Pressburger, Emeric

The Red Shoes - Criterion Collection

It's been said that this 1948 classic has been responsible for the ballet lessons of more young girls than any other film. It's not hard to understand why: Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger's dark fairy tale presents the ballet as an exquisite, magical work of art; but under the theatrics and glory is an all-consuming lifestyle with the power to destroy those who love it perhaps too much. Moira Shearer practically glows as Victoria "Vicky" Page, a young woman consumed by a will to dance who is accepted into the highly prestigious ballet company run by perfectionist Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook). Meanwhile, a gifted young composer, Julian Craster (Marius Goring), is brought on board as an orchestra coach, and later conductor and composer of the ballet that will make Vicky's name: The Red Shoes, one of the most beautiful and dramatic dances ever captured on film. Professional and personal jealousies soon pull this creative team apart, however, and Vicky is torn between her love of Julian, her responsibility to Boris, and her need to dance. Powell and Pressburger recast Hans Christian Andersen's sad story as a modern romantic melodrama, highlighted by beautiful dances and shot, not as stage ballets, but rather as expressionist cinematic dramas on impossibly grand sets awash with bold color and beautifully captured in glorious Technicolor by cinematographer Jack Cardiff. It's a brilliant melding of dance and drama as Vicky's real life mirror's the tragic story she danced in the Red Shoes ballet. --Sean Axmaker

A glorious Technicolor epic that influenced generations of filmmakers, artists, and aspiring ballerinas, The Red Shoes intricately weaves backstage life with the thrill of performance. A young ballerina (Moira Shearer) is torn between two forces: the composer who loves her (Marius Goring), and the impresario determined to fashion her into a great dancer (Anton Walbrook). Criterion is proud to present The Red Shoes in its DVD premiere.

I Know Where I'm Going! - Criterion Collection

Assured, headstrong Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) knows exactly what she wants and how to get it, until she's stranded in a rough, windswept Scottish village--in sight but out of reach of an island where a rich fiancée, a lavish wedding, and a loveless marriage await. While a raging storm prevents her crossing, a quiet, modest, and penniless Scottish laird named Torquil (Roger Livesey) slowly wins her cheerfully mercenary heart and upsets her carefully arranged plans with messy emotions. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's much-loved romantic drama is a handsome work full of vivid, offbeat characters (Pamela Brown is especially striking as an earthy villager always accompanied by a pack of bloodhounds) living in a world that's part tradition and part myth. Villagers work and celebrate with the simple spirit of common folk ("We're not poor, we just haven't any money," Torquil admonishes the materialist Joan). Powell brings his lively manner and bold visual invention to the creation of his beautiful but harsh primal paradise, culminating in the awesome spectacle of a massive whirlpool that could be the work of the "legend of Corryvreckan" or the stormy embodiment of Joan's hysterical heart. Awash in mystic power of ancient castles and chanted legends, I Know Where I'm Going is one of the most romantic visions of Britain's most magical director. --Sean Axmaker

In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's stunningly photographed comedy, romance flourishes in an unlikely place-the bleak and moody Scottish Hebrides. Wendy Hiller stars as a headstrong young woman who travels to these remote isles to marry a rich lord. Stranded by stormy weather, she meets a handsome naval officer (Roger Livesey) who threatens to thwart her carefully laid-out life plans.

The Tales of Hoffmann - Criterion Collection

Jacques Offenbach died with his masterpiece not quite finished, and that has made The Tales of Hoffmann a predestined victim for adapters who have dropped some numbers, inserted others, altered the plot, fiddled with the casting, and changed the order of scenes. It has survived and kept its essential identity through many adaptations because its music is so witty and compelling, its imagination so vivid and varied, its story of the poet Hoffmann's unhappy loves so intriguing they can transcend such tinkering.

A critical performing edition prepared by musicologist Michael Kaye has made it possible to come close to Offenbach's original intentions after more than a century of misunderstanding, and major companies have begun to use that edition, but so far no universally satisfying production of it has reached video. An Opera de Lyon production, using Kaye's research but with a radically untraditional staging, has won wholehearted approval from some fans but unequivocal rejection from more.

As adaptations go, this 1951 film is the best compromise currently available on video and will always be a classic in its own right, even when a more faithful treatment becomes available. It drops some of Offenbach's music and includes some that is spurious, and it changes the plot (Hoffman's beloved Stella is made a dancer--Moira Shearer--not a singer). But at least it treats the story with affection, imagination, and technical expertise. The music presents only highlights of the score, but it is in the hands of a great conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham. The movie is essentially the work of the same team that produced The Red Shoes (directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger); it has the same kind of imaginative appeal and its technical resourcefulness is still exciting, still on the cutting edge despite its age. I expect eventually to add a more faithful Tales of Hoffmann to my video collection, but I will never stop enjoying this one. --Joe McLellan

