1955 - THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE, a Michael Powell short ballet film

Kind of a weird one off in the career of Michael Powell.  Hein Heckroth who had been the art director on a lot of Powell and Pressburger films.  He approached Michael Powell to film a version of the famous Goethe story which had also been the basis for Disney's Mickey Mouse segment in Fantasia.

There isn't a lot of information available about this short film.  It's a ballet performed for the Frankfort Opera.  It was filmed for a German television network and apparently broadcast for television.  This version has an English narration.

 

Besides art director Hein Heckroth, Powell's go to cinemagrapher Christopher Callis was part of the production crew.  Future cinematographer and horror director Freddie Francis was the camera operator.  The editor Reginald Miles had worked with Powell and Pressburger on The Tales of Hoffman.  Still it doesn't appear that Powell had a lot of input the film, probably he was just a gun for hire.

 

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is not without interest, the sets and wide screen photography are bizarrely interesting.  The film was originally 30 minutes long but for some reason it was cut by 16 minutes so who knows what was lost.  Still it is a film directed by Michael Powell and it's not without interest.  Powell usually knew how to combine music and photography into an interesting viewing experience.

The narration was written by Dennis Arundell, the running time is 13 minutes. 

1951 - TALES OF HOFFMANN, Powell and Pressburger at their most esoteric

 Alexander Korda who was running British Lion Studios was anxious to have Moira Shearer the star of The Red Shoes appear in another film.  This gave the opening that Powell and Pressburger were looking for to stage a version of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann as an exotic dance extravaganza. Be careful what you ask for.

The Tales of Hoffmann is an amazing infuriating film.  The film's production design and cinematography are outstanding.  The cast is extremely well chosen along with Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann a dancer and choreographer, Léonide Massine a dancer and also a choreograher as well and Ludmilla Tchérina a prima ballerina appear in the film.  Sir Thomas Beecham, conducted the score which was prerecorded prior to filming.

 

So what's the problem.  Well watching the film is an exhausting experience.  The film is so drenched in overwhelming color design and movement after a while it begins to get to be a bit to much for this viewer anyway.

 

It's amazing that Powell and Pressburger got away with making this film as the commercial potential for this film was not good.  Alexander Korda must have known he did not have another film of The Red Shoes on his hands.

 

For an exercise in extreme style this film is certainly something to look at.

 

Written byE.T.A Hoffman, Jules Barbier, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger and Dennis Arundell.  The running time is 133 minutes.

1940 - CONTRABAND, early and good Powell and Pressburger film

 A film made early in the careers of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger soon to be known as The Archers.  As was to be the case, Powell directs while Pressburger contributes the screenplay.  Contraband is a spy thriller which reminded me of the early Hitchcock films. The film does contain the usual quirky characters that The Archers would specialize and Powell even in this early part of his career is good with his camera setups.

 As a romantic lead The Archers cast of all people Conrad Veidt, a German actor who usually played villains in his English language films.  Veidt was the sorcerer Jaffar in The Thief Of Bagdad, and was memorable as Major Strasser in Casablanca. Veidt played Nazi bad guys during World War II, which is sort of amusing as he was a fervent anti Nazi German.

 Here Veidt is the Captain of a Danish ship who is in pursuit of Valerie Hobson who may or may not be a spy. Veidt is one suave leading man.  Hobson definitely has her mysterious and alluring woman thing going in this film.  Their romantic flirting is very fun to watch.  

 

In a way the film is better than a lot of Hitchcock's early films, Powell and Pressburger always payed careful attention to the characters in their films something Hitchcock would not always do if it got in the way of one of his famous suspense set pieces.  The picture is also greatly aided by the photography of F.A. Young a cinematographer who would later shoot David Lean's super epics.

The running time is a very entertaining 92 minutes

1957 - I'LL MET BY MOONLIGHT, Powell and Pressburger towards the end of their run.

 Michael Powell has gone on record as expressing his dissatisfaction with this film. He was unhappy with his partner Emeric Pressburger's screenplay, dissatisfied with the lead actor Dirk Bogarde and forced to film in black and white Vista Vision in the Alpes-Maritimes region of France which was a location stand in for the island of Crete where this war story was set.

The film is based on the true story of Patrick Michael  Fermor a British commando who captured a German general on Crete and then smuggled him out to Cairo.  Quite the daring raid during the war.

 

I'll Met by Moonlight is certainly not Powell and Pressburger at their peak but it is still a very well made and entertining film. The mountains of the Alpes-Maritimes make for a spectacular backdrop and Dirk Bogarde does supply the light touch that Powell appears to have had in mind  telling this story.

 

The British have always had a thing about treating some of their war movies as some kind of boy scout romp and this film is no exception.  The film does have that strange Powell and Pressburger touch of making the German general a somewhat sympathetic villian, a character that shows up in many of their films.

The film runs 104 minutes and is certainly not a failure.

