J Paul Johnson
If anyone needs convincing to spend time with the unforgettable cinema of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the first few minutes of the new documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger will surely do the trick. Director David Hinton assembles a montage of highlights—sweeping vistas, steep cliffs, mind-bending effects, and stunned reaction shots from their quintessentially British characters—choreographed in a matched sequence and stylized, slightly, to minimize differences in source material, all set to Adrian Johnston’s original composition. Even devoid of narrative context, the images work to convey the panoply of human emotion through the magic of cinema.
It’s so good it deserves a second or third watch, but then again, there is a whole documentary to watch, just as there is an entire body of work to investigate here. “The Archers,” as Powell and Pressburger nicknamed themselves and their production company, created a partnership unprecedented in the history of cinema, working together on equal terms for the better part of two decades, those that presented Powell’s native and Pressburger’s adopted Britain the most challenging years of wartime and recovery. Co-billing themselves both as writers, directors, and producers in a unique working collaboration, they created some of the most daring and original films ever made in Britain’s studios, or for that matter, in any studio anywhere, among them The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951).
Those titles are just the hits, and of course, Hinton’s documentary examines each of them in proper detail, with Martin Scorsese, a lifelong fan, serving as host and guide. The sober, exceedingly personal, and semi-scholarly tone is reminiscent of the 225-minute BFI documentary A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. As a child, the asthmatic Scorsese spent hours in front of his family’s small black and white television in the Bronx, where he first saw films like The Thief of Baghad (1940), which Powell co-directed, and The Red Shoes, intoxicating even in low-fi greyscale. Obsessively rewatching and memorizing their images, the young Scorsese became infatuated with their work in ways that today would have the boy tested for neurodivergence.
Years later, Scorsese would channel his own obsessions into his own uniquely personal and unambiguously American cinema, but his work often reflected the influence of Powell and Pressburger, and so Made in England spends some time charting those associations as well. It’s both a strength of the presentation and, perhaps, a limitation, that the film’s content is presented so narrowly through Scorsese’s own lens. No one has done more to support world cinema than he, and he’s certainly an affable host, but in focusing so exclusively on Martin Scorsese’s interpretation of their work, Made in England might be missing some of the expressly British yet simultaneously universal appeal of the Archers’ oeuvre.
The documentary is replete with artifacts, reminiscences, stills, and clips from their work, all of them handsomely and exactingly restored to crisp high definition. Powell recollects his first meeting with the immigrant writer Pressburger and being astounded at his brazen ideas, knowing almost immediately he’d met a kindred spirit. The two developed an idiosyncratic but highly effective working method: Pressburger drafted, the two of them revised, usually with Powell finalizing the dialogue; both produced and directed, even if Powell usually took command of the floor, and both were known as good collaborators with each other and the whole of the cast and crew.
Eventually, the two formed their own company, so as not to have to kowtow to the whims of external producers. Their greatest successes came first during World War II, and then in its wake. Even facing Winston Churchill’s hostility to the film—Powell notes Churchill was a better statesman than film critic—The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) became their first Technicolor masterpiece. I Know Where I’m Going! (1945) and A Matter of Life and Death (1946) enchanted British audiences with their cheeky narratives, earnest performances, and clever set pieces, such as the latter’s moving stairway to heaven. Their first post-war film, Black Narcissus (1947), released shortly before Britain announced its withdrawal from ruling India, is as hyperbolic as great melodrama gets, setting the stage for The Red Shoes, released the following year.
Made in England provides copious notes on each of these, with great attention to detail and considerable commentary from Powell in particular. Seeing the glass mountains and matte backgrounds coming together to create the steep Himalayan cliffs of Black Narcissus, filmed on set in England, is a trip. Hinton also, though, allows for near-equal time for the lesser-known but newly remastered and re-released The Small Back Room (1948) and even Powell’s own Peeping Tom (1960), his one great post-Pressburger success. (Later in life, Powell and Scorsese became friends and Powell was married to Scorsese’s longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker from 1984 until his death in 1990).
At well over two hours, Made in England might be too rich for someone who has never seen any of The Archers’ films. But for those who know, say, only their most famous films, The Red Shoes and perhaps a few others, Made in England will provide a dozen or more reasons to start their own Powell and Pressburger marathon. It may well be true that their working relationship was singularly unique and their films uniquely British, but Made in England makes the important case that their films were, at their best, both expressly cinematic and able to convey the entire range of felt human emotions. It’s a sense one gets from the documentary’s first moments, elaborated in its detailed representation of their body of work, and ultimately conveyed by the pair’s remarkable cinema.
