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Home , 55 Days at Peking, Allan Gray (composer), A Canterbury Tale, Black Narcissus, Closing the Ring, Daniel Massey (actor)

December 8 (XXXI:15) and , A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/ STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN (1946, 104 min)

(The version of this handout on the website has color images and hot urls.)

Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger Music by Cinematography by Film Edited by Camera Operator...

David Niven…Peter Carter Kim Hunter…June Robert Coote…Bob …An Angel …An English Pilot Bonar Colleano…An American Pilot Joan Maude…Chief Recorder …Conductor 71 …Doctor Reeves Robert Atkins…The Vicar Bob Roberts…Dr. Gaertler Hour of Glory (1949), The Red Shoes (1948), Edwin Max…Dr. Mc.Ewen (1947), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), 'I Know Where I'm Betty Potter…Mrs. Tucker Going!' (1945), A Tale (1944), The Life and Death of Abraham Sofaer…The Judge Colonel Blimp (1943), One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942), 49th …Abraham Farlan Parallel (1941), The Thief of Bagdad (1940), Blackout (1940), The Robert Arden…GI Playing Bottom Lion Has Wings (1939), (1937), Someday Robert Beatty…US Crewman (1935), (1934), C.O.D. (1932), Hotel Tommy Duggan…Patrick Aloyusius Mahoney Splendide (1932) and (1932). Erik…Spaniel …Narrator of introduction Emeric Pressburger (b. December 5, 1902 in Miskolc, Austria- Hungary [now Hungary] —d. February 5, 1988, age 85, in Michael Powell (b. September 30, 1905 in , —d. Saxstead, Suffolk, England) won the 1943 Oscar for Best Writing, February 19, 1990, age 84, in Gloucestershire, England) was Original Story for 49th Parallel (1941) and was nominated the nominated with Emeric Pressburger for an Oscar in 1943 for Best same year for the Best Screenplay for One of Our Aircraft Is Writing, Original Screenplay for One of Our Aircraft Is Missing Missing (1942) which he shared with Michael Powell and 49th (1942). He was nominated for the 1959 Parallel (1941) which he shared with . Mr. Palme d'Or for Luna de miel (1959) and in 1951, also at Cannes, Pressburger was also nominated for a 1949 Oscar for Best Writing, was nominated for the Grand Prize of the Festival for The Tales of Motion Picture Story for The Red Shoes (1948). He has directed 17 Hoffmann (1951), which he shared with Emeric Pressburger. Mr. films including Night Ambush (1957), Pursuit of the Graf Spee Powell also won the Career in (1956), Oh... Rosalinda!! (1955), Twice Upon a Time (1954), The 1982. He has directed 60 films including, The Boy Who Turned Wild Heart (1952), The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), The Fighting Yellow (1972), Age of Consent (1969), They're a Weird Mob Pimpernel (1950), Gone to Earth (1950), Hour of Glory (1949), (1966), The Queen's Guards (1961), Peeping Tom (1960), The Red Shoes (1948), Black Narcissus (1947), A Matter of Life Honeymoon (1959), Night Ambush (1957), Pursuit of the Graf and Death (1946), 'I Know Where I'm Going!' (1945), A Spee (1956), The Wild Heart (1952), The Tales of Hoffmann Canterbury Tale (1944), The Volunteer (1944, Short), The Life and (1951), The Fighting Pimpernel (1950), Gone to Earth (1950), Powell & Pressburger—A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN—2

Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing Rough Cut (1980), A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (1979), (1942). Death on the Nile (1978), Murder by Death (1976), Paper Tiger (1975), The Statue (1971), Before Winter Comes (1969),Prudence Allan Gray (b. Josef Zmigrod on February 23, 1904 in Tarnów, and the Pill (1968), Casino Royale (1967), The Pink Panther Galicia, Austria-Hungary [now Tarnów, Malopolskie, ] —d. (1963), 55 Days at Peking (1963), (1962), September 10, 1973, age 69, in , Buckinghamshire, The Guns of Navarone (1961), Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960), England) composed for over 53 films, some of which were The Big Separate Tables (1958), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), My Man Hunt (1959), Three's Company (1954), The Accused (1953), Godfrey (1957), Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), The Twilight Women (1952), Outpost in Malaya (1952), The African Moon Is Blue (1953), The Lady Says No (1951), Island Rescue Queen (1951), The Obsessed (1951), The Inheritance (1950), A (1951), Schlitz Playhouse (1951, TV Series), Soldiers Three (1951), Matter of Life and Death (1946), 'I Know Where I'm Going!' Happy Go Lovely (1951), The Fighting Pimpernel (1950), The (1945), Frenzy (1945), (1944), The Life and Bishop's Wife (1947), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Spitfire Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), School for Husbands (1937), The (1942), Raffles (1939), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Dawn Burning Secret (1933), The Countess of Monte-Christo (1932). Patrol (1938), Four Men and a Prayer (1938), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Dodsworth Jack Cardiff (b. John Gran on September 18, 1914 in Yarmouth, (1936), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Cleopatra (1934) and There Norfolk, England—d. April 22, 2009, age 94. in Ely, Goes the Bride (1932). Cambridgeshire, England) won 2 Oscars, one posthumously in 2001 for Honorary Award for Master of light and color and one in Kim Hunter (b November 12, 1922 in Detroit, Michigan—d. 1948 for Best Cinematography, Color for Black Narcissus (1947). September 11, 2002, age 79, in , New York) won He has been nominated an additional three times, twice for Best the 1952 Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for A Cinematography in 1962 for Fanny (1961) and in 1957 for War Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Kim Hunter was not present at the and Peace (1956), and once for Best Director in 1961 for Sons and awards ceremony. accepted on her behalf. Ms. Hunter Lovers (1960). He has been the cinematographer on 86 films a few acted in over 140 films and TV series, some of which are The of which are The Other Side of the Screen (2007, TV Mini-Series), Education of Max Bickford (2001, TV Series), Shadows of the Past Vivaldi's Four Seasons (1991), Tai-Pan (1986), Rambo: First (1999), A Price Above Rubies (1998), Midnight in the Garden of Blood Part II (1985), Cat's Eye (1985), Good and Evil (1997), As the World Turns (1997, TV Series), L.A. (1984, photographed by), Scandalous (1984), Ghost Story (1981), Law (1994, TV Series), Murder, She Wrote (1990, TV Series), The Dogs of War (1980), The Awakening (1980), Death on the Nile F.D.R.: The Last Year (1980, TV Movie), The Edge of Night (1978), Fanny (1961), The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), The (1979-1980, TV Series), The Rockford Files (1979, TV Series), Brave One (1956), War and Peace (1956), The Barefoot Contessa Baretta (1976, TV Series), Ironside (1974, TV Series), Police (1954), The Master of Ballantrae (1953), The African Queen Story (1973, TV Series), Love, American Style (1973, TV Series), (1951), Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), The Black Young Dr. Kildare (1972, TV Series), Columbo (1971, TV Series), Rose (1950), The Red Shoes (1948), Black Narcissus (1947), A Cannon (1971, TV Series), Gunsmoke (1971, TV Series), Escape Matter of Life and Death (1946), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Beneath the Planet of the Apes The Great Mr. Handel (1942), Plastic Surgery in Wartime (1941, (1970), The Swimmer (1968), Planet of the Apes (1968), Bonanza Documentary short), Symphonies (1937, Documentary) and (1968, TV Series), Dr. Kildare (1965, TV Series), The Defenders The Last Days of Pompeii (1935, uncredited). (1965, TV Series), Lilith (1964), Naked City (1962, TV Series), Alcoa Theatre (1958, TV Series), The Joseph Cotten Show: On Trial (1956, TV Series), The Gulf Playhouse (1953,TV Series), Robert Montgomery Presents (1952, TV Series), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Suspense (1949, TV Series), A Mastter of Life and Death (1946), You Came Along (1945), When Strangers Marry (1944), A Canterbury Tale (1944), Tender Comrade (1943) and The Seventh Victim (1943).

