Clyde Jeavons’s letter (18 October) doesn’t quite explain what part the British Film Institute played in reviving Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s reputation.
In fact it was a 36-programme retrospective at the National Film Theatre in 1978 that really set the ball rolling. This also drew on restoration work the BBC had been doing, notably on A Canterbury Tale and Edge of the World; and only being able to screen The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp in a restricted nitrate print inspired a determination to fund the film’s restoration – kickstarted by a charitable donation that Derek Jarman helped to secure.
But it was laying out the full canon of the film-makers’ work that inspired similar retrospectives in Paris, Locarno, Munich and elsewhere. Among these, the New York Museum of Modern Art’s retrospective in 1980 gave Martin Scorsese the opportunity to back a relaunch of Peeping Tom, inaugurating his lasting devotion to supporting Powell and Pressburger’s work.
When Blimp’s restoration was ready to premiere in 1985, Scorsese was happy to play a supporting role at the National Film Theatre, not wanting to upstage the veteran film-makers in their moment of vindication – a scene happily preserved on video.
Ian Christie
Former head of distribution, British Film Institute
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