The film that turned heads to a man who would become one of the greatest filmmakers the world has ever known.
Since last summer [Editor's Note: this was written in 2018] - having been inspired by a few documentary series - I’ve been on my own journey through film and film history. I started with the year 1895, and I’ve been watching many of the major films or films from the major filmmakers from each year since then (that I could find; endless thanks to
Fandor and
Filmstruck The Criterion Channel). I’m up to 1952 right now, and it’s been an incredible learning experience to see the evolution of the art form and which directors truly established themselves as innovators and visionaries in comparison to their contemporaries, and even beyond. The one filmmaker who’s most consistently impressed me and knocked me on my butt is British director
Michael Powell, an artist who I believe was unarguably the greatest director in the world during the 1940s (relative to the works of that decade), and easily one of the top 10 in history. I have 9 different photosets - starting with this film,
The Edge of the World, and ending with
Peeping Tom (1960), a horror film so controversial at the time of its release that he was blacklisted - locked and loaded that I’ll be posting over the next few weeks.
You can think of Michael Powell, and the brilliant Hungarian-born writer,
Emeric Pressburger, who would become his co-director, as an early template for
Steven Spielberg or
Christopher Nolan, directors who combine spellbinding spectacle with heartfelt, deeply resonant stories. Powell and Pressburger regularly shot their films in technicolor - about 10-20 years before it became common (same goes for the cutting edge special effects and camera tricks they employed) - and it added a level of brilliance to the production design of their films that astonishes even today.
My favorite trait about Powell though, is that he’s one of those filmmakers who seems like they were born with a camera in their hands; he seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of how to make a film. His spatial awareness was downright otherworldly. He harnessed depth of field like few others - putting absolute faith in his cinematographers to put his vision onscreen - shooting in deep focus, staging performers around the frame with the strategic foresight of a general deploying troops on the battlefield, producing soul-inspiring wide shots that’ll make you believe Powell had magic running through his veins.
Whether in front of or behind the camera, everyone involved in a Powell and Pressburger film got the chance to shine; the two filmmakers wholly understood the fact that film as an art form is inherently collaborative, and they made sure to maximize the potential of all they worked with: creating masterpiece after masterpiece as a result.
As any great artists, through their works we get to see the way they viewed the world: through a lens of dreamlike vibrancy, where even the nightmares are breathtaking.
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