Robert Coote (b February 4, 1909 in , England—d. November 26, 1982, age 73, in New York City, New York) acted in 72 films and TV series including, Nero Wolfe (1981, TV Series), BBC (1969-1973, TV Series), Theatre of Blood (1973), Up the Front (1972), Kenner (1968), Prudence and the Pill (1968), The Cool Ones (1967), The Swinger (1966), Alice Through the Looking Glass (1966, TV Movie), The V.I.P.s (1963), The League of Gentlemen (1960), The Horse's Mouth (1958), The Prisoner of Zenda (1952), The Merry Widow (1952), Othello (1952), Scaramouche (1952), The Desert Fox: The Story of (b. March 1, 1910 in London, England—d. July 29, Rommel (1951), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), Soldiers Three 1983, age 73, in Château-d'Oex, Switzerland) won the 1959 Oscar (1951), The Fighting Pimpernel (1950), The Three Musketeers for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Separate Tables (1958). He (1948), Express (1948), Forever Amber (1947), The Exile acted in 113 films including, Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), (1947), Lured (1947), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), A Matter Better Late Than Never (1983), Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), of Life and Death (1946), Cloak and Dagger (1946), Forever and Powell & Pressburger—A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN—3 a Day (1943), Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942), The House of Jew (1933), In a Monastery Garden (1932), Hobson's Choice Fear (1939), Gunga Din (1939), The Sheik Steps Out (1937), (1931), Chamber of Horrors (1929) and This Freedom (1923). Loyalties (1933) and Sally in Our Alley (1931). Marius Goring (b. May 23, 1912 in Newport, , Kathleen Byron (b. Kathleen Fell on January 11, 1921 in London, England—d. September 30, 1998, age 86, in East Sussex, England) England—d. January 18, 2009, age 88, in Denville Hall, acted in 98 films and TV series a few of which include Strike It Northwood, Hillingdon, London, England) acted in over 117 films Rich (1990), (1982, TV Movie), Holocaust (1978, TV and TV series, some of which are Perfect Strangers (2001, TV Mini-Series), Zeppelin (1971), (1967, TV Series), Up Mini-Series), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Les Misérables (1998), from the Beach (1965), Maigret (1963, TV Series), Exodus (1960), Emma (1996), Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983, TV Mini-Series), Hedda Beyond the Curtain (1960), Whirlpool (1959), Son of Robin Hood Gabler (1981, TV Movie), Angels (1976-1980, TV Series), The (1958), The Moonraker (1958), Prescription for Murder (1958), Professionals (1978, TV Series), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), The Abdication (1974), General The Paris Express (1952), So Hospital (1972, TV Series), Little Time (1952), The Mistress Private Road (1971), The (1952), Pandora and the Flying Avengers (1969, TV Series), Dutchman (1951), The Red Shoes The Portrait of a Lady (1968, (1948), A Matter of Life and TV Series), Othello (1956), The Death (1946), Night Boat to Night of the Full Moon (1954), Dublin (1946), The Night Invader Profile (1954), Young Bess (1943), The Big Blockade (1942), (1953), The Gambler and the (1939), Lady (1952), Tom Brown's Rembrandt (1936) and The Schooldays (1951), The Amateur Gentleman (1936). Inheritance (1950), Black Narcissus (1947), A Matter of Roger Livesey (b. Born: June 25, Life and Death (1946), The 1906 in Barry, Wales—d. Silver Fleet (1943), The Young February 4, 1976, age 69, in Mr. Pitt (1942) and Climbing Watford, Hertfordshire, England) High (1938). acted in 66 films and TV series, some of which are The Lives of Richard Attenborough (b. August 29, 1923 in , Benjamin Franklin (1975, TV Mini-Series), The Pallisers (1974, Cambridgeshire, England—d. August 24, 2014, age 90, in London, TV Mini-Series), (1969), Oedipus the King (1968), The England) won the 1983 Oscar for both Best Director and Best Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965), Of Human Bondage Picture for Director Gandhi (1982). He acted in 77 films, some of (1964), The Entertainer (1960), The League of Gentlemen (1960), which are Puckoon (2002), Elizabeth (1998), The Lost World: The Life and Death of Sir John Falstaff (1959, TV Series), The Jurassic Park (1997), Miracle on 34th Street (1994), Jurassic Park Master of Ballantrae (1953), Green Grow the Rushes (1951), The (1993), The Human Factor (1979), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Master Builder (1950, TV Movie), A Matter of Life and Death Conduct Unbecoming (1975), Ten Little Indians (1974), 10 (1946), 'I Know Where I'm Going!' (1945), The Life and Death of Rillington Place (1971), The Magic Christian (1969), Doctor Colonel Blimp (1943), Drums (1938), Rembrandt (1936), Dolittle (1967), The Sand Pebbles (1966), The Flight of the Midshipman Easy (1935), Lorna Doone (1934), Blind Justice Phoenix (1965), The Great Escape (1963), Only Two Can Play (1934), A Cuckoo in the Nest (1933), Where the Rainbow Ends (1962), The League of Gentlemen (1960), I'm All Right Jack (1959), (1921) and The Four Feathers (1921) Desert Patrol (1958), Dunkirk (1958), The Outsider (1948), Brighton Rock (1947), The Smugglers (1947), A Matter of Life and Raymond Massey (b. August 30, 1896 in Toronto, Ontario, Death (1946), Journey Together (1945), The Hundred Pound Canada—d. July 29, 1983, age 86, in , California) was Window (1944), It Started at Midnight (1943), In Which We Serve nominated for a 1941 Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for (1942). He also directed 12 films including, Closing the Ring his work in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940). He acted in 85 films and (2007), Grey Owl (1999), In Love and War (1996), Shadowlands TV series including, The President's Plane Is Missing (1973, TV (1993), Chaplin (1992), (1987), A Chorus Line Movie), Mackenna's Gold (1969), Saint Joan (1967, TV Movie), (1985), Gandhi (1982), Magic (1978), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Dr. Kildare (1961-1966, TV Series), How the West Was Won (1972) and Oh! What a Lovely War (1969). (1962), The Great Impostor (1961), The Naked and the Dead (1958), Robert Montgomery Presents (1952-1958, TV Series), Joan Maude (b. January 16, 1908 in Rickmansworth, Seven Angry Men (1955), East of Eden (1955), The Desert Song Hertfordshire, England—d. September 28, 1998, age 90, in Lewes, (1953), Carson City (1952), David and Bathsheba (1951), Chain East Sussex, England) acted in 28 films and TV series including Lightning (1950), The Fountainhead (1949), Mourning Becomes (1956, TV Series), Life in Her Hands Electra (1947), Possessed (1947), A Matter of Life and Death (1951), The Temptress (1949), Badger's Green (1949), Corridor of (1946), God Is My Co-Pilot (1945), Hotel Berlin (1945), The Mirrors (1948), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Night Boat to Woman in the Window (1944), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), A Dublin (1946), Notorious Gentleman (1945), Great Day (1945), Canterbury Tale (1944), Action in the North Atlantic (1943), Strawberry Roan (1944), The King of Paris (1934), When London Desperate Journey (1942), Reap the Wild Wind (1942), Sleeps (1934), Power (1934), It's a King (1933), The Wandering Dangerously They Live (1941), 49th Parallel (1941), Santa Fe Powell & Pressburger—A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN—4

