It was Martin Scorsese who helped to encourage the critical and popular reappraisal of the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger back in the 1970s and now, half a century later, it is only right that it's his voice guiding us in this new documentary on the filmmaking duo.
Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger comes hot on the heels of an exhaustive BFI programme last autumn which showcased the pair's undisputed masterpieces (such as The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp), alongside their lesser-seen pictures (Contraband, The Small Back Room).
Now, with Made in England, Scorsese talks us through the careers of both men, whose films so inspired and influenced him, drawing through-lines from their films and his own; with clips played from his own classics Raging Bull and The Age of Innocence.
As well as a look at their lives, the documentary, directed by David Hinton, offers a detailed study of the beauty and power of Powell and Pressburger’s films, especially Colonel Blimp, along with A Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I'm Going!, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes and Tales of Hoffman (and Powell’s solo effort Peeping Tom).
These films are the central works of Powell and Pressburger, who formed their own production company called The Archers after hitting it off on their debut film together The Spy in Black.
At a leisurely but engaging pace, Scorsese tells us how he first encountered their works as a sickly boy in New York, when asthma stopped him playing outside and so instead he would obsessively watch movies on television, over and over again.
It’s a familiar story to those who know Scorsese; one he spoke about in his own two epic documentaries he made in the Nineties, one on the Italian cinema that inspired him and the other on American filmmaking.
Thankfully Hinton’s film although similar in style to Scorsese’s works, is smaller in scope (and length), focusing mostly on just six or seven films.
When Scorsese earned widespread acclaim with break-out hit Mean Streets, Scorsese sought out Powell in the UK, befriended him and brought him back to Hollywood, where Powell ended up marrying Scorsese's editor Thelma Schoonmaker.
Given this strong personal connection, Made in England inevitably focuses more on Powell than Pressburger – though it’s clear both endured relative obscurity through the 1960s as kitchen sink realism took hold of the British film industry.
Scorsese turns his own cinematic eye to the work of The Archers, showing us what has been there for decades but what even the most avid fans might have missed, or just what means the most to him.
His own personal favourite, The Red Shoes, gets an extended examination, from Moira Shearer’s casting as the doomed dancer to Powell’s own championing of the film as a ‘call to art’ after the Second World War.
As such Made in England works for film fans and newcomers, as both an introduction and an education about the filmmaking duo.
The credits always said 'written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger', but who really was responsible for what? Who could take the credit for their moments of cinematic magic? Thanks to a plethora of unearthed archive interviews with the two filmmakers, Hinton attempts to answer those questions.
Powell, it seems, was the genius behind the camera whereas Pressburger, a Jewish-Hungarian refugee who fled central Europe amid the rise of the Nazis, was the writer but it was together that they became capable of creating indelible cinematic images and quotes. Moments, Scorsese says, that are the peak of cinematic form.
Their talent was such that they had the ability to easily swerve from (sublime) glorified war propaganda (A Matter of Life and Death), to sexually-charged melodrama about horny nuns in the Himalayas (Black Narcissus).
Made in England cements the idea of Powell and Pressburger as geniuses who together were able to create their own kind of cinema, unlike any around at the time or since.
Powell may have cut his teeth working with silent movie director Rex Ingram and Pressburger likewise as he worked in Europe but together they created a doctrine of cinema that was fantastical and fantastic, British but otherworldly, of its time and also, without a doubt, timeless.
