Summary
Books on films of Michel Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Five books examined the motion pictures of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The books analyzed Powell's contributions to foreign influences in the film industry and Pressburger's experiences in production administration. They also discussed the historical relativism of Powell and Pressburger through an analysis of the pictures they worked on. These include 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,' 'Black Narcissus' and 'Stairway to Heaven.'See the full content of this document
Extract
The Powell and Pressburger mystery.
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 as Spectacle and Pleasure, Life for Art's Sake, cranky English individualism, a 'field' culture (geography, hunting, walking, soldiering), gentlemanly pa...
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