Trail (1940), Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), Drums (1938), The real world but isn’t.” He entered the the same year Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Under the Red Robe (1937), Fire Over when his father introduced him at a party to , an England (1937), (1936), The Scarlet Pimpernel artist and filmmaker then working with on Mare (1934) and High Treason (1929). Nostrum at the Nice studio. Powell joined the unit and “worked all through” Mare Nostrum, an extravagant spy story. He says “it was a great film to come in on because, being a spectacular film, full of enormous tricks with a great theme and an international cast, it gave you ideas which stayed with you all through your life. . . .My first job was rally to stick around–that was how Harry Lachman put it. Then I was a grip, but I was unofficially attached to Lachman as the strange, cultured young Englishman who had a remarkable gift for falling over things.” Some of these qualities were put to work in Ingram’s next two films,The Magician (1926) and The Garden of Allah (1927), in both of which Powell had small roles providing “comic relief.” These were great days in the film industry in France: “everyone was mad about the cinema,” and in Nice Powell met celebrated painters, sculptors, and writers all eager to contribute to the from The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia ed. Andrew medium. Then Ingram decided to take a break from films. Sarris. Visible Ink Press, NY 1998, Powell & Pressburger Lachman launched a series of comedy travelogues featuring [combined entry signed by Stephen L. Hanson] Powell, but this project was ended after a few months by the arrival of the talkies and, Powell says, “we closed up the studio, Between the years 1942 and 1957, English director Michael Powell said goodbye to the sun, and headed for the fog belt.” Lachman and his Hungarian partner, Emeric Pressburger, formed one of the joined British International at the , where he found most remarkable partnerships in cinema. Under the collaborative work for Powell also, first as stills photographer on Hitchcock’s pseudonym “The Archers,” the two created a series of highly Champagne and then as a cutter on Lupu Pick’s A Knight in visual and imaginative treatments of romantic and supernatural London. Powell’s last assignment at Elstree was as an uncredited themes that have defied easy categorization by film historians. contributor to the script of Hitchcock’s Blackmail—he says it was Although both were listed jointly as director, screenwriter, and he that suggested the final chase over the roof of the British frequently as producer, and the extent of each one’s participation Museum: “Being an East End boy, Hitch had never been there.” on any given film is difficult to measure, it is probably most In 1930 Powell joined a young American producer named accurate to credit Powell with the actual visualization of the films Jerome Jackson, then entering the British “quota quickie” market. while Pressburger functioned primarily as a writer. Alarmed by the fact that only about five per cent of movies shown in Britain were made there, the government had instituted a quota Thematically, operate in a limbo system that was supposed to improve the situation. The result was somewhere between romance and realism. The former, a flood of generally rubbishy cut-rate pictures, most of them less characterized by technical effects, camera angles and movements, than an hour in length, that were shown as second features with and the innovative use of color, often intrudes in the merest of Hollywood movies. …One of the last of Powell’s “Quickies” was details in fundamentally naturalistic films. In the eyes of some, this (1936), made for an American producer weakens the artistic commitment to realism. On the other hand, the named ….Powell had been trying to find backing for a psychological insights embodied in serious fantasies like A Matter film [on the depopulation of the Scottish islands].Rock encouraged of Life and Death are too often dismissed as simply entertainment. him to write a script, and then sent him off to the remote Most of the Powell-Pressburger efforts are, in fact, attempts at island of to make what became The Edge of the World, his fundamental reconciliations between modern ideas and the first personal film….In 1937 it was chosen by the New York Film irrational, between science and savagery, or between religion and Critics as the best foreign movie of the year, and in 1938 Powell eroticism. published an account of the making of the picture, 200,000 Feet on Foula. Although such mergings of reality and fantasy met with approval At that point Powell was considering going to Hollywood, by the moviegoing public, Powell and Pressburger were less but , impressed by The Edge of the World, offered successful with the British film establishment. In a sense they him a contract. His first film for Korda was The Spy in Black were alienated from it through their exercise of a decidedly non- (1939), a fast-moving and often amusing spy thriller set during British flamboyance. World War I…. The Spy in Black began Powell’s collaboration with the Hungarian-born scenarist, Emeric Pressburger….Powell From World Film Directors V.I, ed. John Wakeman, H.H. himself produced 49th Parallel (1941), financed by the Ministry of Wilson Co., NY 1987, MCHAEL POWELL entry Information. A story about the crew of a wrecked German In 1925, on his way to visit his father, who had acquired submarine on the run in Canada, it was intended to counter a hotel on the Riviera, he stopped off in Paris to catch up with the isolationism in North America. The film was shot mostly on work of Buñuel and Dali and “that lot, involved in surrealism,” as location in Canada with a starry cast that included Laurence he put it to an interviewer, adding that “of course, all films are Olivier, Leslie Howard, , and Gylnis Johns as surrealist . . . because they are making something that looks like a representatives of various aspects of Canadian life, and Eric Powell & Pressburger—A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN—5

