Happy Birthday, Michael Powell! Born today in 1905 as Michael Latham Powell, this English film director is celebrated for his partnership with Hungarian British screenwriter, film director and producer Emeric Pressburger in making innovative, visually vivid motion pictures.
Aside from a director, Powell was also a producer, screenwriter and production company co-founder (with Pressburger).
Powell was educated at The King's School, Canterbury and then at Dulwich College. He started work at the National Provincial Bank in 1922 but quickly realized he was not cut out to be a banker.
Three years later, Powell entered the film industry in 1925 through working with Irish film director, producer, writer and actor Rex Ingram.
This was at the Victorine Studios in Nice, France (the contact with Ingram was made through Powell's father, who owned a hotel in Nice).
Michael first started out as a general studio hand, the proverbial "gofer": sweeping the floor, making coffee, fetching and carrying.
He soon 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 1926 American silent black and white horror film 'The Magician'.
In the late 1920a, Powell returned to England. There, he worked at a diverse series of jobs for various filmmakers, most notably as a stills photographer for Alfred Hitchcock.
Powell also signed on in a similar role on Hitchcock's first "talkie" as an uncredited writer. This the 1929 British black and white drama/thriller film 'Blackmail'.
In his autobiography, Powell claims that he suggested the ending in the British Museum, which was the first of Hitchcock's "monumental" climaxes to his films. Powell and Hitchcock afterwards 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". This was known as The Cinematograph Films Act of 1927 (17 & 18 Geo. V).
This was an act of the United Kingdom Parliament designed to stimulate the declining British film industry. These hour-long films needed to satisfy a legal requirement that British cinemas screen a certain quota of British films.
During this period, Powell 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 in the early 1930s. From 1931 to 1936, Powell was the director of twenty-three films.
Three years later, Powell met Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer Emeric Pressburger on the set of the 1939 British black and white war/action film 'The Spy in Black' (released as 'U-Boat 29' in the United States). Powell had directed while Pressburger had co-written the script.
They both soon recognized that although they were total opposites in background and personality, they had a common attitude to filmmaking and that they could work very well together.
After making two more films together, the pair decided to form a partnership and to sign their films jointly as "Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger".
Working together as co-producers, writers and directors in a partnership Powell and Pressburger dubbed "The Archers". This would be a British filmmaking partnership of which made a series of influential films in the 1940s and 1950s.
Together, Powell and Pressburger had made nineteen features, many of which had received critical and commercial success.
Their best films are still regarded as classics of 20th century British cinema. The BFI 100 list of "the favourite British films of the 20th century" contains five of Powell's films, four with Pressburger.
Although admirers would argue that Powell ought to rank alongside fellow Hitchcock and David Lean, his career suffered a severe reversal after the release of the film.
This was the film which Powell is best known for producing and directing, made as a solo effort This was the 1960 British Eastmancolor psychological horror/thriller film 'Peeping Tom'.
The film follows loner Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Boehm), who works at a film studio during the day and, at night, takes racy photographs of women. Also, he's making a documentary on fear, which involves recording the reactions of victims as he murders them.
He later befriends Helen Stephens (Anna Massey), the daughter of the family living in the apartment below his, and he tells her vaguely about the movie he is making. She sneaks into Mark's apartment to watch it and is horrified by what she sees -- especially when Mark catches her.
The film's controversial subject matter and its extremely harsh reception by critics had a severely negative impact on Powell's career as a director in the United Kingdom.
However, it attracted a cult following, and in later years, it has been re-evaluated and is now widely considered a masterpiece, and a progenitor of the contemporary slasher film.
'Peeping Tom' was later excoriated by mainstream British critics, who were offended by its sexual and violent images; Powell was ostracized by the film industry and found it almost impossible to work thereafter.
However, in 1965, Powell was subject of a major positive revaluation by British film critic Raymond Durgnat.
This was the auteurist magazine Movie, later included in Durgnat's influential 1970 film criticism book A Mirror for England. It remains one of the most important books ever written on British cinema.
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.
In 1980, Powell, along with his partner Pressburger, were made fellows of BAFTA by received the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award at the 34th British Academy Film Awards in late February.
The following year, Powell received the Awarded Career Gold Lion at the 39th Venice International Film Festival in September.
Of his three wives, the most notable was his third. This was Algerian-born American film editor Thelma Schoomaker. She is best known for her longtime collaboration with Martin Scorsese.
By the time of Powell's death, he and Pressburger were recognized as one of the foremost film partnerships of all time – and cited as a key influence by many noted filmmakers. These included Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma and George A. Romero.
In 2014, an English Heritage Blue Plaque was erected to commemorate Powell and Emeric Pressburger at their old offices in London. The plaque was unveiled by Martin Scorsese and Schoonmaker.
The British Film Institute (BFI) named 'Peeping Tom' the 78th greatest British film of all time. In 2017, a poll of one hundred and fifty actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out magazine saw it ranked the 27th best British film ever.
Powell had been active from 1925–1978.
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