1956 - THE BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE aka The Pursuit of the Graf Spee.

Powell and Pressburger towards the end of their run as a production team known as, The Archers.  The Battle of the River Plate may not be as good as their 1940's masterpieces but it is still a very good war film

During the beginning of World War II the German battle ship, "Admiral Graf Spee" is sinking British merchant ships in the southern hemisphere.  The British Navy sends out a task force to stop the Graf Spee and the film consists of a large scale battle followed by some clever intelligence tricks on the part of the British that eventually stops the run of Graf Spee.

The film as always has a strong focus on characterization particularly adding some depth and complexity to the German captain of the Graf Spee,  Captain Hans Langsdorff a rather sympathetic character.

Powell and Pressburger had real battleships to play with while filming.  Obviously models were used in the actual battles but the battle scenes are exciting.

The film is in many ways in the great tradition of "stiff upper lip" British War films.  But Powell and Pressburger are smart enough to tweak the troupes.

As with every film by The Archers, Powell and Pressburger share screenplay and directing credits.  The film runs 119 minutes.

1963 - HERZOG BLAUBARTS BURG - a return to form for Michael Powell

After the disaster that was The Queen's Guards, a career low point for director Michael Powell.  Powell's production designer Hein Heckroth arranged for Powell to collaborate with the opera singer Norman Foster who was producing a Bartok opera called Herzog Blaubarts Burg. 

 Powell's version of this opera shows that he still knew how to pull together a film that could have been an unwatchable experience.  Putting opera on film is a very difficult trick. This is a fairly impressive achievement.  

Powell and Heckroth combined color and abstract sets to create a fascinating mixture of music and visual images.  This short film is well worth a look.

60 minutes.

1950 - THE ELUSIVE PIMPERNEL, a not very good Powell and Pressburger film to put it mildly.

A stinker is a stinker even from Powell and Pressburger.  The producers Alexander Korda and Samuel Goldwyn persuaded The Archers to remake The Scarlet Pimpernel.  However Powell and Pressburger seemed very uninspired considering the end result.

The film has pretty color photography and enough foppish behavior from the cast to completely distract the viewer from the story which is about rescuing French aristocrats during the French Revolution.  Frankly the sight of David Niven with curls in his hair is not one easily forgotten.

As usual the film is drenched in technicolor as is the way with Powell and Pressburger, it is a gorgeous film to look at. However the film is just about dramatically inert with the climax involving the chief villain sneezing after inhaling a bunch of pepper up his nose!

The Elusive Pimpernel shows the further decline of the Powell and Pressburger team, good looking films but eccentric and off putting entertainments.

109 minutes.

1961 - THE QUEEN'S GUARDS, for Michael Powell completists

I doubt Martin Scorcese who is a big fan of the director Michael Powell will be spending a lot of time preserving this very mediocre picture.  The Queen's Guards is a film that so drips with the English spirit it's a cliche of everything British.

The film focuses on an English army officer who is a member of an elite unit responsible for guarding the homes (!) of the Queen of England.  The film follows this officer, from his time in training, through a British incursion into a North African county and concludes with him presiding over an unending ceremony featuring an unending parade of men dressed up as toy soldiers for some dull as dishwater royal review.

The actor Daniel Massey who played Noel Coward in Star plays the officer in the guards.  He comes off as a real simp running around with his umbrella and bowler hat and affecting that stiff upper lip character that every American thinks the British are born with. 

It's hard to believe that a director like Michael Powell, who usually made interesting and unique films about England and English life could get involved in such a cliche ridden mess like this.   Many of Powell's other films examined the British character with a lot more subtlety than this sloppy patriotic crap.  This is an England that probably never existed except in the fantasy world of film.

 

 

110 minutes, screenplay by Roger Milner.

1969 - AGE OF CONSENT, Michael Powell's final feature film

Michael Powell's final film is probably remembered for Helen Mirren's topless scenes.  Mirren is an actor who apparently never had a problem undressing for the camera.  But Powell was too much of an artist who I doubt was interested in filming nude scenes of Helen Mirren just for the sake of it.  

It appears that Powell and James Mason the actor/producer of Age of Consent were interested in exploring the emotional state of a successful painter who is trying to stay relevant and meaningful to his work.

Apparently Powell and Mason's solution to this artistic crisis is to have the painter Bradley Morahan take up residence on a South Pacific island which just happens to have a young buxom blonde girl running and swimming around half nude a lot of the time.  Let's face it the script for this film is not so hot.

Age of Consent isn't a total failure.  It has beautiful photography of The Great Barrier Reef and certain scenes in the film do have some of that old Michael Powell touch.  It sure could have done without the comedy relief that Mason insisted that Powell stick into the film.

106 minutes, written by Peter Yeldham.

1946 - A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, a Powell and Pressburger 40's classic

Viewed this Powell and Pressburger film the other night, for a film almost 70 years old this is still a remarkable achievement.