Portman as the ruthless Nazi commander. Vaughan Williams natural forces. Their fierce power is asserted in constant hints and provided the score. Pressburger’s script won him an Oscar, and the jabs (a close-up of the eagle’s beak ripping off a rabbit’s ear) movie was a great financial success…. which sees nature as a Nietzschean whirl of blood and death. . . The plot of 49th Parallel is virtually reversed in One of .But the hero, sailing. . . [the heroine’s ] boat through the Our Aircraft is Missing (1942), co-scripted and co-produced by treacherous whirlpool, overcomes these forces with that protective Powell and Pressburger, in which the crew of a British bomber are manliness which. . .is itself a force of nature.” This is one of the forced to bail out over Holland and are smuggled to safety under most personal and original of Powell’s films, and one of the best the noses of the Germans by the Dutch Resistance. Made in the loved–Nora Sayre has recalled that she was almost deprived of her documentary style typical of the period, it opens with an allowance when she was twelve because she went to see it week extraordinary shot of an empty bomber sailing eerily across the after week. Channel. Asked by the Ministry of Information for a film that The same year, 1942, Powell and Pressburger established might help to reverse the post-war decline in Anglo-American their own production company, The Archers, under the financial relations, Powell and Pressburger came up with A Matter of Life umbrella provided by J. Arthur Rank’s Independent Producers. and Death (Stairway to Heaven in the United States). David Niven Most of the films they made for the Archers credited Powell and plays a British pilot (and poet) who jumps from his blazing plane Pressburger as joint directors, without a parachute and producers, and scenarists, apparently survives to fall in love though it seems fairly clear that with June, an American airforce Pressburger dominated the radio operator (Kim Hunter). But writing, Powell the directing…. his survival has been a cosmic After oversight, and an official is sent (1943), a story of the Dutch from a monochrome heaven to Resistance that they produced claim him for death. The rest of but neither wrote nor directed, the film deals with the struggle to came their first collaboration, save him—both on earth where The Life and Death of Colonel surgeons fight for his life, and in Blimp (1943). The hero’s real heaven, where an all-American name is Clive Candy(Roger jury is selected from the Livesy)—the title refers to a illustrious armies of the dead to character, created by cartoonist insure a fair trail. In a reversal of David Low, depicted as an ultra-conservative old officer senior the Orpheus myth, it is June who saves him, proving that nothing enough to impose his antiquated ideas on the modern in the world is stronger than love. army…. plays Candy’s “Ideal woman” (three red- The script is full of the kind of erudite and witty paradoxes that headed generations of her) and Anton Walbrook is a “good Powell regards as characteristic of the Hungarian Pressburger— German”—the enemy who becomes Candy’s lifelong friend. Apart “They always see he world inside out. All their jokes are reverse from The Thief of Baghdad, this was Powell’s first film in color. It jokes.” For the director, this was “the most perfect film…a was gorgeously designedcby and beautifully filmed wonderful conjuring trick to get handed. It is all the more by an illustrious team of photographers_Jack Cardiff and Geoffrey fascinating to me because all this fantasy actually takes Unsworth, under the direction of Georges Périnal. place….Inside somebody’s damaged head, so there was a good Colonel Blimp is an ambivalent film—apparently sound medical reason for every image that appears on the screen.” intended as a warning against the dangers of leaving too much Roy Armes writes that “with its huge escalator to heaven power in the hands of bumbling old diehards like Clive Candy, it is and its skillful use of of model shots,” this is “very much a studio in fact full of nostalgia for a more heroic and gallant notion of movie—“an amazing amalgam of colour and black and white warfare than seemed viable in 1943. The Ministry of Information images, audacity and conventionality….Powel in never afraid of thought it defeatist, and encouraged by himself, mixing fact and fantasy and bandies the spectacle and rhetoric with did everything it could to prevent its production. Army help was equal assurance, dwelling on such moments as the huge pink denied and , who was to have played the lead, was eyelid closing over the camera lens or the catching of a woman’s refused leave from military service. In fact Roger Livesy gave the tear on a red rose.” performance of his life, making Candy an irresistibly likable old Some reviewers, it must be said, found the characters warhorse, while the government’s attempts to suppress the movie unconvincing and the story therefore emotionally uninvolving. only increased its immense boxoffice appeal. And others responded uneasily to the film’s departure from the The Volunteer (1943), a medium-length recruiting film in tradition of realism in British cinema. There was also a strange which plays himself (and Othello)_, was outburst from E.W. and M.M. Robson in their The World Is My followed by A Canterbury Tale (1944)…. Cinema (1947). They called the picture decadent, sadistic, and The Archers had more success with I Know Where I’m Going! fascist, equating it distinctly unattractive heaven with the Nazi (1945), in which goes to the Western Isles of state. Later critics tend to see it as a caricature of a bureaucratic to marry a millionaire but falls under the spell of Celtic socialist utopia—evidence of what Durgnat calls the director’s mysticism and winds up in the arms of the haunted young laird “high-Tory” morality. (Roger Livesey). gives an extraordinary performance as an aristocratic sorceress. It was clear to Raymond …Black Narcissus (in which Anglican nuns set up a new mission Durgnat that “Powell’s film reveals a serious belief in the wayward in the Himalayas, was also shot in the studio…. Powell & Pressburger—A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN—6

