David Vining's Blog, page 32

Peeping Tom (A Second Look)

Having watched this before, disengaged from Powell’s overall filmography, I was in a poor position to try and connect it to something like The Red Shoes, something I was only passingly familiar with having only seen it once before. Now, having worked my way through Powell’s quickie period and then his fruitful professional relationship with Emeric Pressburger, I think I can see Peeping Tom more clearly. If there’s one word I can use to define Powell across his career it’s: artifice. That doe...

Ill Met by Moonlight (or, Night Ambush)

The final film credited as being written, produced, and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is the film that Powell called the worst of their partnership as The Archers. I think that’s harsh (and, plus, you know, Gone to Earth is right there), but it’s definitely the most straightforward and thinnest work the pair had collaborated on. A man on a mission tale set on Crete in WWII, it’s an uncomplicated tale of daring-do with functional characters and pretty much no thematic dept...

The Battle of the River Plate (or, Pursuit of the Graf Spee)

Powell and Pressburger leave the song and dance behind (mostly) for a return to WWII theatrics, this time focusing on one particular, real-world naval action and its fallout. The emphasis on realism and capturing as much as possible fits this in squarely with other grand WWII epics of its ilk like The Longest Day or Midway, but the busyness of so many characters leaving so little of an impression ends up biting the film in its final act when things calm down and become more character focused...

Oh…Rosalinda!!

Based on an operetta by Johan Strauss, Oh…Rosalinda!! is a confection, a small delight of nothingness that flitters away from the mind as soon as it’s done, but it’s fun while it lasts. Reminding me of Lubitsch, this is Powell and Pressburger taking the formalism and theatrical influences of The Tales of Hoffmann and bringing them down a bit, going for more modest returns on more modest sets and with more modest emotions. I think the package ends up being a modest delight, a small concoction...

The Tales of Hoffmann

George Romero‘s favorite film, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s adaptation of the opera The Tales of Hoffmann is a formalistic exercise in craft, the sort of exercise in style that the Archers, as they used to be called, had been driving towards for some years. And you know what? I liked it. I liked it a lot. I’ve said more than once that some of their earlier films feel like the kinds of films that end directorial careers, veering so hard away from the naturalism so endemic in the ci...

The Elusive Pimpernel (or, The Fighting Pimpernel)

What if Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made a Batman movie? Well, it’d probably turn out a whole lot like The Elusive Pimpernel. It’d be full of pretty gowns, balls, and more focused on Bruce Wayne’s dandy cover than his skills as Batman. I mean, there’s not one swordfight in this film. I was really not expecting that. Still, it’s moderately entertaining but not entirely successful. Thriller mechanics are simply different from most dramatics, and I think many filmmakers who dip their ...

Gone to Earth

For the first time in a long while, I was largely bored by a Michael Powell film. Adapted from the novel by Mary Webb, Gone to Earth is a rote, standard melodrama about a girl caught between two diametrically opposed lovers. This is The Red Shoes but without the fantastic sights to carry us along the route-one story structure. Considering the nature of David O. Selznick and how his output had degraded over the years since Gone with the Wind (Duel in the Sun is also very dull), it makes me wo...

The Small Back Room (or, Hour of Glory)

The Archers lose their name with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger producing their newest film under their own names while they leave behind the colorful formalism of The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus for a stylized realism more in line with film noir visually. They also return to the war with an adaptation of the novel by Nigel Balchin, continuing to stay away from the front lines, this time focusing on one man working far from the front but still facing his own dangers. It’s a more res...

The Red Shoes

Reportedly Martin Scorsese’s favorite film (or, well, one of the legion he loves), The Red Shoes is absolutely the kind of film that kills directorial careers (much like A Matter of Life and Death). This is formalistic like One from the Heart, about an obscure subject like The Lone Ranger (this time it was ballet instead of a long-dead serial), and incredibly expensive for the time like Heaven’s Gate. And Alexander Korda seemed to think it would have no audience, refusing any sort of serious...

Black Narcissus

This movie…is not subtle. Like, at all. However, it is a testament to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s sheer talent that it gets as involving as it does. Essentially their Technicolor version of Vertigo, Black Narcissus is a Hitchcockian dramatic thriller of madness at great heights. Filmed entirely in studios and the outdoors around Pinewood in England, The Archers created a special effects marvel of the time that still holds up visually today, all while creating specific character p...