Michael Powell | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Michael Latham Powell (1905-09-30)30 September 1905 Bekesbourne,Kent, England |
| Died | 19 February 1990(1990-02-19) (aged 84) Avening,Gloucestershire, England |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1925–1983 |
| Spouses | |
| Partner(s) | Pamela Brown (1962; died 1975)[1] |
| Children | 2 |
Michael Latham Powell (30 September 1905 – 19 February 1990) was an English filmmaker, celebrated for his partnership withEmeric Pressburger. Through their production companyThe Archers, they together wrote, produced and directed a series of classic British films, notablyThe 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,Stairway to Heaven in the U.S.),Black Narcissus (1947),The Red Shoes (1948) andThe Tales of Hoffmann (1951).
His controversialPeeping Tom (1960), which was so vilified on first release that it seriously damaged his career, is now considered a classic, and possibly the earliest "slasher movie".[2][3][4][5] Many renowned filmmakers, such asFrancis Ford Coppola,George A. Romero,Brian De Palma,Bertrand Tavernier andMartin Scorsese have cited Powell as an influence.[6]
In 1981, Powell and Pressburger received theBAFTA Fellowship, the highest honour theBritish Academy of Film and Television Arts can bestow upon a filmmaker. Five of their films were featured on theBritish Film Institute's list of100 Greatest British films.[7] In 2024, their work was explored in the documentaryMade in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, narrated by Scorsese.[8][9]David Thomson writes "There is not a British director with as many worthwhile films to his credit as Michael Powell."[10]
Powell was the second son and youngest child of Thomas William Powell, ahop farmer, and Mabel, daughter of Frederick Corbett, ofWorcester, England. Powell was born inBekesbourne,Kent, and educated atThe King's School, Canterbury and then atDulwich College. He started work at theNational Provincial Bank in 1922 but quickly realised he was not cut out to be a banker.
Powell entered the film industry in 1925 through working with directorRex Ingram at theVictorine Studios inNice, France (the contact with Ingram was made through Powell's father, who owned a hotel in Nice). He first started out as a general studio hand, the proverbial "gofer": sweeping the floor, making coffee, fetching and carrying. Soon he progressed to other work such as stills photography, writing titles (for the silent films) and many other jobs including a few acting roles, usually as comic characters. Powell made his film début as a "comic English tourist" inThe Magician (1926).
Returning to England in 1928, Powell worked at a diverse series of jobs for various filmmakers including as a stills photographer onAlfred Hitchcock's silent filmChampagne (1928). He also signed on in a similar role on Hitchcock's first "talkie",Blackmail (1929). In his autobiography, Powell claims he suggested the ending in theBritish Museum which was the first of Hitchcock's "monumental" climaxes to his films.[11] Powell and Hitchcock remained friends for the remainder of Hitchcock's life.[N 1]
After scriptwriting on two productions, Powell entered into a partnership with American producer Jerry Jackson in 1931 to make "quota quickies", hour-long films needed to satisfy a legal requirement that British cinemas screen a certain quota of British films. During this period, he developed his directing skills, sometimes making up to seven films a year.[12]
Although he had taken on some directing responsibilities in other films, Powell had his first screen credit as a director onTwo Crowded Hours (1931). This thriller was considered a modest success at the box office despite its limited budget.[12] From 1931 to 1936, Powell was the director of 23 films, including the critically receivedRed Ensign (1934) andThe Phantom Light (1935).[12]
In 1937 Powell completed his first truly personal project,The Edge of the World. Powell gathered together a cast and crew who were willing to take part in an expedition to what was then a very isolated part of the UK. They had to stay there for quite a few months and finished up with a film which not only told the story he wanted but also captured the raw natural beauty of the location.
By 1939, Powell had been hired as a contract director byAlexander Korda on the strength ofThe Edge of the World. Korda set him to work on some projects such asBurmese Silver that were subsequently cancelled.[11] Nonetheless, Powell was brought in to save a film that was being made as a vehicle for two of Korda's star players,Conrad Veidt andValerie Hobson. The film wasThe Spy in Black, during pre-production of which Powell first metEmeric Pressburger in 1939.
