Extract
Michael Powell.
by James Howard, with an Introduction by Deborah Kerr. Batsford, England and North Pomfret, VT: Trafalgar square Press, 1997. 160 pp., illus. Paperback: $24.95
Rich and strange are the movies of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Masterpiece or misfire, stunning or disappointing, they bristle with odd angles, they hook and tease the mind. Underappreciated by critics in their day, their Hollywood admirers ranged from Cecil B. De Mille to Billy Wilder. Paramount used I Know Where I'm Going to demonstrate classical scriptwriting. Gene Kelly used The Red Shoes to change MGM's policy on musicals. Their cause was championed by movie 'brats-with-beards' Scorsese and Coppola, by mainstream innovator Ken Russell, and by outright avant-gardists Kenneth Anger and Derek Jarman. Finally film academics have followed suit, but find the films hard to handle, partly because they're so diverse (where auteur theory liked consistency and repetition), partly because they draw on cultures film studies have chosen to repudiate - the 'rich' avant-gardes (like Diaghilev, Stravinsky, and Matisse), Film...See the full content of this document
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