Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Robert Rousenville, Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine The Tales of Hoffmann is one of those lovely movies which is a personality test for the viewer. The movie is a technical marvel, totally beautiful, beautifully aligned. It is no small thing to decide to take an opera, which are essentially… Read More The Tales of Hoffmann (1951)
Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Roger Livesey, David Niven, Kim Hunter The second scene of the film, the one where Peter Carter (Niven, who will always be the guy who got off the best burn in Oscar history) descends about as slowly as possible in a crashing airplane, is surprisingly moving. The surprise… Read More A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, David Farrar Once again, I find myself a little lost for words trying to talk about a Powell and Pressburger movie, so once again I’ll go to a shot and try to work backwards. There are fewer famous images in Black Narcissus than in… Read More Black Narcissus (1947)
Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring I have been vexed occasionally in the past year because I wanted to write something about a Powell and Pressburger film but couldn’t think of a good way to do it; as a general rule I don’t like to talk about what… Read More The Red Shoes (1948)
Seeing Things Secondhand 