Filmed in technicolor and black and white with the bulky 3 strip technicolor camera,  Jack Cardiff captured some remarkable images.

The production design by Alfred Junge is very impressive

As an example of film making, this film is a quite a technical achievement.

Finally, credit has to be given to Powell and Pressburger for pulling off this amazing fantasy film.  This is a one of a kind film.
 

104 minutes.

1942 - ONE OF AIRCRAFT IS MISSING, very boring World War II film from the Archers

I like Powell and Pressburger as much as the next film nut, but this boring adventure film about a British bomber crew trapped in the occupied Netherlands is just a bunch of talk and inaction.

The film starts out good enough with the British Bomber "B" for Bertie flying into England and crashing into a tower.  It turns out that the crew had bailed out over the Netherlands and now has to find a way back to England.  That's about it for action after 10 minutes into this film.

The rest of the film has the bomber crew being hid by the brave Neherlandians (?) from the Germans.  The crew rides around on bikes, they go to church, the have a couple of good meals, they wear clogs and they talk and talk and talk and talk.

I doubt Powell and Pressburger fan Marty Scorsese will be showing up on a Criterion commentary track for this film anytime soon but you never know.

102 minutes.

1937 - THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, Michael Powell's film of life on an island

The end of a small community on a remote Scottish island as documented by Michael Powell in his first important film.  

The story is actually a pretty simple one, the young men are leaving the island frustrated by their inability to make a living on the island.  Slowly the people left on the island realize their way of life is no longer sustainable.  All this is filmed against some very impressive scenery. 

Powell's strong feeling for this remote and rugged island comes through in just about every scene.  Some of his compositions are as good as anything Robert Flaherty achieved with Man of Aran.  Filming Edge of the World must have been very challenging back in 1937.  

A very good film.

Written by Michael Powell, the running time is 81 minutes.

1939 - THE SPY IN BLACK, Powell meets Pressburger, in this very good spy thriller

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger worked together for this first time on this British spy thriller, The Spy In Black, which is about as quirky as anything they ever did.  For a film made during World War II, the focus wasn't on the British but the German U-Boat captain played by Conrad Veidt. 

Veidt's is ordered to become a spy for German intelligence service, he ends up in Scotland working with another German agent played by Valerie Hobson.  Hobson worked with David Lean on a couple of films and somehow ended up in Hollywood in The Bride of Frankenstein, of all things.

Veidt is very good in this film , he is usually remembered as the Nazi swine Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca and Jafar from The Thief of Bagdad.  Veidt's performance is so impressive you end up having more empathy for him then the British.
 

The film ends with an exciting sea chase as Veidt attempts to escape from the British navy on a tugboat.

The Spy In Black is as impressive as any of Hitchock's British thrillers.

1972 - THE BOY WHO TURNED YELLOW Powell and Pressburger's final film

For their final film collaboration, Powell and Pressburger ended up directing a low budget children's film, THE BOY WHO TURNED YELLOW. A film about as quirky as anything they ever did in their prime. The story is about a young boy who loses his pet mouse on a field trip to the Tower of London with his school class. Riding in the subway on the way home, he and the entire subway are transformed in the color yellow. It turns out some yellow being from outer space who travels through
electrical currents is responsible.

The yellow guy gets around on a pair of ski's and has a flashing light on the top of his head. The boy persuades the yellow guy to sneak into the Tower of London in search of his pet mouse.

The boy is captured by the beefeaters (eating beef sandwiches) and condemned to having his head cut off on a chopping block.

Powell and Pressburger, eccentric to the end.

55 minutes.

1955 - OH.. ROSALINDA!!, Powell and Pressburger crash and burn

I like Powell and Pressburger as much as the next film nut but what were they thinking when they made this film? This team was always eccentric with the type of films they made but whose idea was it to update Die Fledermaus and set it in occupied Vienna after World War II?  Why cast a prima ballerina, Ludmilla Tcherina as the lead character and then not have her dance?  That seems like an even goofier idea.

 

Powell and Pressburger's plan was to take the "legendary" Johann Strauss operetta Die Fledermaus and apparently update it a bit. They had the lyrics translated into English and they filmed the whole thing on sound stages in CinemaScope.  The artificial sets heighten the unreality of the whole thing, as if the whole film wasn't unreal enough.  The operetta that was staged back in 1874 and watching this boggles the mind.  Apparently the thinking was that they could make a stylish entertainment out of an idea like this. But Powell and Pressburger's idea of stylish humor is to have an overweight Austrian sitting around eating strudel.

Why any studio would have given Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger the money to film this garbage completely escapes me, didn't anyone read the script or listen to the outdated music? Only creative arrogance on the part of the filmmakers can explain this thing.

Film historians usually claim that Michael Powell's career ended with Peeping Tom, but I could make the very strong argument that Oh Rosalinda is the real end of the line for him.

The film was written by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the running time is 101 minutes.