In Jacques Offenbach's fantasy opera, the poet E.T.A. Hoffmann dreams of three women - a mechanical performing doll, a bejeweled siren who steals his reflection, and the consumptive daughter of a famous composer - all of whom break his heart in different

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp - Criterion Collection

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's first Technicolor masterpiece, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), transcends its narrow wartime propaganda to portray in warm-hearted detail the life and loves of one extraordinary man. The film's clever narrative structure first presents us with the imposingly rotund General Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey in his greatest screen performance), a blustering old duffer who seems the epitome of stuffy, outmoded values. But traveling backwards 40 years we see a different man altogether: the young and dashing officer "Sugar" Candy. Through a series of affecting relationships with three women (all played to perfection by Deborah Kerr) and his touching lifelong friendship with a German officer (Anton Wallbrook), we see Candy's life unfold and come to understand how difficult it is for him to adapt his sense of military honor to modern notions of "total war." Notoriously, this is the film that Winston Churchill tried to have banned, and indeed its sympathetic portrayal of a German officer was contentious in 1943, though one suspects that Churchill's own blimpishness was a factor too. --Mark Walker

Black Narcissus - Criterion Collection

Appropriately enough for a picture named for a flower, Black Narcissus exists in a color-drenched, hothouse atmosphere. The setting is a nunnery in the Himalayas, where sister Deborah Kerr has her hands full with an envious nun (the remarkable Kathleen Byron) and a sardonic Englishman (David Farrar). Director Michael Powell and screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, the team responsible for the mid-forties masterpieces A Stairway to Heaven and The Red Shoes, decided to shoot Black Narcissus entirely in the studio, so they could create their own controlled, slightly unreal world. The choice paid off, as both art director Alfred Junge and cinematographer Jack Cardiff won Oscars for their blazing Technicolor work. The climactic sequence--a murder attempt on the cliffs of the cloister--bears special attention, as Powell "set" the sequence to a preexisting musical track, staging it as though it were a piece of visual choreography. Adding a bit of behind-the-scenes tension to the production was the fact that Kerr was the director's ex-mistress, and Byron his current one. "It was a situation not uncommon in show business, I was told," he later wrote, "but it was new to me." --Robert Horton

Plagued by uncertainties and worldly desires, five Protestant missionary nuns, led by Deborah Kerr's Sister Clodagh, struggle to establish a school in the desolate Himalayas. All the elements of cinematic arts are perfectly fused in Powell and Pressburger's fascinating study of the age-old conflict between the spirit and the flesh, set against the grandeur of the snowcapped peaks of Kanchenjunga. Criterion is proud to present Black Narcissus in a new Special Edition.

A Canterbury Tale - Criterion Collection

One of the most beloved of all British films, A Canterbury Tale marks yet another occasion to celebrate the Criterion Collection's growing DVD legacy of Powell and Pressburger classics. Originally conceived as good-natured propaganda to support the British-American alliance of World War II, the film became something truly special in the hands of the Archers (a.k.a. writer/director/producers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger). Taking its literary cues from Chaucer's titular classic, it begins with a prologue that harkens back to Chaucer's time before match-cutting to present-day August of 1943, with the night-time arrival of U.S. Army Sgt. Bob Johnson (played with folksy charm by John Sweet, an actual American GI) on the shadowy platform of Canterbury station in the magically rural county of Kent (where Powell was born and raised). He is soon joined by two fellow train passengers: Alison Smith (Sheila Sim), a brashly independent recruit in the British Woman's Land Army; and Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price), a sergeant in the royal Army, and before long they're tracking clues to find "the glue man," a mysterious figure who's been pouring "the sticky stuff" on unsuspecting women as the midnight hour approaches. Their investigation leads to Thomas Colpeper (Eric Portman), a village squire whose local slide-shows celebrate life in an idyllic rural England threatened by wartime change. As Graham Fuller writes in an observant mini-essay that accompanies this DVD, is this a whodunit? Historical documentary? War film? Rustic comedy? It's all these and so much more: As photographed in glorious black and white by Erwin Hiller (faithfully preserved by one of Criterion's finest high-definition digital transfers), A Canterbury Tale has an elusive, magical quality that encompasses its trio of Canterbury "pilgrims" and translates into a an elusive, spiritually uplifting sense of elation that has made it an all-time favorite among film lovers around the world. --Jeff Shannon

On the DVDs
In addition to one of the most crisply detailed black-and-white transfers you're ever likely to see, disc 1 of A Canterbury Tale includes a feature-length commentary by film historian Ian Christie, author of the now out-of-print Arrows of Desire (the definitive study of Powell & Pressburger films) and a foremost authority on British films in general. Disc 2 is loaded with Canterbury extras, including a pleasant reminiscence by actress Sheila Sim; a documentary about John Sweet (who is seen visiting Canterbury in 2000, for the first time since filming A Canterbury Tale in 1943); and a charming new documentary that follows contemporary Canterbury "pilgrims" as they revisit locations used in the film. There's also "Listen to Britain," a seven-minute video-installation piece inspired by A Canterbury Tale by artist Victor Burgin (and programmed to loop from start to finish and back again, as it did in museums); and the original "Listen to Britain," by Humphrey Jennings--a classic wartime documentary from the classic era of British non-fiction film that celebrates the sights, and especially the sounds, of rural England in the early 1940s. All in all, these are excellent features that place A Canterbury Tale in evocative historical context. --Jeff Shannon

