Martin Scorsese has been trying to get people to know and like the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger since the 60s when he was a film student at NYU. He actually discovered his first Archer films as a child, seeing The Tales of Hoffman on television and The Red Shoes in theaters with his father, but it wasn't until he became a success himself with the release of Mean Streets that he discovered that Michael Powell was still alive. Searching out the retired, English filmmaker at his small cottage in Kent, Scorsese is the singular force behind the rediscovery of Powell's films decades after he had made his pair of Australian films, and this documentary is probably the furthest that appreciation is going to reach.
Told by Scorsese who narrates the entire documentary, the story of Michael Powell in particular and his professional relationship with Emeric Pressburger is cast through the lens of Scorsese's own experience, opening with him as a child and his appreciation of some 19th century opera on television. Interspersed, Scorsese covers basic biography of Powell and Pressburger individually before really digging into their careers.
The documentary really is a primer for audiences, an introduction to the strange, otherworldly visions of the Archers who, as Scorsese put it, were experimental filmmakers in the British studio system. Having just gone through all of it (except for Pressburger's Twice Upon a Time, his only sole directing credit that I couldn't find a copy of anywhere), I got swept away in Scorsese's telling. I can't talk about how it would affect the uninitiated, but I have to assume that the strange sights and Scorsese's descriptions of their techniques, effects, and influence, especially on his own work, would interest those newly discovering the works of the British and Austro-Hungarian team.
It's interesting to note the differences of opinions that Scorsese and I have about the work. For instance, Scorsese considers The Red Shoes to be one of the greatest films ever made while I think it is merely very, very good. Or that he calls Gone to Earth a gothic masterpiece and I found it rather dull. Or that he considers both Oh...Rosalinda! And Ill Met by Moonlight to be disappointments, but I found them quite competent entertainments. Which is to say that while our opinions differed, I still loved hearing him talk about all of it.
If I have disappointments, it's that he skips over some professional details that I need answers to (I'll have to just read Powell's autobiography to get them, I think), namely around how Powell managed to pull together the production of The Queen's Guards after the horrendous reaction to Peeping Tom, or how The Boy Who Turned Yellow exists at all. It's understandable that Scorsese's focus is on Powell's successes rather than his failures, namely the artistic successes since he spends a goodly amount of time talking about Peeping Tom, a personal favorite of his. Still, with Scorsese's personal connection to Powell, a few seconds to talk about these things that concern me and no one else on the planet would have been nice.
It was interesting to hear of Powell's influences beyond what I found to be the obvious of Lubitsch (like in His Lordship) and Hitchcock (like in Crown v. Stevens and several others) to his earliest work with Rex Ingram, including clips from The Four Horsemen that emphasized the otherworldly approach to cinema that obviously Powell reformed in his own way through what he called "compositional film", the combination of sight and sound with an emphasis on synching the action on screen to the music, something he started with Black Narcissus and embraced fully across the entirety of the film with The Tales of Hoffman. It's a term that I couldn't have come up with myself but which fits this kind of idealized form of Powell's work rather completely.
I also really liked how Scorsese and the documentary's director, David Hinton, were able to include a fair number of clips from Scorsese's own work to highlight the influence of Powell's approach to making movies, Scorsese emphasizing the use of movement within a frame and editing to music. The largest clips come from Raging Bull, but the parallel between the obsessive characters like Lermontov in The Red Shoes or Mark in Peeping Tom with some of Scorsese's own characters like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver or even May from The Age of Innocence helps deepen the connection between the two men's work.
And, of course, there's the actual personal connections starting with the energetic young director of Mean Streets searching out Powell in the English countryside, glad to hear that anyone would be interested in his films at all, much less a rising New York director from America. It continues on with Scorsese helping him find work in Los Angeles, the marriage between Powell and Scorsese's editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and ending with behind-the-scenes clips of Powell on the set of The King of Comedy as Scorsese talks about how Powell, the older, more mature, creative voice in his life was able to help him through tough times. He never talks about Powell's death, almost making it feel like Powell is still alive in some way, and it seems appropriate considering how Scorsese's entire efforts around Powell are to bring the man and his work alive to a world that had forgotten and abandoned him.
Really, the personal touch from Scorsese is what gives the film that wonderful emotional connection. There's talking about how Powell and Pressburger's work was great, and then there's Scorsese talking about a friend whose work he greatly admired.
This is a wonderful documentary and introduction to the work of The Archers for those who haven't seen it, and it's also a wonderful bit of catharsis for those who have.
