The Archers (Powell & Pressburger): S/D

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

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/dec/05/thelma-schoonmaker-a-matter-of-life-and-death-scorsese-powell-and-pressburger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyLocMuwCYw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig4OiBwD43I

Recently learned that George Romero’s favorite movie is The Tales of Hoffmann and Wayne Shorter’s is The Red Shoes.

4K premiere run of A Matter of Life and Death begins in NYC on Friday

Oh yeah, saw that

Hadn't remembered that Kathleen Byron is in it.

James, you asked my opinion of TSBR in another thread, so --

I thought it was really good, though I'm partial to Powell/Pressburger and am pretty blind to any faults they may have. (Still couldn't finish Tales of Hoffman, though.) I really liked its relatively unmelodramatic take on alcoholism -- Sammy keeping the bottle front and center and not hiding (from) it. Great German-expressionism dream sequence. I thought David Farrar and Kathleen Byron were great in Black Narcissus and liked that Powell put them in the leads in very different roles. The thermos-bomb plot is a bit thin and nonsensical from most angles, but ultimately it does make sense that the Defense Ministry would want to know how they're built even if the advice to the public wouldn't change -- "hey, don't touch that, call the local Home Guard."

Filmstruck showing all the powburgers on streaming

Trying to remember if I’ve ever seen Farrar or Bryson in anything but those two films plus Bryson in AMOLAD.

Okay, Farrar is in another Archers film, Gone To Earth that I’ve never seen. Forgot that Bryson was in Saving Private Ryan and never realized she was in The Elephant Man.

Wonder if I am the only one who clicks through credits on Mubi.

i always think this thread is about the soap opera thing

Ah, see that I already had this discussion about Farrar with Morbius three years ago

Still don’t really like the, um, somewhat heavy-handed nature of the trial scene, which I guess was the motivation for the production of the film, but everything else in AMOLAD is aces.

saw COLONEL BLIMP for the first time and loved it. the methods deployed to show the passage of time in this film were marvelous and drolly comic, excepting the flipping of the memory book (where the last few pages are black.)

starting off with a valiant soldier type walking in on a seemingly pompous visual buffoon and then going back to deconstruct this buffoon and build him up again into an honorable if flawed figure is quite something. the casting of Deborah Kerr in the three roles could seem like a stunt elsewhere but it doesn't overplay its hand and her separate performances are subtly different enough that it doesn't come off like cheap magic realism. Livesey and Walbrook are both very funny and very touching together. The empathy for all the characters is itself quite moving, and the ending is perfect.

i saw the red shoes for the first time a few weeks ago (it's the first film i've seen from them, the directors poll made me antsy about the gaps in my knowledge). it's... completely magnificent

picking Gone to Earth next because that's my favorite David Sylvian album.

lol i almost did this for the exact same reason

naah pick off the klassiks

P&P and Fassbinder were two top 10'ers I was thrilled made it as high as they did.

A Canterbury Tale and I Know Where I'm Going are two must views.

I'm probably going to buy all the P&Ps on Criterion.

Black Narcissus remains one of my top five favorite films of all time.

I'm hoping that A Matter of Life and Death with get a Criterion blu-ray release this summer... seems likely!

for sure, they just ran a 4K at Film Forum in NY

Theo walking away from Clive in the POW camp, as Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture starts up, killed me on last rewatch.

oh that is fantastic news!
though I suppose I wouldn't otherwise have ever seen Age of Consent if it hadn't been paired with AMOLAD on the DVD

you can't go wrong with any of the classic Archers. I might recommend a b&w one if you've just seen Red Shoes or Blimp, so Eric otm

Age of Consent!

Wild, huh? Here's Kehr on the set: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/movies/homevideo/06dvds.html

reading that made me want to rewatch the opening to AMOLAD immediately

I need to watch it again. Parts of it reminded me of the Lubitsch Heaven Can Wait, which was too aw-shucks for me.

if you mean AMOLAD, it does drag in the final act with the big trial (Heaven Can Wait is a bit slow too, especially for Lubitsch), but I love the set up and everything that happens on Earth. And Livesey's camera obscura is quintessential P&P visual bravura: http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/1075290/Matter-Of-Life-And-Death-A-Movie-Clip-Camera-Obscura.html. Also fun to see Marius Goring in such a different role from Red Shoes.

if you meant Age of Consent... I don't remember much of it

I watched Criterion's blu-ray of AMOLAD last night and it is absolutely stunning--the upgrade really brings home what a visual achievement it is. What I said in my previous post about the trial still stands, but the rest is pure joy.

I've only watched the first 20 minutes, but there's also an odd but compelling special feature, a 1986 episode of the South Bank Show, that functions as something of a miniature adaptation of A Life in Movies.

enjoyed Black Narcissus but didn't like The Red Shoes as much

The Small Back Room was on tv over the weekend. I've not watched it yet and can't remember if I've seen it before.

If you saw it I think you would have remembered it.

The Small Back Room is the next film of theirs I'm planning to watch

yes, then read my archived review.

NYers: The Small Back Room is showing at the Film Forum on August 26, part of Marty Scorsese & Jay Cocks' double feature festival (paired w/ the '26 silent The Magician)

half an hour into SBR and it's still not ringing any bells.

saw The Red Shoes again. the hyper-stylization annoyed me at first, but I was more drawn in seeing it again. the climactic ballet sequence was beautiful

watched The Small Back Room today. I liked your review Morbs

Thanks. As I still own the Bluray, I may not make the NYC screening (tho I need to see that silent), but we'll see.