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's beloved classic is a profoundly personal journey to Powell's bucolic birthplace of Kent England. Set amidst the tumult of the Second World War yet with a rhythm as delicate as a lullaby the film follows three modern-day incarnations of Chaucer's pilgrims -- a melancholy "landgirl" a plainspoken American GI and a resourceful British sergeant -- who are waylaid in the English countryside and forced to solve a bizarre village crime en route to the mythical town. Building to a majestic climax that ranks as one of the filmmaking duo's finest achievements the dazzling A Canterbury Tale has acquired a following passionate enough to qualify as a pilgrimage all its own.System Requirements:Running Time 124 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 715515018920 Manufacturer No: CC1639DDVD

Battle of the River Plate [Region 2]

A Matter of Life and Death (AKA Stairway to Heaven)

Briefed by the Ministry of Information to make a film that would foster Anglo-American relations in the post-war period, innovative filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger came up with A Matter of Life and Death, an extravagant and extraordinary fantasy in which David Niven stars as a downed pilot who must justify his continuing existence to a heavenly panel because he has made the mistake of falling in love with an American girl (Kim Hunter) when he really should have been dead. National stereotypes are lampooned as the angelic judges squabble over his fate. In a neat reversal of expectations, the Heaven sequences are black and white, while Earth is seen in Technicolor. Daring cinematography mixes monochrome and color, incorporates time-lapse images, and even toys with background "time freezes" 50 years before The Matrix. Roger Livesey and Raymond Massey lead the fine supporting cast. This is one of the undoubted jewels of British cinema. --Mark Walker

A Canterbury Tale [Region 2]

One of the most beloved of all British films, A Canterbury Tale marks yet another occasion to celebrate the Criterion Collection's growing DVD legacy of Powell and Pressburger classics. Originally conceived as good-natured propaganda to support the British-American alliance of World War II, the film became something truly special in the hands of the Archers (a.k.a. writer/director/producers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger). Taking its literary cues from Chaucer's titular classic, it begins with a prologue that harkens back to Chaucer's time before match-cutting to present-day August of 1943, with the night-time arrival of U.S. Army Sgt. Bob Johnson (played with folksy charm by John Sweet, an actual American GI) on the shadowy platform of Canterbury station in the magically rural county of Kent (where Powell was born and raised). He is soon joined by two fellow train passengers: Alison Smith (Sheila Sim), a brashly independent recruit in the British Woman's Land Army; and Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price), a sergeant in the royal Army, and before long they're tracking clues to find "the glue man," a mysterious figure who's been pouring "the sticky stuff" on unsuspecting women as the midnight hour approaches. Their investigation leads to Thomas Colpeper (Eric Portman), a village squire whose local slide-shows celebrate life in an idyllic rural England threatened by wartime change. As Graham Fuller writes in an observant mini-essay that accompanies this DVD, is this a whodunit? Historical documentary? War film? Rustic comedy? It's all these and so much more: As photographed in glorious black and white by Erwin Hiller (faithfully preserved by one of Criterion's finest high-definition digital transfers), A Canterbury Tale has an elusive, magical quality that encompasses its trio of Canterbury "pilgrims" and translates into a an elusive, spiritually uplifting sense of elation that has made it an all-time favorite among film lovers around the world. --Jeff Shannon

On the DVDs
In addition to one of the most crisply detailed black-and-white transfers you're ever likely to see, disc 1 of A Canterbury Tale includes a feature-length commentary by film historian Ian Christie, author of the now out-of-print Arrows of Desire (the definitive study of Powell & Pressburger films) and a foremost authority on British films in general. Disc 2 is loaded with Canterbury extras, including a pleasant reminiscence by actress Sheila Sim; a documentary about John Sweet (who is seen visiting Canterbury in 2000, for the first time since filming A Canterbury Tale in 1943); and a charming new documentary that follows contemporary Canterbury "pilgrims" as they revisit locations used in the film. There's also "Listen to Britain," a seven-minute video-installation piece inspired by A Canterbury Tale by artist Victor Burgin (and programmed to loop from start to finish and back again, as it did in museums); and the original "Listen to Britain," by Humphrey Jennings--a classic wartime documentary from the classic era of British non-fiction film that celebrates the sights, and especially the sounds, of rural England in the early 1940s. All in all, these are excellent features that place A Canterbury Tale in evocative historical context. --Jeff Shannon

Ill Met By Moonlight (Night Ambush) [Region 2]