The original script ofThe Spy in Black followed the book quite closely, but was too verbose and did not have a good role for either Veidt or Hobson. Korda called a meeting where he introduced a diminutive man, saying, "Well now, I have asked Emeric to read the script, and he has things to say to us."[11]
Powell then went on to record (inA Life in Movies) how:
Emeric produced a very small piece of rolled-up paper, and addressed the meeting. I listened spellbound. Since talkies took over the movies, I had worked with some good writers, but I had never met anything like this. In the silent days, the top [American] screenwriters were technicians rather than dramatists ... the European cinema remained highly literate and each country, conscious of its separate culture and literature, strove to outdo the other. All this was changed by the talkies. America, with its enormous wealth and enthusiasm and its technical resources, waved the big stick. ... The European film no longer existed. ... Only the great German film business was prepared to fight the American monopoly, and Dr. Goebbels soon put a stop to that in 1933. But the day that Emeric walked out of his flat, leaving the key in the door to save the storm-troopers the trouble of breaking it down, was the worst day's work that the clever doctor ever did for his country's reputation, as he was soon to find out. As I said, I listened spellbound to this small Hungarian wizard, as Emeric unfolded his notes, until they were at least six inches long. He had stood Storer Clouston's plot on its head and completely restructured the film.[11]
They both soon recognised that although they were total opposites in background and personality, they had a common attitude to film-making and that they could work very well together. After making two more films together,Contraband (1940) and49th Parallel (1941), with separate credits, the pair decided to form a partnership and to sign their films jointly as "Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger."[11]
Working together as co-producers, writers and directors in a partnership they dubbed "The Archers", they made 19 feature films, many of which received critical and commercial success. Their best films are still regarded as classics of 20th-century British cinema. TheBFI 100 list of "the favourite British films of the 20th century" contains five of Powell's films, four with Pressburger.[13] Thomson writes that Powell and Pressburger "struggle with great, clashing virtues—with marvelous visual imagination and uneasy, intellectual substance.I Know Where I'm Going is a genuinely superstitious picture;49th Parallel is a strange war odyssey, with escaping Germans wandering across Canada—naïve, very violent, at times unwittingly comic, but possessed by a primitive feeling for endangered civilization; an interesting sequel isOne of Our Aircraft is Missing—English fliers getting out of Holland;A Matter of Life and Death is pretentious in its way, yet very funny and absolutely secure in its dainty stepping from one world to another ...The Thief of Bagdad is delightful,The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp a beautiful salute to Englishness ...Black Narcissus is that rare thing, an erotic English film about the fantasies of nuns."[10] The partnership ended afterIll Met By Moonlight.[14]
Although admirers would argue that Powell ought to rank alongside fellow British directorsAlfred Hitchcock andDavid Lean, his career suffered a severe reversal after the release of the controversial psychologicalthriller filmPeeping Tom, made in 1960 as a solo effort.[15] The film was excoriated by mainstream British critics, who were offended by its sexual and violent images.[2] The film did, however, meet with the rapturous approval of the young critics ofPositif andMidi Minuit Fantastique in France, and those ofMotion in England, and in 1965 he was subject of a major positive revaluation byRaymond Durgnat in the auteurist magazineMovie, later included in Durgnat's influential bookA Mirror for England.
Powell made two films in Australia,They're a Weird Mob andAge of Consent.[16]
In 1982,Francis Ford Coppola invited Powell to be 'senior director in residence' at hisZoetrope Studios. There, Powell "pottered around", including starting to write his autobiography. Powell's films came to have a cult reputation, broadened during the 1970s and early 1980s by a series of retrospectives and rediscoveries, as well as further articles and books. By the time of his death, he and Pressburger were recognised as one of the foremost film partnerships of all time – and cited as a key influence by many noted filmmakers such asMartin Scorsese andBrian De Palma.[15]
In 1927 Powell married Gloria Mary Rouger, an American dancer; they were married in France and stayed together for only three weeks. During the 1940s, Powell had love affairs with actressesDeborah Kerr andKathleen Byron.[11] From 1 July 1943 until her death on 5 July 1983, Powell was married to Frances "Frankie" May Reidy, the daughter of medical practitioner Jerome Reidy; they had two sons: Kevin Michael Powell (b. 1945) and Columba Jerome Reidy Powell (b. 1951). He also lived with actressPamela Brown for many years until her death from cancer in 1975.
Powell was introduced tofilm editorThelma Schoonmaker byMartin Scorsese and London-based film producer Frixos Constantine.[15] The couple were married from 19 May 1984 until his own death from cancer on 19 February 1990 at his home inAvening,Gloucestershire.[15] The couple had no children.[17]
His niece was the Australian actressCornelia Frances, who appeared in bit parts in her uncle's early films.
TheAcademy Film Archive has preservedA Matter of Life and Death andThe Life and Death of Colonel Blimp by Michael Powell andEmeric Pressburger.[18]
David Thomson writes:
I was fortunate enough to know Michael Powell in the last decade of his life. he was in America a good deal at that time: teaching for a term atDartmouth; as director emeritus withCoppola'sAmerican Zoetrope, as treasuredMerlin in the court ofScorsese; and in his marriage to the editor,Thelma Schoonmaker. I had the chance to watch many of his films with him, discussing them and learning the passion of his vision. It is all the more agreeable now to see Michael's influence spreading: the ardent antirealist has inspired so many people; the man in love with color, gesture, and cinema helped to educate viewers as well as filmmakers—not lest in the two volumes of his autobiography,A Life in Movies ... The great Powell and Pressburger films do not go stale; they never relinquish their wicked fun or that jaunty air of being poised on the brink. To put an arrow in our eye—to leave a nurturing wound—that was Michael's eternal thrill. I do not invoke the figure of Merlin lightly: Powell was English but Celtic, sublime yet devious, magical in the absolute certainty that imagination rules.[10]
Many of these titles were also published in other countries or republished. The list above deals with initial publications except where the name was changed in a subsequent edition or printing.
The backlash for this British psychological horror film was so strong upon release that director Michael Powell never made another British film again.
