A Matter of Powell And Pressburger

Michael Powell (1905-1990) was truly one of the most extreme and yet elusive directors of all English cinema. It would be the war that would enflame Powell's powerful imagination and bring him his vital collaborator, Emeric Pressburger (1902- 1988). Pressburger was of Hungarian gypsy stock and had toiled his way as a screenwriter in Europe. He emigrated to Britain in 1938, where he was introduced to Powell by another Hungarian, Alexander Korda. Powell and Pressburger would embark on their working partnership in 1939's The Spy in Black. A film that centered on Germans trying to penetrate the British naval base of Scapa Flow, with Conrad Veidt as Powell's first study of German decisiveness. They would work together until 1956, usually sharing the credit for writing, production and direction. Powell's films around 1945 were personal reactions against the now new socialist tide in Britain. Although I Know Where I'm Going and A Matter of Life and Death are love stories, they are in coalition, political statements willfully set against the grain of the time. Their unruliness shows the difficulty Powell has had for being a man in his own time; but their spirit proclaims his loyalty to gentlemanly values, values buried in his sense of English tradition. 

The post-war romance stories depict desire without lurking within a restraining code, the lovers tossed about between a sense common, and erratic lyricism. Women are nuisances, helpmates of old familiars who intuit the power of both spell and fantasy. The films move violently, yet serenely from reality to hallucination. A Matter of Life and Death has a bomber 'killed' in action. But he claims a reprieve in heaven because he became besotted with a radio operator, moments before dying. Reality is given color in all its splendor, and the socialist utopia of heaven is seen in insipid black-and-white. Although David Niven, who portrays the pilot is loquacious and matter-of-fact, he is also a poet. Peace probably frustrated Powell. Instead of a splurge of joy and release in Britain, there would be ration books and shortages. He riposted with the exotic Black Narcissus, produced in a studio re-creation of Nepal, about the thunder of denied sexuality in a convent. It was picturesque, fevered and seemingly insane. Gothic romance has often beckoned Mr Powell. The sensual potential of David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, Deborah Kerr and the young Jean Simmons, is viewed with flinching ecstasy.

                     Deborah Kerr in the gothic Black Narcissus (1947)

David Farrar and Kathleen Byron play the couple in The Small Black Room (1949). He is a crippled, and inebriated bomb-expert who nonetheless given the task of dismantling a new German weapon. Farrar is an ideal and Powell hero; passionate, yet insulate. The Small Black Room is an inspired film noir love story. Sexual lingering conceals itself in every shadow. The Red Shoes on the other hand, is an explosion of colors - garish, undried and emotively vibrant. Revered world round by lovers of dance and ballet, The Red Shoes was a testament to Powell's obsession for total cinema - color, design, story, music, dance - impressive for for it's unyielding artiness. For being the cinematic answer to an Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale and its rapture and abandon of art. The Red Shoes captivates young people because it's zeal is so close to nightmare, the prima ballerina (Moira Shearer) cannot stop dancing, and the impresario played by Anton Walbrook urges her to perform at the cost of her life and the love he cannot even admit to himself. The Red Shoes is both fanciful and theatrical, but Walbrook's rendering of the Diaghilev figure reflects Powell's conception of the artist as outcast, scold, and prophet in an all too indolent universe.

                     Put on your red shoes and dance the blues

 The artist's dedication is on the brink of  destructiveness; his vision is never more romantic than when it vehemently refuses to succumb to real obstacles; he is most tender and wounded when he cannot share the sentiments of other people. For all its illuminating dazzle, The Red Shoes glorifies the pained but magnificent - even necessary - isolation of the artist in modern society.