Moira Shearer, one of the most striking of Powell’s red- 1956) and Ill Met by Moonlilght (Night Ambush,1957). Working haired heroines, is a ballet dancer fatally torn between love and art separately, neither Powell nor Pressburger ever really established a in The Red Shoes (originally written by Pressburger for Alexander consistent pattern of production again. Powell’s next picture, Korda but bought back by the Archers. Anton Walbrook is another ballet film called Luna de Miel (Honeymoon), was made in magnificent as the diabolical impressario Lermontov, the 1961 in Spain. Then he met a writer and former cypher expert choreographer is played by Leonid Massine, and the heroine’s co- named , who proposed a picture in the sadistic horror- dancers are Ludmilla Tcherina and (the film’s movie genre then being exploited by Anglo-Amalgamated. The actual choreographer). Music was again in the hands of Brian result was Peeping Tom (1960). Easdale, and ’s spectacular sets were lyrically The film centers on Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), who photographed by Jack Cardiff. The film went nearly L200,000- works in a film studio by day as a focus-puller, and in the evenings over budget and Powell says sometimes makes pornographic that “when the Rank films of an appallingly specialized Organisation saw it they nature. It is his pleasure to stab thought they were sunk….It’s beautiful girls through the throat probably grossed $20 to $30 with a blade concealed in his million.” tripod and to film their dying agonies in close-up, a mirror on The Red Shoes seems the tripod allowing them to share to Roy Armes “Powell and this experience. This voyeur Pressburger’s most explicit psychosis is traced back to Mark’s statement of the relationship of childhood, during which his art and life,” and “the high point father, an authority on the of their career in both psychology of fear, had used him commercial and artistic as a guinea pig, filming his terms….All [their] central reactions to terrifying situations, themes and stylistic concerns natural or contrived. find expression in The Red And all these horrors Shoes: the Romantic opposition were, of course, set up and filmed of art and life, the concern with a choreography of film whereby by Michael Powell and his cameraman (Otto Heller), so that the overwhelming passions are acted out rather than expressed through movie becomes an extremely complex essay on the voyeurism words, and the creation of a dynamic inner-relationship of vivid involved in making and watching films, as Powell clearly visual imagery and an immensely rhythmic soundtrack. In a recognized. He himself plays Mark’s father in Peeping Tom, and memorable climax the ballerina dies but the ballet goes on without he has said that he “felt very close to the hero, who is an ‘absolute’ her, the audience being made to imagine her presence by the director, someone who approaches life like a director, who is conviction of music and production.”… conscious of and suffers from it. And I am someone who is thrilled The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), from Denis Arundell’s by technique, always mentally editing the scene in front of me in adaptation of Offenbach’s operetta, was The Archers’ last film for the street, so I was able to share his anguish.” Korda…using much the same team as The Red Shoes. Its romantic Except in the trade press, where the film was praised for excesses embarrassed some reviewers but it took the Special Jury its commercial potential, the critical response was almost totally Prize at Cannes and delighted , who wrote: “this negative—a passionate chorus of disgust and loathing that is gallimaufry of Gothicisms, this pantechnicon of palettical examined at some length in Ian Christie’s Powell, Pressburger and paroxysms…this massive accumulation of Mighty Wurlitzerisms, Others…..It virtually ended his career [in Britain] while the shorter follows Offenbach’s operetta relatively faithfully and fills in version seen in the United States was largely ignored. filmically by ballet, décor and by-play, seeking, moreover, an Its immediate successor was The Queen’s Guards (1961), operatic visual style with a splendid disdain of plausibility….If a “High Tory” tribute to the Brigade of Guards starring both often overblown, the film is intermittently breathtaking, an effect Raymond and Daniel Massey, of no special interest. After that, which survives repeated viewings.” shunned by backers and distributors, Powell was reduced to In 1944 Powell had directed a stage production of directing episodes of Espionage, The Defenders, and other Himingway’s The Fifth Column, and in 1951 he returned to the television series, or to filming abroad. Bluebeard’s Castle (1964) is theatre with Raymond Massey’s play Hanging Judge. At about the a straightforward record of a Zagreb production of Bartók’s opera, same time he also tried without success to set up two ambitious and this was followed by two “romps” made in , They’re screen projects—a short film of a scene from The Odyssey that was a Weird Mob (1966) and Age of Consent (1969), co-produced with to have had words by Dylan Thomas and music by Stravinsky, and , who also stars as a painter entangled with a youthful a version of Shakespeare’s with and . Back in Britain, and re-united with Pressburger, . In fact his next picture was a short ballet film, The Powell made a prize-winning children’s film, The Boy Who Turned Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1955), distributed by Twentieth Century- Yellow. Fox The Archers went back into production with Oh Rosalinda! But meanwhile, a reassessment of Powell’s work had (1955), based on Strauss’ opera Die Fledermaus. This “had some begun in such British journals as Motion and Movie, and in such lovely things in it,” Powell thought, but “is one of our failures.” foreign ones as Image et Son and Midi-Minuit Fantastique. Since The Archers’ last two productions, both unexceptional 1970, there has been an apparently endless series of Powell war films, The Battle of the River Plate (Pursuit of the Graf Spee, retrospectives all over the world….In 1981 he was “senior director Powell & Pressburger—A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN—7 in residence” at ’s Zoetrope Studios in Los pilot must undergo; perhaps his heavenly trial is only a by-product Angeles, working on a long-planned film about the Russian dancer of the anesthetic. Anna Pavlova…. The British title of this film was "A Matter of Life and Raymond Durgnat has compared Powell to in his Death," and when the Americans retitled it "Stairway to Heaven," “weakness for patriotic sentiment” and for “optical shocks,”… Powell wrote in his autobiography, he felt they had missed the Durgnat suggests that Powell “remains an upholder, point. But "Stairway to Heaven" may be a more expressive title, through its lean years, of the Méliès tradition. . .a school of and certainly there is a stairway in the film, part of the incredible ‘Cinema’ which is always exquisitely conscious of not only its contribution of production designer Alfred Junge, who also cinematic effects but its cinematic nature.” provides one of the most spectacular shots in movie history, a view Powell regards not Gance but Walt Disney as “the of heaven's underside: Vast holes in the sky with tiny people greatest genius of us all.” After the death of his wife Frances Reidy peering down over the edges. The heavenly scenes are shot in he married the film editor in 1984. black and white, and the movie is filled with technical tricks, as when "real life" freezes while spirits leave their bodies. The film's most audacious leap is to the trial in heaven to decide whether Peter will be allowed to stay on earth. Junge creates a heavenly amphitheater that fills the sky, and fills it with infinite ranks of heaven's population. Standing on one precipice, the prosecutor, an American played by Raymond Massey, argues against the British pilot. In one of the comic touches that deflates any excess profundity, he argues that Peter and June could never be happy together because they come from different cultures. First, we hear a radio broadcast of a cricket match; then an American big band broadcast. He asks the jury: "Should the swift current of her life be slowed to the crawl of a match of cricket?" But of course the question is not whether Peter and June will be happily married, but whether they will be married at all, and here the tear of love, captured on a rose petal by the Heavenly Conductor, becomes crucial evidence. "Stairway to Heaven" has as its subtext the jockeying for power between Britain and America that took place after World War II. British critics, at the time, sniffed that the film was too Roger Ebert on Stairway to Heaven pro-American. What today's audiences will find amazing is the “Stairway to Heaven" (1946) is one of the most audacious films sheer energy of its invention. Powell and Pressburger (who always ever made - in its grandiose vision, and in the cozy English way it's shared the writing, directing and producing credits, and whose expressed. The movie, which is being revived at the Music Box in production company was known as the "Archers") were not timid a restored Technicolor print of dazzling beauty, joins the in reaching for new visual effects, and among the many startling continuing retrospective at the Film Center of 15 other films by sights in "Stairway to Heaven" is an eyeball's point-of-view of its Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the most talented British eyelid closing,before the brain operation. filmmakers of the and 1950s. There's also sly humor. Heaven has a Coke machine for "This is the universe," a voice says at the beginning of the arriving Yanks; newly appointed angels are seen carrying their "Stairway to Heaven." "Big, isn't it?" The camera pans across the wings under their arms in plastic dry-cleaner bags; the dialogue at skies - but the story, as it develops, is both awesome and intimate, the trial includes complaints like, "Would you repeat the question? suggesting that a single tear shed for love might stop heaven in its It has `enamored' in it." Today's movies are infatuated with special tracks. effects, but often they're used to create the sight of things we can The story opens inside the cockpit of a British bomber easily imagine: crashes, explosions, battles in space. The special going down in flames over England in the last days of World War effects in "Stairway to Heaven" show a universe that never existed II. The pilot, Peter (David Niven), establishes radio contact with a until this movie was made, and the vision is breathtaking in its ground controller, an American named June (Kim Hunter). Peter is originality. unflappable in the face of death, and an instant rapport springs up As a kid, discovered the Archers on TV, between the two disembodied voices ("I love you, June. You're watching Million Dollar Movie on a New York station that would life, and I'm leaving it"). Then Peter jumps out of the plane before show the same film seven days in a row. He says that's how he did it crashes. his homework. What follows is a breathtaking pastoral moment, as the pilot, somehow alive, washes ashore and sees a young woman, far A Matter of Life and Death. Ian Cristie. away, riding her bicycle home. It is, of course, June, and soon they BFI/PalgraveMacmillan, London, 2011. are deeply in love. But there is a problem. Peter was not intended to live. Heaven has made an error, and an emissary, Heavenly A Matter of Life and Death (hereafter AMOLAD) has for too long Conductor 71 (Maurice Goring) is sent to fetch him back. Peter been a prisoner of its founding premise. Originally conceived as refuses to go, and a heavenly tribunal is convened to settle the wartime propaganda it couldn’t be made until after the war’s end, case. This fantasy is grounded in reality by a brain operation the when its message risked seeming out of date. Bur even if it started Powell & Pressburger—A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN—8 as a contribution to improving Anglo-American relations, there is surrealism’ that, crucially,’ would need Technicolor’. When this ample evidence that its makers had much larger and less proved unavailable, he quickly devised another forward-looking circumstantial ambitions. And over the years, despite critical film that could be made in monochrome, I Know where I’m Going, disdain and frequent regret over its propaganda aims, audiences although this wasn’t finished until September 1945—by which have discovered for themselves that it is a poetic and provocative time the Archers had already committed to AMOLAD (probably in fantasy. It now ranks number twenty in the BFI’s poll of the January) and the end of the war was clearly in sight. Why did they British Top 100 (and number two in the BFI Library users’ poll, revert to a propaganda piece, when conventional wisdom would indicating higher status among students and scholars). … have suggested that audiences needed anything but another war The opening of AMOLAD remains one of the most film? remarkable of any film, even by the standards of two illustrious Part of the answer is obviously that AMOLAD, like precursors which probably influenced it—The Wizard of Oz (1939) IKWIG, makes deliberate bridge from war into peace, debating the with its tornado transition from Kansas to Munchkinland, and values that will be needed in a post-war world. The opening Citizen Kane (1941), which starts with an atmospheric death scene, sequence is full of topical references to the events of 1945. before crashing into its brash pseudo-newsreel. AMOLAD begins Although apparently set o the night of 2May, three days before the with nothing less than a guided tour of the universe, moving past German surrender, the commentary and dialogue refer to ‘thousand nebulae and novae, with an bomber’ attacks on German cities, authoritative, slightly amused, which had reached a climax in February voice making the cosmic seem 1945; and, by implication, to the general cozy: and here’s the earth, our election of July that gave Labour a earth, part of the grand design. mandate for sweeping reform (Peter Reassuring, isn’t it?’ But If we describes his politics as ‘Conservative have been reassured, this by instinct, Labour by experience’) and equilibrium is abruptly shattered to the atomic bombs that were dropped as we find our selves in the on Japan in August (‘someone’s been wrecked cockpit of a bomber, messing around with the uranium blazing in full Technicolor, atom’). Thereafter, the war recedes listening to the pilot’s last radio rapidly as the film develops its exchange. Powell and Pressburger metaphysical and broad historical had already rehearsed this shock- themes. beginning in their earlier ‘…one of AMOLAD also leaves behind our aircraft is missing’ (1942) the realism that had framed their strictly which starts with a mysteriously empty bomber, an aerial Marie wartime films to engage with the modern mystique of the aviator. Celeste, that crashes before we travel back in time to discover what The 20s and 30s had seen a succession of pilots such as Charles happened to its missing crew. Lindbergh and Amy Johnson become world celebrities, and artists But here there’s no doubling back, no flashback were quick to develop a new mythology of aviation…. reassurance, This pilot really is going to die, unless a miracle saves The fighter pilots of the Battle of Britain became the first him—which it does in a distinctively modern way, resulting from a popular heroes of the war, followed by the bomber crews whom bureaucratic mistake of the kind only too familiar to those who had Powell and Pressburger celebrated in ‘…one of our aircraft is lived through the war with uncertain news of loved ones’ fate. missing’….

