The Archers (Powell & Pressburger): S/D

eric h, i don't know who you are, but you sure are grumpy

Peeping Tom is Powell alone

Pepping Tom is great (for years it was possibly the only Powell-related thing I had seen) and really quite a diff thing altogether.

a masterpiece indeed

fuck i need to rewatch all of these. i tried getting my ex to watch black narcissus unsuccessfully for TWO YEARS

I bought BN Blu-ray for my sister and her husband two Christmases ago. And there it lies.

even more frustrating as we watch the red shoes together and he loved it

watched*

when you visit for the holidays distract them and steal it. I'd love it.

well, I'm going to demand it back for me, they aren't going to watch it til the daughter is out of the house or at least in adolescent exile.

Or in a nunnery.

Peeping Tom is on TCM in a couple of hours btw.

It doesn't have the Pressburger or production magic of the others and I used to resist the overly obvious symbolism, if that's the right way to describe it, and the fish out of water, Peter Lorre on the skids German accent, but I eventually got past the film professor arguments and found my own reasons to like it, which turned out to be mostly the same anyway.

karl bohm's accent was real if that's what yr'e referring to

Hah, yeah I know. I've seen the Fassbinder picture with the sunburn, Martha.

He's great in Fox and His Friends.

"Happy bersssday."

I've tried to watch Small Back Room twice now and got utterly confused both times about 40 minutes in. I should stop drinking.

I watched it again this weekend and loved it. It might help not to drink during the scene when the protagonist isn't drying out.

I also rewatched Peeping Tom. There is something to letting the lead show all his cards from the start; the actor's pretty obvious though.

*uring the scene when the protagonist IS drying out

That guy is so great in Small Back Room and Black Narcissus. Was he ever in anything else of note? Am I blanking?

also in their Gone to Earth

seems to have retired from the screen in the early '60s

peeping tom is great but in such a different register from the Archers classics!

Just watched A Canterbury Tale for the first time – so wonderful.

I do wonder where that was filmed, because it looked idyllic.

(The start, obviously)

Have you seen this, Koogs?

http://gu.com/p/3hzz5

I would love to see the documentary about the John Sweet/Sheila Sim reunion in 2000, but I'm not sure it's worth paying 20+ bucks for a used copy of the DVD for that. Maybe in the next Criterion half-off sale.

canterbury tale is my favorite film many days

I am on my last day (I think) of recovering from flu. "I Know Where I'm Going is playing. Uneventful, yes, but so bizarrely charming.

I have a ridiculous crush on young Roger Livesey.

Local public broadcasting is doing an Archers cavalcade. So far Black Narcissus, I Know Where I'm Going and tonight A Matter of Life and Death. Next tuesday The Red Shoes. I've never seen them, and wow, they're amazing. A Matter of Life and Death is one of the best films I've ever seen. Such sad beauty. And the story seems as if it could really have been a short or midlength, but then stretched out in the best way, with inventive and/or moody episodes tangentially related to plot. The Camera Obscura scene, and the whole thing with the soldiers rehearsing Midsummers Night Dream, for some reason. Oh, I want to see it again soon.

Saw A Canterbury Tale for the first time yesterday. As always with Archers films, I found it extremely moving, and it had me a bit tearful a couple of times. I also came out angry for our current times. So many of the constitutive elements of the film - the countryside, tradition, Christianity (albeit in its more mystical aspects), childhood and innocence, the village, the pub - are also seem to be the constitutive elements of the vision many vexatious and enraged people have of this country today. Yet all the crucial elements are lost - the humour, the cheerfulness, the characteristic P&P view of humanity as a whole - from the notes:

The character played by John Sweet had been born and brought up in the lumber business in Oregon, and Emeric had written the scene in Kent to show how two craftsmen understand each other's methods, even though they are from opposite sides of the earth.

Also, they do English rudeness and the English manner very well.

As always they manage to portray a far wider spectrum of cheerfulness than i've seen in other films, or depicted much at all in fact. Then there's the curious mixture of whimsy and mysticism and all together it means the film just glows. The delivery of miracles, and the manner in which they're delivered is not a common subject for a film!

Although reading a brief note by Michael Powell on the film suggests this wasn't the intention, it's hard not to feel Colpeper and the cinema organist Gibbs exist only loosely between this world and realms outside it, with fairly strong suggestions that Gibbs is already dead, and Colpeper a strange sort of demi-urge, existing across time on the Pilgrim's Road. A Puck-like figure, though not especially puckish with his administrative aspect and gently done but unpleasant misogyny. A very strange figure. How wonderful their films are.

rewatched it myself last Sunday, i could watch it once a week i think

Colpeper is the knot at the heart of the movie, i can never work out how i feel about him (or how he feels about Alison). there's something in P&P's worldview that i probably disagree with pretty profoundly, or agree with v reluctantly - they were certainly no fans of what the Atlee gov stood for iirc, and i still itch at the blood & soil overtones in Canterbury Tale. but as you say, what's happening and what it says about a sense of place is infinitely richer than 2017 jingoism and fake nostalgia.

Yeah the countryside/tradition thing is difficult. From what I understand they sit in an extended 20th C version of that late 19th C congeries of holiness/spiritism/mysticism/countryside esp South East and South West/common humanity/volkism/folkish stuff expressed by a wide set of in some other ways disparate people - W Morris, Chesterton (ledge to thread!), Machen, Warlock, Belloc (who I find supremely unpleasant), John Ireland.

