classics series, employs the slyest wit as it teases out a kaleidoscope of themes in the greatest of all ballet films.

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Both books remind us of the films’ conscious artificiality. Hutchinson notes how “brushstrokes are visible in the gore” painted on the doomed heroine’s legs at the close of The Red Shoes. The volumes also fascinatingly tease out the mechanics of a partnership that bled across filmmaking disciplines. Pressburger, Hungarian émigré, was often seen as the screenwriter. Powell, Kentish eccentric, was treated as director. It wasn’t that simple. “I’m not the originator of the story,” Hutchinson quotes Powell saying. “But I am the teller of the tale.” The Red Shoes. A Matter of Life and Death. Black Narcissus. What tales.

Donald Clarke

Donald Clarke

Donald Clarke, a contributor to The Irish Times, is Chief Film Correspondent and a regular columnist