Origins A Modern Masque Like all Powell’s and Pressburger’s previous joint films (although A British rear gunner was reported by German radio in 1944 as only one after, The Red Shoes, 1948), AMOLAD was an original having landed unhurt in a snowdrift after falling 18,000 feet from a script; and like at least four of their wartime productions, it was in Lancaster. From this ‘believe it or not’ anecdote, Pressburger some sense ‘commissioned’ for propaganda, or public relations conceived a supernatural fantasy, which he then developed when purposes. Powell told the story on several occasions of how Jack IKWIG was in production and Powell reworked during his voyage Beddington, head of the film department at the Ministry of to New York in early May. ‘Emeric had done the historical Information, had suggested over ‘a very good lunch’ that the research and written the story and most of the jokes,’ while Powell Archers might tackle the theme of worsening Anglo-American had researched the medical background and ‘brought to the script relations. Many in Britain had formed a negative impression of the all that I knew and loved about England’, including a range of American service personnel whose presence had grown during poetry quotations’. Powell recalled Pressburger ‘a little dismayed 1944; and during the last phase of the war, there was increasing when he saw how thin the script had become, but when he read it resentment over American claims of leadership and Britain’s he was enthusiastic’. Judging from the difference between all growing economic and material dependence on its ally. The known versions of the script and the final film. This process of Archers were no strangers to this delicate subject, after 49th revision must have continued throughout production…. Parallel (1941) and more idiosyncratically, A Canterbury Tale (1944). Metaphysics According to Powell’s later account, Beddington wanted However much AMOLAD was re-written and researched to ‘a big film’ which would, in Archers’ style, ‘put things the way ‘ground’ its fantasy, few viewers have doubted that it still carries a that people understand without understanding’. Pressburger duly poetic, if not mystical message. A clue to this intended dimension conceived ‘a real fantasy with supernatural beings’, in a ‘kind of of the film appears as an epigraph to the shooting script: Powell & Pressburger—A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN—9

