Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces

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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.

Reviews

'Powell and Pressburger made beautiful, deviant and mongrel films that are famously un-pindownable. Moor's book challenges this belief in their rootlessness and shows how they fit into the movie genres, social history, empire, gender, nation, literature and iconography. He's particularly good on the postwar films, and brilliant on David Niven.' Mark Cousins 'Andrew Moor does full justice to the richness of their great films of the 1940s, and relates them in fascinating ways to the events of this pivotal decade in twentieth-century British history.' Charles Barr 'Essential reading for anyone engaging with the work of Powell and Pressburger.' Screen 'Eclectic and intellectually stimulating. - This book is clearly a labour of love, but that only adds to its worth and readability.' Historical Journal of Film and Television ' - A valuable text for both students and academics that is pertinent for study relating to postmodernism, cultural geography, postcolonial studies, gender studies, film studies, and the affect/effect of cinematic spaces on the spectator.' Journal of Popular Film and Television

Author Bio

Andrew Moor is Reader in Cinema History at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is co-editor (with Ian Christie) of Michael Powell: International Perspectives on an English Filmmaker and (with Graeme Harper) of Signs of Life: Medicine of Cinema. He is currently writing a book on gay cinema.