The partnership of English director Michael Powell (1905-1990) and Hungarian-born writer Emeric Pressburger (1902-1988) was one of the most inspired in the history of British cinema, producing a body of films notable for their passion and fantasy and quite unlike anything produced in a national cinema traditionally dominated by 'realism'.
The pair quickly distinguished themselves with their well executed propaganda films, including 49th Parallel (1941) and ...One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942), but the spectacular Arabian Nights fantasy Thief of Bagdad (1940), co-directed by Powell without Pressburger, was an early taste of the fantasy which would increasingly inform their films.
In 1943 they established their own production company, Archers Film Productions, and began their most distinctive and personal phase, producing a run of vivid, passionate and beautiful films, including The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948).
The partners separated in 1957, and Powell went on to make the intense psychological horror Peeping Tom (1960), the critical backlash against which all but finished his career. Fortunately, the pair lived long enough to see their work gain new fans in the late 1970s and '80s.
Mark Duguid
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