 Emeric (Imre) Pressburger was born in Miskolc, Hungary, on December 5 1902. He worked as a journalist, translator and short story writer in Weimar Republic Berlin, before turning screenwriter for directors Robert Siodmak (Abschied (Germany, 1930)) and Max Ophuls (Dann schon lieber Lebertran (Germany, 1930)). He left Germany for England in 1935, and settled into a film industry especially congenial to Hungarian émigrés, scripting Alexander Korda's attempt to co-opt the German genre of mountain movie, The Challenge (d. Milton Rosmer, 1938). Korda assigned Pressburger to rewrites on The Spy in Black (1939), directed by Michael Powell. The two hit it off; Pressburger became Powell's favoured screenwriter, and got his first producer credit on "... One of our Aircraft Is Missing" (1942). Thirteen major films made between 1943 and 1955 bear the credit "Produced, written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger", and though Powell continually expressed his debt to Pressburger's creative input, no suggestion has ever been made that Pressburger co-directed these films. Without Powell, he directed only the undistinguished Twice Upon a Time (1953). He died in Suffolk on February 5 1988. Kim Newman, Reference Guide to British and Irish Film Directors
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FILM & TV CREDITS
