Powell and Pressburger

A Cinema of Magic Spaces

Andrew Moor

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9781780763774
• eBook ISBN: 9780857721891
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film Direction & Production

The film-making partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger was one of the most remarkable and visionary in cinema. 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. With champions like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, and revived critical interest worldwide, they now find new generations of admirers. This illuminating new book looks closely at these classic films to explore their complex relationship to national identity, and their interest in exile, borderlands, utopias, escapism, art and fantasy. Moor reveals for example how the visual imagery of the films of the Second World War question current cinematic styles and how post war films like The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman are in their highly expressive use of design, music and dance utterly international in character.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• General Editor’s Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction - Magic Spaces: Migration, Home and the National
• 1. Alien Territories and Enemy Lines – The Spy in Black, Contraband, 49th Parallel, ‘…one of our aircraft is missing’
• 2. Satire, Epic and Memory – The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
• 3. Two Pastorals – A Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I’m Going!
• 4. Post-war Masculinities: The Pilot and the Back-room Boy - A Matter of Life and Death, The Small Back Room
• 5. Post-war Femininities: Mopu, Madness and Melodrama - Black Narcissus
• 6. Art and Artists – The Red Shoes, The Tales of Hoffmann
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index