Emeric Pressburger | |
|---|---|
 Pressburger in Paris | |
| Born | Imre József Pressburger (1902-12-05)5 December 1902 |
| Died | 5 February 1988(1988-02-05) (aged 85) Saxtead, England |
| Occupation(s) | Screenwriter, producer, director and production house co-founder withMichael Powell |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 1 |
| Relatives | Andrew MacDonald (grandson) Kevin Macdonald (grandson) |
Emeric Pressburger (bornImre József Pressburger; 5 December 1902 – 5 February 1988) was a Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is best known for his series of film collaborations withMichael Powell, in a collaboration partnership known asthe Archers, and produced a series of films, including49th Parallel (US:The Invaders, 1941),The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943),A Matter of Life and Death (US:Stairway to Heaven, 1946),Black Narcissus (1947),The Red Shoes (1948), andThe Tales of Hoffmann (1951).
Imre József Pressburger was born inMiskolc, in theKingdom of Hungary, ofJewish heritage.[1] He was the only son (he had one elder half-sister from his father's previous marriage) of Kálmán Pressburger, estate manager, and his second wife, Kätherina (née Wichs). He attended a boarding-school inTemesvár (today better known as Timișoara), where he was a good pupil, excelling at mathematics, literature and music. He then studied mathematics and engineering at the Universities ofPrague andStuttgart before his father's death forced him to abandon his studies.[2]
Pressburger began a career as a journalist. After working in Hungary andWeimar Republic-era Germany he turned to screenwriting in the late 1920s, working forUFA inBerlin (having moved there in 1926). The rise of theNazis forced him to flee to Paris, where he again worked as screenwriter, and then to London. He later said, "[the] worst things that happened to me were the political consequences of events beyond my control ... the best things were exactly the same."
Pressburger's early films were mainly made in Germany and France where he worked at the UFA Studios in the Dramaturgie department (script selection, approval and editing) and as a scriptwriter in his own right. In the 1930s, many European films were produced in multiple-language versions. Some of the films made in Germany survive with French intertitles and vice versa.
In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, UFA's head sacked the company's remaining Jewish employees with Pressburger being told his contract would not be renewed. He left his Berlin apartment, "leaving the key in the door so that theStormtroopers wouldn't have to break the door down" and left for Paris. Late in 1935, Pressburger decided that he would do better in England.
Pressburger arrived in Britain in 1935 as a stateless person; once he decided to settle, he changed his name to Emeric in 1938. In England, he found a small community of Hungarian film-makers who had fled theNazis, includingAlexander Korda, owner ofLondon Films, who employed him as a screenwriter. Asked by Korda to improve the script forThe Spy in Black (1939), he met the film's director,Michael Powell.Their partnership would produce some of the most acclaimed British films of the next decade.[3] However, Pressburger still did some projects on his own.
Pressburger was much more than "Michael Powell's screenwriter" as some have categorised him. The films they made together in this period were mainly original stories by Pressburger, who also did most of the work of a producer for the team. Pressburger was also more involved in the editing process than Powell, and as a musician, Pressburger was also involved in the choice of music for their films.
Powell and Pressburger began to go their separate ways after the mid-1950s. They remained close friends but wanted to explore different things, having done about as much as they could together. Their last film as a partnership wasIll Met By Moonlight but Pressburger's first film as a solo producer,Miracle in Soho, flopped.[4]
Two of his later films were made under the pseudonym "Richard Imrie".
Two novels by Pressburger were published. The firstKilling a Mouse on a Sunday (1961), is set in the period immediately following theSpanish Civil War. It received favourable reviews and was soon translated into a dozen languages. His second novel,The Glass Pearls (1966), reissued in 2015 and again in 2022 byFaber, gained an especially negative assessment fromThe Times Literary Supplement, its only contemporary review.[5] Subsequently it has been highly praised. Lucy Scholes inThe Paris Review in 2019 called it "a truly remarkable work. It deserves to be recognized both for its own virtuosity, and as an important addition to the genre of Holocaust literature."[6]
On 24 June 1938, Pressburger marriedÁgi Donáth, the daughter of Andor Donáth, a general merchant, but they divorced in 1941. The union was childless. He remarried, on 29 March 1947, to Wendy Orme, and they had a daughter, Angela, and another child who died as a baby in 1948; but this marriage also ended in divorce inReno, Nevada in 1953 and in Britain in 1971. His daughter Angela's two sons both became successful film-makers:Andrew Macdonald as a producer on films such asTrainspotting (1996), andKevin Macdonald as anOscar-winning director. Kevin has written a biography of his grandfather, and a documentary about his life,The Making of an Englishman (1995).
Pressburger became a British citizen in 1946. He was made a Fellow ofBAFTA in 1981, and a Fellow of theBFI in 1983.
Pressburger was a diffident and private person who, at times, particularly later on in his life, could be hypersensitive and prone to bouts of melancholia. He lovedFrench cuisine, enjoyed music, and possessed a great sense of humour. In appearance he was short, wore glasses, and had a sagacious, bird-like facial expression. He was a keen supporter ofArsenal F.C., a passion he developed soon after arriving in Britain. From 1970 he lived inAspall, Suffolk[7] and he died in anursing home in nearbySaxtead on 5 February 1988. He is interred in the cemetery of St. Mary of Grace Church, Aspall.[7] His is the only grave in thatChurch of England graveyard with aStar of David.
