Powell & Pressburger : a cinema of magic spaces / Andrew Moor.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Moor, Andrew, 1964-

Series:

Cinema and society

Cinema and society series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Powell, Michael, 1905-1990--Criticism and interpretation.

Powell, Michael.

Pressburger, Emeric, 1902-1988--Criticism and interpretation.

Pressburger, Emeric.

Pressburger, Emeric, 1902-1988.

Powell, Michael, 1905-1990.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xii, 250 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Other Title:

Powell and Pressburger : a cinema of magic spaces

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : I.B. Tauris ; New York : Distributed in the U.S. by Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Summary:

The film-making partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger was the most remarkable and visionary in British cinema. Between 1939 and 1957 they made an extraordinary range of films, from The Spy in Black and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp to A Canterbury Tale and The Red Shoes. After 1960 their careers faltered, but with champions like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, and revived critical interest in Britain and the USA, they now find new generations of admirers.

Powell and Pressburger made arresting, perplexing films-mainstream, yet recognisably personal. This illuminating new book looks closely at these classic films to explore their complex relationship to national identity, and their developing interest in exile, borderlands, utopias, escapism, art and fantasy - themes which trouble traditional definitions of British national cinema. Moor takes a variety of perspectives, including space and place, myth and magic, the exotic and the pastoral, art and ideology, to reveal that, while the films of the Second World War belong to the propaganda mission of classical 'British cinema', their visual imagery questions the style of understated realism so revered at that time, as their strangely skewed narratives betray both a fascination and an anxiety homely images of Englishness.

Moor argues that postwar melodramas such as Black Narcissus and Gone to Earth depart from the aspirational stories of wartime to reveal a culture of blocked desire, while male-centred films such as A Matter of Life and Death and The Small Back Room recuperate 'damaged men' and offer ideal images of masculinity. Engaging with ballet in The Red Shoes and opera in The Tales of Hoffman, their highly expressive, controlled use of design, music and dance mark their increasing aesthetic ambitions, oblivious to British realism and utterly international in character.

Contents:

General Editor's Introduction ix

Introduction - Magic Spaces: Migration, Home and the National 1

1 Alien Territories and Enemy Lines - The Spy in Black, Contraband, 49th Parallel, '...one of our aircraft is missing' 27

2 Satire, Epic and Memory - The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp 54

3 Two Pastorals - A Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I'm Going! 85

4 Post-war Masculinities: The Pilot and the Back-room Boy - A Matter of Life and Death, The Small Back Room 126

5 Post-war Femininities: Mopu, Madness and Melodrama - Black Narcissus 168

6 Art and Artists - The Red Shoes, The Tales of Hoffmann 197.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-244) and index.

ISBN:

1850438587

1850439478

OCLC:

56965101

Publisher Number:

9781850439479 (hbk.)