There is a music wherever there is a harmony, order, or exhibition system….Rank firmly believed that there was a need for proportion; and thus far we may maintain the Music of the more wholesome films on British themes (as well as the tax Spheres; for those well-ordered motions and regular paces, though advantage of being able to off-set productions costs against large they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they profits from exhibition)…. strike a note most full of harmony. This extraordinary freedom combined with financial security This is from Religio Medici, a meditation by the seventeenth- undoubtedly accelerated Powell and Pressburger’s rapid creative century physician and essayist Sir Thomas Browne, whose development from 1942. And, in turn, the rapport between Arthur writings combine Christian piety, vaulting imagination and Rank and The Archers, sharing a concern with English values and classical erudition. His influential essay views man as a microcosm a hostility to ‘materialism’, seems to have been an important of the universe and stresses the importance of toleration and inspiration for Independent Producers…. respect for other nations—all highly relevant to AMOLAD— AMOLAD also posed new but even more significant is its challenges. It was to be a fantasy, uniquely visionary quality…. with special effects creating The quotation from Peter’s ‘highly organized Browne sanctions an hallucination’ of heaven, but of a interpretation of Reeves as a very different kind of either of the source of both medical and benchmark Technicolor fantasies, metaphysical wisdom, a The Wizard of Oz, or The Thief of mediator between two Bagdad (closer, in fact, to worlds…. Goldwyn’s 1945 Danny Kaye vehicle Wonder Man). Here PRODUCTION Cardiff’s experience on commercials and on demonstration film Independence would prove invaluable. Oz had only required ‘bracketing’ AMOLAD began shooting on 14 August 1945, the day that Japan monochrome at the beginning and end, but frequent cuts from surrendered. Its wartime justification had gone, but the underlying colour to black-and-white stock would be jarring and make release issue of Anglo-American relations was, if anything, even more prints physically fragile. Printing the monochrome scenes on fraught. Effectively bankrupt, Britain had to negotiate terms with colour stock—treating them as drastically reduced colour—was a the US to pay back what had been loaned and leased, while trying good mechanical solution which also offered the advantage of to rebuild its economy. Cinema attendance was at its height—30 controllable transitions (dissolves), and a monochrome that was million admissions per week—and L17 million of box-office tonally compatible with the full colour sequences. Powell revenue was being remitted annually to the US. In the year dramatized the moment of decision in his memoir: following AMOLAD’s release, a government move to tax film ‘What will three-strip without the three primary colours earnings would lead to a boycott by Hollywood, followed by a look like?’ we all wanted to know. climbdown which further depressed the struggling British industry. ‘Sort of pearly,’ said Jack vaguely. Before and during this crisis, much of that industry was I looked at Alfred. ‘Did you hear that, Alfred? Open wide controlled by J. Arthur Rank; and it was he who approved them pearly gates!’ AMOLAD, as he had Powell and Pressburger’s three previous Design films, also made under the banner of the Archers and released Alfred Junge, the German production designer, was the most through Rank’s General Film Distributors to the Rank Odeon experienced of the core team responsible for AMOLAD. He had circuit of cinemas. But Rank was no ordinary tycoon. As well as worked at the UFA studios with Paul Leni, famous for the fantastic being heir to a flour-milling empire, he was also a devout Waxworks (Waxfigurenkabinett, 1924), then with E.A. Dupont, Methodist and it was through supplying film projectors to churches accompanying him to England after the international success of that he first became aware of British cinema’s endemic problems. Variety (1925), and designing the series of prestige films with Having co-produced a Yorkshire fishing village drama, The Turn which British-International Pictures aimed to raise domestic of the Tide, in 1935, he discovered that the cartel structure of the production standards in 1928-30. Thereafter he worked for Paul British distribution trade made covering the costs of even a Venice Czinner, Alexander Korda and Hitchcock. Before becoming head festival prize-winner almost impossible. Looking at the cinema as of the art department at Gaumont-British and for MGM’s major a business, in the spirit of Weber’s ‘protestant ethic’, he saw no British productions of the late 30s…. contradiction in feeling ‘guided by God’. In doing so, he also brought a modern corporate outlook for the first time to Britain’s Music stunted film industry. …’Allan Gray’ was the professional name used by Josef Zmigrod, After taking over General Film Distributors in 1935, a a Polish-born composer whose career had followed a similar series of two shrewd moves gave him effective control of three pattern to that of Pressburger. Having started at UFA—on a film major studios and two of the three nationals cinema chains by that Pressburger also worked on, Emil and the Detectives (1931)— 1941. By this stage, he could no longer run his vast film interest Gray moved to France and then England, where he found work part-time, so he became full-time chairman of the network of through Korda, and again wrote the music for a film that interrelated companies, with John Davis as chief executive. One Pressburger co-scripted, The Challenge (1938). Powell and vital element, however, was missing—a regular supply of suitable Pressburger had been distinctly fortunate in the composers productions to occupy the studios, and feed the distribution and provided for their first films—Miklos Rosza for Spy in Black and Powell & Pressburger—A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN—10

Richard Addinsell for Contraband (1940). On 49th Parallel they shaped a lot of our films. There’s a bit of history maybe you don’t had persuaded no less a composer than Ralph Vaughan Williams to know: about two weeks before the war broke out in 1939, August, write his first film score. For Blimp, which required period I was working on The Thief of Bagdad—I think I was doing quotations and pastiche, they turned to Gray, who would work on something with the flying carpet—and we all knew desperately the their next six films. … war was coming and we were all trying to finish this enormous picture before the war came, and we were all asked to come to AFTERLIFE Alex’s room in the old house at Denham, do you remember Imre? AMOLAD never disappeared from view, in the way that Blimp and A Canterbury Tale did after being re-edited. But it was PRESSBURGER: Oh, yes. difficult to see during the 60s and 70s; and even more difficult in the 80s, when the remake rights were sold by The Archers and POWELL: And I remember being there. One of the people I Rank to Columbia. Although nothing ever came of this. In 1994, it remember most was one of the most unjustly neglected men in the was adapted as a stage musical (more successfully than The Red whole history of films, I think, and that’s Ian Dalrymple. He was a Shoes) under the title Stairway to remarkable producer, remarkable Heaven, winning an award for its editor, and he was standing there novice creators…. scraping away at his cigarette. We Materially, the film has were all there, about 30 or 40 also been restored on both sides of people. And Alex spoke and said the Atlantic, making both its rich Churchill had asked him to make a Technicolor tones more tactile and propaganda film against the Nazis its pearly monochrome more the moment war was declared., and luminous. And, following its he’d said that he was prepared to video cassette release, there is do this and tat the moment war now a DVD edition, with a was declared he would turn over supplement featuring Jack Cardiff the whole of Denham, and all the digitally placed on the same people working in it, including all escalator that he photographed the people on Thief of Bagdad, to over fifty years’ earlier. The make this propaganda film. In electronic revolution has brought return, Churchill agreed that there AMOLAD within everyone’s should be a Ministry of grasp…. Information, which would have to Most important of all, the spectacle of AMOLAD turns out be formed in wartime with its difficulties with propaganda and to be intrinsic to its themes. The modernized Jacob’s Ladder of the censorship, there should be a Films Division and that films should stairway is not a symbol of transcendence, but a trap in this anti- become a weapon of war. If you think about it, there couldn’t have utopian and quite secular allegory. Despite Scott’s ‘love is heaven been a more important moment in the whole history of films, not and heaven is love’, love is shown as temporal, human and only to just British films, but as I said the other day at the private showing be enjoyed on earth. After its spectacular displays of cinematic of Blimp, this is a 100% British film but it’s photographed by a magic, and intricate metaphysics of identity and mortality, Frenchman, it’s written by a Hungarian, the musical score is by a AMOLAD finally articulates the post-war yearning for ‘normal’ German Jew, the director was English, the man who did the lives and deaths. This modernist masque deploys its dazzling costumes was Czech; in other words, it was the kind of film that version of Inigo Jones’ ‘pictures with Light and Motion’, not to I’ve always worked on with a mixed crew of every nationality, no amaze but to achieve what Johnson insisted masques were or frontiers of any kind. should be: ‘the mirrors of man’s life’. CHRISTIE: I wondered if we could take this opportunity to say From Michael Powell Interviews. Edited by David Lazar. something about the relationship between you two over this long University of Mississippi Press, Jackson, 2003: “Powell and series of films: the relationship between writer and director. I think Pressburger. Ian Christie / 1985” that quite a mystery to many people exactly how you worked, what the kind of relationship between you was. We’re all very used to POWELL: Well, Blimp is part of a series of films that the notion of directors as he people who really put their signatures Emeric and I made together and people are always asking us, first on films but you chose, uniquely of all filmmakers, to sign your of all, how we got together and then how we managed to work films “written, produced, and directed by.” You bequeathed together for so long, something like 18 years, making about 20 endless confusion to critics and people writing about films in doing films. And the answer is: Love. You can’t have collaboration in this. You once said that the reason you did it was to keep other anything without love. Any married men here? [laughter] We had people out of interfering with the films, which I can well complete love and confidence in each other and we were very understand. How did it actually work as a relationship? You lucky that just at that time we managed to prove to the man who weren’t the Archers quite at the point you made 49th Parallel but had the money—that was Rank, Arthur Rank—we managed to you must have realized you were going to work together. prove to him that he should let the filmmakers decide what they want to make. And that was really how Blimp came about: from an POWELL: It came about organically, really. Anybody that thinks understanding with Arthur Rank that we knew best what to do at they can just solely make a film needs his head examined. this particular time in the middle of the war. Because the war really Powell & Pressburger—A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN—11

