David Vining's Blog, page 31

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Michael Powell (and Emeric Pressburger): The Definitive Ranking

Michael Powell, one half of The Archers with Emeric Pressburger, was top of the British filmmaking world through the 40s with his otherworldly looks at things like nuns in an Indian convent or ballet or the Afterlife. His body of work does not feel like the kind of stuff that becomes popular. It feels niche, and its contemporary popularity seems to have been some kind of historical fluke because he got forgotten long before he died.

Rediscovered by Martin Scorsese who grew up on watching ...

Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger

Martin Scorsese has been trying to get people to know and like the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger since the 60s when he was a film student at NYU. He actually discovered his first Archer films as a child, seeing The Tales of Hoffman on television and The Red Shoes in theaters with his father, but it wasn’t until he became a success himself with the release of Mean Streets that he discovered that Michael Powell was still alive. Searching out the retired, English filmmaker at h...

The Boy Who Turned Yellow

I’m really curious about the backstory to this. Michael Powell, who had been effectively exiled from the British film industry, went to Australia, made two movies, and came back to make one final film with his long-term creative partner, Emeric Pressburger, and it’s this weird, children’s thing that supposed to be teaching kids about electricity? It’s hard to say, this thing is so stuffed with events that have nothing to do with electricity and how it works, and its such a sugar rush of thos...

Age of Consent

You know, I was expecting something more exploitation-like from this. I mean, the poster and everything seems to be promising a sex-romp, and while there is a not insignificant amount of nudity in it, it’s actually about the creative process and finding meaning. It also…doesn’t quite work. Meandering and not nearly as funny as it thinks it is, Age of Consent is more interesting than actually fun to watch.

Bradley Morahan (James Mason) is a successful artist who sells tapestries for $5,000...

They’re a Weird Mob

Michael Powell moves to Australia and makes a movie about a new arrival to Australia learning to adapt and assimilate into the Australian culture. Oh, but it’s about an Italian immigrant, not an English one, so it’s definitely not about him at all. Slight sarcasm aside, this is not a challenging film. It’s not even something one could call prototypically Powell-esque, or even Archers-esque even with Emeric Pressburger writing the screenplay under the pseudonym Richard Imrie, but it is a wond...

Even John Ford is releasing new movies and messing up my rankings?!

He’s been dead for 50 years!

Well, one of the dozens of lost films from Ford’s early years has been found in a Chilean warehouse. This is a Harry Carey Sr. film, The Scarlet Drop. No release seems to have been announced, but the existing print (still somewhat incomplete, it seems) has been digitized but not subject to a restoration yet.

I suspect some film foundation or other will take on the work (these restorations are not cheap, and a little known silent film with a forgotten movie s...

Herzog Blaubarts Burg

In exile, Michael Powell made a quick stopover in Germany to make this filmed adaptation of the opera by Bela Bartok for West German television based on the French folktale of the eponymous Bluebeard who killed his series of wives. An hour long, it’s one of Powell’s least physically ambitious efforts in decades, but he makes the absolute most of his limited sets, focusing on his two performers as they belt out the libretto by Bela Balazs. He gets some great compositions, making this one of h...

The Queen’s Guards

The last theatrical film Michael Powell was able to make in Britain, The Queen’s Guards became the least of his works in his own eyes. Apparently, it was one of those productions where the script (credited to Roger Milner) was constantly being rewritten on set, implying that no one really understood what the film was supposed to be. And the final product reflects that. There are subplots that don’t go anywhere. There are characters that seem to serve no purpose. There are ideas that don’t ge...

Honeymoon

I have to start this review with a caveat. I mentioned this in a comment on the Statement of Purpose, but I could not find an English language version or English subtitles. I bought the Region-B Blu-ray in the hope that the known menu trick (pressing the Disc Menu button when the Region incompatibility screen comes up, it works on my Region-B edition of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes) would work, and it doesn’t. I even looked for the script! I found nothing except a surprisingly detaile...