MADE IN ENGLAND: THE FILMS OF POWELL AND PRESSBURGER
Cert 12A ★★★★ In cinemas now
Emmy award-winning director David Hinton nestles behind the camera as Oscar-winner Martin Scorsese presents a deeply personal tribute to filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who made more than 20 features together including A Matter Of Life And Death, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes.
Scorsese credits his passion for the moving image to an asthmatic childhood in 1940s’ New York watching films on his family’s 16in black and white TV. By the age of 11, he was devouring Powell and Pressburger’s work. “I was so bewitched by them as a child, they made up a big part of my film subconscious,” he gushes.
A tapestry of rare material from personal collections traces the duo’s output including the provocative 1943 satire The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp, which famously incurred the wrath of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. “Such a wonderful leader but he just wasn’t a good film critic,” quips Pressburger in archive footage.
Affection is weighted heavily towards Powell, who would marry Scorsese’s long-time editor Thelma Schoonmaker, but Hinton’s documentary is nevertheless an effusive love letter to the genius of two sublimely matched collaborators, who firmly embraced cinema’s power to fire the imagination and buoy the soul.