Powell & Pressburger—A Cinema of Magic Spaces

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.

Andrew Moor lectures at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the author of articles on such topics as Derek Jarman, Anton Walbrook, and Neil Jordan, and he is the co-editor (with Graeme Harper) of Signs of Life: Medicine and Cinema.