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While filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger — aka The Archers — may be best known for their extravagant color films like “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” “A Matter of Life and Death,” “Black Narcissus,” and “The Red Shoes,” their underseen black-and-white, post-wwii potboiler “The Small Back Room” may be their most daring.

Following a wartime weapons expert whose experiences studying and disarming bombs have led to injuries and a nasty drinking habit, the film came at a time when audiences were ready to look past the fighting, so it didn’t perform well at the box office. Now, thanks to Rialto Pictures, the film is set to hit theaters once again on June 28 with a 4K restoration. Watch the new trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.

The restoration, handled by The Film Foundation and the BFI National archives, in association with StudioCanal, was also conducted with the help of...

Courtesy of Studiocanal

by James Cameron-wilson

Hard to believe today, but Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1949 drama was a flop. A glum, perhaps cynical, claustrophobic piece of film noir shot in black-and-white, The Small Back Room was released just four years after the end of the Second World War – and it was not what postwar audiences wanted to see. Indeed, it is hardly one of the most celebrated titles in the Powell/Pressburger catalogue and I, for one, had never seen it before. Even so, having just watched this consummately photographed and magically restored work, I would say without hesitation it is one of my very favourite Powell and Pressburger films.

With the psychological complexity of a good play and replete with telling touches, it blends both the disciplines of Hollywood film noir with the Expressionism of the Weimar cinema of Germany, but with its own ineffable, stiff upper lip Englishness.

To celebrate Studiocanal’s release of the 4K restoration of Powell and Pressburger’s The Small Back Room on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital on 3 June, we have a Blu-ray to give away!

From the legendary filmmaking duo Powell and Pressburger, The Small Back Room (1949) is the story of the troubled love affair between a tormented back-room scientist and a secretary, told against a background of ministerial intrigue and Empire building.

Sammy Rice (David Farrar) was the army’s finest bomb disposal officer until he was injured in the war. Now part of a specialist ‘back room’ team, he dismantles the boobytrapped devices being dropped by Nazi bombers. He falls in love with Susan (Kathleen Byron), a colleague, and the two begin a secret affair.

However, embittered by life, he feels inferior: inferior as a lover, inferior as a man unable to wear uniform, inferior in his work. Although a brilliant scientist,...

Reuniting the stars of Black Narcissus, this movie about a back-room boffin attached to a bomb disposal unit finds the film-makers pushing gloriously against genre conventions

Kathleen Byron and David Farrar were unforgettable presences in the 1947 Powell and Pressburger classic Black Narcissus, playing a hysterical nun and the taciturn colonial agent with whom she is peevishly infatuated. The film-makers reunited these remarkable performers two years later for this intimate, intense wartime drama thriller; brilliant on the emotional misery, low-level dread and petty office politics of wartime government. It takes place mostly in London’s noirish darkness and rain, except for the sensational final sequence in the bright sunlight of Chesil beach in Dorset.

Adapted from an autobiographical novel by military scientist Nigel Balchin, The Small Back Room is a work that shows the film-makers pushing – brilliantly – at the conventions and constraints of a regular wartime period drama. Any number of...

It’s not often that a doc about the transformative power of cinema will deliberately use bad clips of the movies it’s talking about, but that’s part of the point of this insightful, sprawling film, corralled by director David Hinton. Though the masterpieces made by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger at the height of their big-screen, Technicolor powers were visually impeccable, their subversive emotional power could still pack a punch through a 16-inch TV screen, even from the most scratched, butchered, and washed-out black-and-white prints.

This is, famously, how the young Martin Scorsese discovered The Archers (as the pairing styled themselves), and in this lengthy discourse he gets to position them both as an influence on his own movies and as unsung heroes in the history of world cinema. Now, there are plenty of people who will immediately say that Powell and Pressburger have actually been sung quite a bit,...

Blanchett in imperious zealot mode is hard to resist, but Warwick Thornton’s story of orphans and evangelists in the 40s outback never quite fulfils its promise

Cate Blanchett gives it the full wimple as cantankerous alcoholic nun Sister Eileen in Warwick Thornton’s woozily mystical and slightly unfocused drama set in a remote outback Catholic orphanage in 1940s wartime Australia - and really only a period setting would give us the spectacle of Blanchett in the complete picturesque nun outfit, now a rarity in the modern age.

Blanchett brings to it a fierce authority born of repressed emotion in the time honoured nuns-on-film manner - although she can’t match Kathleen Byron’s troubled nun in Powell and Pressburger’s Black Narcissus.

Betty Gilpin in Mrs. Davis (Photo by: Colleen Hayes/Peacock) Background: Sally Field in The Flying Nun (Photo by ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images), Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act (Afro Newspaper/Gado/Contributor), Black Narcissus (John Kobal Foundation/Contributor), Siobahn McSweeney in Derry Girls (Netflix...

Take a look at more footage from the FX/BBC drama TV miniseries,"Black Narcissus" (referencing the Caron perfume 'Narcisse noir'), based on the 1939 novel of the same name by Rumer Godden, starring the late Diana Rigg as 'Mother Dorothea', Gemma Arterton as 'Sister Clodagh' and Alessandro Nivola as 'Mr. Dean':

"... a nun is sent to establish a branch of her order with her fellow sisters in the Himalayas, but struggles to temper her attractions to a 'World War I' veteran..." 

Cast also includes Aisling Franciosi as 'Sister Ruth', Jim Broadbent as 'Father Roberts', Gina McKee as 'Sister Adela', Rosie Cavaliero as 'