Michael Powell

Michael Latham Powell (30 September 1905 – 19 February 1990) was an English filmmaker, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger. Through their production company The Archers, they together wrote, produced and directed a series of classic British films, notably The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), A Matter of Life and Death (1946, Stairway to Heaven in the U.S.), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948) and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951).

His controversial Peeping Tom (1960), which was so vilified on first release that it seriously damaged his career, is now considered a classic, and possibly the earliest "slasher movie". Many renowned filmmakers, such as Francis Ford Coppola, George A. Romero, Brian De Palma, Bertrand Tavernier and Martin Scorsese have cited Powell as an influence. In 2024, their work was explored in the documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, narrated by Scorsese. David Thomson writes "There is not a British director with as many worthwhile films to his credit as Michael Powell."

Early life

Powell was the second son and youngest child of Thomas William Powell, a hop farmer, and Mabel, daughter of Frederick Corbett, of Worcester, England. Powell was born in Bekesbourne, Kent, and educated at The King's School, Canterbury and then at Dulwich College. He started work at the National Provincial Bank in 1922 but quickly realised he was not cut out to be a banker.

Film career

Powell entered the film industry in 1925 through working with director Rex Ingram at the Victorine Studios in Nice, France (the contact with Ingram was made through Powell's father, who owned a hotel in Nice). He first started out as a general studio hand, the proverbial "gofer": sweeping the floor, making coffee, fetching and carrying. Soon he progressed to other work such as stills photography, writing titles (for the silent films) and many other jobs including a few acting roles, usually as comic characters. Powell made his film début as a "comic English tourist" in The Magician (1926).

Returning to England in 1928, Powell worked at a diverse series of jobs for various filmmakers including as a stills photographer on Alfred Hitchcock's silent film Champagne (1928). He also signed on in a similar role on Hitchcock's first "talkie", Blackmail (1929). In his autobiography, Powell claims he suggested the ending in the British Museum which was the first of Hitchcock's "monumental" climaxes to his films. Powell and Hitchcock remained friends for the remainder of Hitchcock's life.

After scriptwriting on two productions, Powell entered into a partnership with American producer Jerry Jackson in 1931 to make "quota quickies", hour-long films needed to satisfy a legal requirement that British cinemas screen a certain quota of British films. During this period, he developed his directing skills, sometimes making up to seven films a year.

Although he had taken on some directing responsibilities in other films, Powell had his first screen credit as a director on Two Crowded Hours (1931). This thriller was considered a modest success at the box office despite its limited budget. Thomson writes that Powell and Pressburger "struggle with great, clashing virtues—with marvelous visual imagination and uneasy, intellectual substance. I Know Where I'm Going is a genuinely superstitious picture; 49th Parallel is a strange war odyssey, with escaping Germans wandering across Canada—naïve, very violent, at times unwittingly comic, but possessed by a primitive feeling for endangered civilization; an interesting sequel is One of Our Aircraft is Missing—English fliers getting out of Holland; A Matter of Life and Death is pretentious in its way, yet very funny and absolutely secure in its dainty stepping from one world to another ... The Thief of Bagdad is delightful, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp a beautiful salute to Englishness ... Black Narcissus is that rare thing, an erotic English film about the fantasies of nuns."

Although admirers would argue that Powell ought to rank alongside fellow British directors Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean, his career suffered a severe reversal after the release of the controversial psychological thriller film Peeping Tom, made in 1960 as a solo effort.

Zoetrope Studios

In 1982, Francis Ford Coppola invited Powell to be 'senior director in residence' at his Zoetrope Studios. There, Powell "pottered around", including starting to write his autobiography. Powell's films came to have a cult reputation, broadened during the 1970s and early 1980s by a series of retrospectives and rediscoveries, as well as further articles and books. By the time of his death, he and Pressburger were recognised as one of the foremost film partnerships of all time – and cited as a key influence by many noted filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma. The couple had no children.

His niece was the Australian actress Cornelia Frances, who appeared in bit parts in her uncle's early films.

Preservation

The Academy Film Archive has preserved A Matter of Life and Death and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Awards, nominations and honours

1943: Oscar nominated for 49th Parallel as Best Picture
1943: Oscar nominated for One of Our Aircraft Is Missing for Best Writing, Original Screenplay. Shared with Emeric Pressburger
1948: Won Danish Bodil Award for A Matter of Life and Death as Best European Film. Shared with Emeric Pressburger
1948 Nominated for The Red Shoes for Venice Film Festival Golden Lion. Shared with Emeric Pressburger
1949: Oscar nominated for The Red Shoes as Best Picture. Shared with Emeric Pressburger
1951: Cannes Film Festival nominated for The Tales of Hoffmann for Grand Prize of the Festival. Shared with Emeric Pressburger
1951: Won Silver Bear from 1st Berlin International Film Festival for The Tales of Hoffmann as Best Musical. Shared with Emeric Pressburger
1957: BAFTA Award nominated for The Battle of the River Plate as Best British Screenplay. Shared with Emeric Pressburger.
1959: Cannes Film Festival won the Technical Grand Prize for Luna de Miel. Nominated for Golden Palm.
1978: Awarded Hon DLitt, University of East Anglia
1978: Awarded Hon DLitt, University of Kent
1981: Made fellow of BAFTA
1982: Awarded Career Gold Lion from the Venice Film Festival
1983: Made fellow of the British Film Institute (BFI)
1987: Awarded Hon Doctorate, Royal College of Art
1987: Awarded Akira Kurosawa Award from San Francisco International Film Festival
2014: An English Heritage Blue plaque to commemorate Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger was unveiled on 17 February 2014 by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker at Dorset House, Gloucester Place, London NW1 5AG where The Archers had their offices from 1942 to 1947.

Legacy

David Thomson writes: <blockquote>I was fortunate enough to know Michael Powell in the last decade of his life. he was in America a good deal at that time: teaching for a term at Dartmouth; as director emeritus with Coppola's American Zoetrope, as treasured Merlin in the court of Scorsese; and in his marriage to the editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. I had the chance to watch many of his films with him, discussing them and learning the passion of his vision. It is all the more agreeable now to see Michael's influence spreading: the ardent antirealist has inspired so many people; the man in love with color, gesture, and cinema helped to educate viewers as well as filmmakers—not lest in the two volumes of his autobiography, A Life in Movies ... The great Powell and Pressburger films do not go stale; they never relinquish their wicked fun or that jaunty air of being poised on the brink. To put an arrow in our eye—to leave a nurturing wound—that was Michael's eternal thrill. I do not invoke the figure of Merlin lightly: Powell was English but Celtic, sublime yet devious, magical in the absolute certainty that imagination rules. Said Thelma Schoonmaker (Scorsese's long-time film editor and Powell's third wife) of Scorsese, "Anyone he meets, or the actors he works with, he immediately starts bombarding with Powell and Pressburger movies." Scorsese and Schoonmaker are working on restoring Powell's films, beginning with The Red Shoes and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

Pinewood Studios, where Powell made many of his most notable films, has named a mixing theatre in the post-production department after him: The Powell Theatre. A giant picture of the director covers the door to the theatre, where many well-known films are mixed.
The Film, Radio and Television Department of Canterbury Christ Church University has its main building named after him: The Powell Building.
He has been played on screen by Alastair Thomson Mills in the award-winning short film (2022) which explores Moira Shearer's life changing decision to appear in The Red Shoes.
A celebration entitled 'Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger' was held by the British Film Institute in 2023, including a UK-wide programme of films and an exhibit of production and promotion materials from The Red Shoes.
Powell's work was explored in the documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (2024), with narration by Martin Scorsese.