That can be approached with wry amusement, which nevertheless has the capacity for revelation (the US Seargent John Sweet is representative), and which does take some of the toxicity away, but only conditionally on the right personalities and circumstances being present really.

The other way to redeem things slightly is to emphasise the other history of the countryside so effectively erased at the moment - anti-enclosure, non-conformist, pro-liberty etc.

and try an dial down the merrie england crap.

Colpeper is really difficult I agree. He's the retarding mechanism that prevents everyone leaving and so allows the delivery of miracles, or the receptivity for them to be delivered (yes, Alison's lover's father is waiting for her in Canterbury, but this period of rediscovering the land why she had stayed before was necessary, otherwise the moths win!). To this extent he reminds me of one of the famous 'problems' in Lear, the passage where Edgar leads Gloucester to Dover. It doesn't make sense in terms of the time scheme and movement of the play, but it's a necessary... catharsis, that's probably not the right word.

I was think he had that puckish/faery aspect, but of course he is also a petty tyrant, and as you say downright sinister or peculiar towards Alison.

Like most of the rest of the Archers films it feels like it will be one that I keep returning to as well.

Watched the Red Shoes last night with a friend and we were both absolutely delighted the entire time. Thinking of snagging the Korean DVD of Gone to Earth from Amazon and watching that; already love Canterbury Tale and I Know Where I'm Going... picking Gone to Earth next because that's my favorite David Sylvian album.

I feel like Black Narcissus might be closest in vibe to the red shoes but they're all golden

Read the Michael Powell autobiography - well, have stalled near the end for some reason, but will finish it soon. Probably should have posted here as I went through as there was a load of interesting stuff in there.

Incidentally, he's in the boat with his future wife Frankie at the beginning of The Edge of the World here. It's a little perplexing how someone who is somewhat underwhelming and slightly peevish there managed to have relationships with such extraordinary women - his marriage to Frankie, then a London model - very nearly didn't happen due to his and Deborah Kerr's infatuation for each other, and he had Pamela Brown (ah me) had a very intense relationship once he was married, but one that was unconsummated, as the only time they tried they fell into the fire grate laughing.

I remember enjoying reading that very much, though iirc he's pretty negative about my beloved A Canterbury Tale and even says the critics were right to dislike it? I have the second volume but have never gotten around to reading it. I'd be curious to read the Peeping Tom years and I've never known how he ended up with Thelma Schoonmaker. On the other hand I feel like a lot of the best material in the first book is about the silent era; his affection for that time and regret at its passing has always stuck with me despite my being a bad cinephile who can only rarely work up to watching a silent

i’ll have to check but i think that’s right - iirc he says he understands why they didn’t like it and also felt it was unsatisfactory in terms of plot. He felt the glue man - intended to be a portrait of a typical “english loony” who remains unsaved by god wasn’t well understood by the americans, or anyone else for that matter (see conversation upthread).

clearly has a great fondness for it tho.

and yes i had the same experience when he was writing about silent films, the lighting and faces and need to capture drama visually - watched Kevin Brownlow’s restores version of Abel Gance’s Napoléon as a consequence and felt MP’s enthusiasm towards silent film meant i enjoyed it more.

Also found it interesting, perhaps slightly unexpected, that the film maker he seems to rate highest and from a fairly early stage is Buñuel. “The only director who could make two people sitting silently at a table together compelling.”

will seek out the second volume - like you keen to read about the whole Peeping Tom saga, which clearly made him feel very bitter about Britain.

This is the truly excellent South Bank Show docu from 1986. It keeps getting taken down from You Tube so rip it and watch it at all speed

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2xkg6m

(the story MP tells of how he and Pressburger got together is amazing)

This is a really great David Thomson article about how he invited Powell to teach at Dartmouth, and how he met Thelma
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/cinema-a-genius-without-a-job-1575433.html

that's lovely. Thanks for posting

yes thank you Stevie! Imagine studying film at Dartmouth of all places and then meeting Michael Powell and Lillian Gish

meant to ask if anyone has read the Kevin Macdonald bio of Pressburger mentioned in that piece? Thinking about Powell's take on ACT--and yes it's a weird film to be sure--makes me wonder what his partner would have thought. A repressed hobbyist who harasses women to police their sexual behavior and prevent them from intruding into the sacred space of his geeky interests is far more typical than someone as confidently masculine as Powell might have realized.

That's a lovely article as NN say, thanks for posting Stevie. And the South Bank Show is really good too, thanks picesx. It's a miracle of compression as well; it seems to manage to cover an awful lot that's in the book and does it with Powellian wit and imagination as well. Gives him room to speak and breathe.

repeating what others have said... that south bank show was brilliant. thank you for posting that.

Belated thanks for the David Thomson link. Just rewatched two films on Mubi over the past few days, Peeping Tom and The Small Back Room and was keen to watch a third, The Tales of Hoffmann, but unfortunately my download was bad and I only got a half hour in before it went kaput. The Small Back Room confirmed itself as a personal favorite and am finally warming to Peeping Tom after all these years. It helped a little to think of Karlheinz Boehm’s character Mark as some kind of reincarnation of Peter Lorre’s character in M. Also noticed some kind of connection or visual rhyme across time between the clock in the darkroom in the later film and the one in the paranoid drinking sequence in the earlier one.

Tales of Hoffmann showing soon in Astoria, Redd