Michael Powell: International Perspectives on an English Film-maker

by Christie, Ian; Moor, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9781844570935
• ISBN10: 1844570932
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-07-06
• Publisher: British Film Inst

Summary

The films of Michael Powell (1905-1990) and Emeric Pressburger (1902-1988) , among them I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) , A Matter of Life and Death (1947) , and The Red Shoes (1948) , are landmarks in British cinema, standing apart from the realist and comic mainstream with a highly stylized aesthetic and themes of romantic longing and spiritual crisis. Film lovers and filmmakers alike revere Powell and Pressburger; Martin Scorsese has called them " the most successful experimental filmmakers in the world. " In this first-ever collection of essays on Michael Powell, an international group of critics and scholars map out his filmmaking skills, provide new readings of individual films, and analyze recurrent techniques and themes, relating the latter to contemporary debates about gender, sexuality, nationality, and cinematic spectacle.

Author Biography

Ian Christie is the author of Arrows of Desire: the Films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (1985, 1994) and has written and edited four other books about their work. He has organised many retrospectives and played a part in the films' restoration. He is currently Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a regular broadcaster. Andrew Moor is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Wales in Bangor. He is author of Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces (2005) and contributed essays on Powell and Pressburger to a range of other publications.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors	vii
Acknowlegments	viii
Introduction	1	(10)
Ian Christie
Andrew Moor
Beginnings and Endings
At the Edge of Our World	11	(9)
John Ellis
The First Four Minutes	20	(16)
Charles Barr
From the Other Side of Time	36	(20)
Lesley Stern
A Life in Pictures	56	(19)
Thelma Schoonmaker
Ian Christie
Reassessing the Films
`History Is Now and England': A Canterbury Tale in its Contexts	75	(19)
Ian Christie
On Knowing and Not Knowing, Going and Not Going, Loving and Not Loving: I Know Where I'm Going! and Falling in Love Again	94	(23)
Tom Gunning
Life and Death in A Matter of Life and Death	117	(15)
Philip Horne
The Invisible and the `Intruder Figure': Perfume in Black Narcissus	132	(11)
Jean--Louis Leutrat
The Light that Fails: A Commentary on Peeping Tom	143	(13)
Laura Mulvey
They're a Weird Mob: Powell in the Antipodes	156	(15)
Graeme Harper
Collaborators
Another Life in Movies: Pressburger and Powell	171	(16)
Ian Christie
Hein Heckroth and The Archers	187	(22)
Nanette Aldred
Gender Matters
Bending the Arrow: The Queer Appeal of The Archers	209	(15)
Andrew Moor
That Obscure Subject of Desire: Powell's Women, 1945--50	224	(15)
Natacha Thiery
Officers and Gentlemen: Masculinity in Powell and Pressburger's War Films	239	(14)
Robert Shail
Filmography	253	(34)
Index	287

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