PRESSBURGER: I remember a little poem which we used at the as the two experimental filmmakers who got away with making very beginning…. experimental films inside the commercial framework.

POWELL: It was a jingle that I think James Agate threw together. SCORSESE: Totally. They’re the only ones, I feel, who really We like it particularly at the time. He said: succeeded. Twenty films, I feel, all totally experimental. Even the The arrow was pure gold moment in The Elusive Pimpernel, do you remember, when David but somehow missed the target. Niven sneezes at the end in the scene with ? When he Still, as some golden arrow trippers know sneezes, he cuts to the fireworks on a black screen. Okay, so you ‘tis better to miss Naples than hit Margate. can say, there was a kiss in To Catch a Thief where they cut to And that really inspired the Archers trademark. But the answer fireworks, but this was made before that. And there was just no really is that I don’t think any one man makes a film. I don’t think reason to cut to fireworks here for the man sneezing, except for the any one man should make a film, unless it’s a very simple one. If image, and it worked. And I was literally amazed….. you want to make a personal film, any one of you can do that; it doesn’t cost so much now to hire lights, hire this, hire that, or buy AUDIENCE: In A Matter of Life and Death why did you film the this and that and make your own film. Bu a big production like 49th celestial sequences in black and white and why the earthbound Parallel, which started as just a small idea and grew into a very big sequences in color? film, I don’t think one man can do it. Two men—if one of them is a very remarkable one, because it’s no good if you haven’t got a POWELL: You can answer that, Emeric. I asked you at the time, I good story and a good script- think. [laughter] two men, as far as we were concerned, could put a film PRESSBURGER: Would you repeat? together. But of course, we [they laugh] couldn’t do it by ourselves, we had to have the best technicians POWELL: Well, remember we available and at that time, couldn't get Technicolor for a long probably some of the best in the time and then finally we could get world…. Technicolor and the Ministry of Information told us we could go CHRISTIE: At this point I’d ahead with a film which they like to call on our third guest described as a film to improve Anglo- this afternoon who’s come American relations. So, Emeric especially from New York to be produced a story in about a week and with us, that’s Martin Scorsese. we then thought about it a good deal. Martin, you’ve talked quite a lot And as we were going to make it in over the years and you’ve even color, I said to him, “Well, in your been present at occasions like idea of heaven and earth, which is this in the past introducing Michael and Emeric before their films color and which is black and white? in New York back in 1980. I think what’s interesting for the people who know your work , is that you find so many points of contact PRESSBURGER: Ah, but I remember now. I think that 8 out of between The Archers’ films and the films you’re actually making 10 would have thought that color was the right thing for… now. POWELL: …another world? SCORSESE: Well, actually it’s hard to say. I don’t really know where the contact is. I was just very curious to find them. Back PRESSBURGER: Another world. Yes. But I thought that just around 1971, ’72, we just kept looking at these films, myself and because it would be what people would expect, it would be much my friends in New York: Jay Cocks, , Spielberg; a more interesting [to film it as they did] than to do the obvious. I’m number of people just kept watching these films over and over quite certain that in reality, I know it’s not so simple what I’m again. We wanted to know where they were-who were they first of saying now, that something will happen that people don’t expect. all? Why did they sign together—it said, “written , produced, They don’t know everything about the world. directed by”—that was strange. We didn’t know who did what and we were always asking the same questions: who was the writer? POWELL: May I remind you also that you said, “look around Who was the director? But it was all together on the same card, you, well, you’re in the ordinary world. What do you see? Color and tat was really quite honest and quite interesting. I first met So we know the ordinary world is colored because there it is in Michael through a man named Michael Kaplan, who was working front of our noses. But who knows about the other world? Make it for at the time. I think he designed the poster for in black and white!” [laughter] Actually it isn’t, of course, black 2001 and the triangle of Clockwork Orange. He was working with and white. It’s monochrome. We shot all the other-world Michael in London, I believe on The Tempest? Michael, was that sequences in 3-strip Technicolor and then didn’t develop the dyes. it?... So what you’re seeing is a monochrome Technicolor print of the other world and a regular Technicolor print of this world. CHRISTIE: Something else which you once said that I thought was very striking was that you always thought of Michael and Emeric December 8 (XXXI:15) Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/ STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN (1946, 104 min)

COMING UP IN BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS 32, SPRING 2016 (TENTATIVE)

Jan 26 1929 G. W. Pabst: Pandora’s Box Feb 2 1939 : Rules of the Game Feb 9 1946 : Notorious Feb 16 1955 Satayajit Ray Pather Panchali Feb 23 1968 Sergio Leone: Once Upon a Time in the West Mar 1 1970 Vittorio De Sica: Garden of the Fitzini Continis Mar 8 1971 William Friedkin: The French Connection Mar 22 1980 Martin Scorsese: Mar 29 1980 Stanley Kubrick: The Shining Apr 5 1997 : Ran Apr 12 1999 Claire Denis: Beau Travail Apr 19 2008 Ari Folman: Waltz with Bashir Apr 26 2012 Michael Haneke: Amour May 3 1991 : The Fisher King

CONTACTS: ...email Diane Christian: [email protected]…email Bruce Jackson [email protected] the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.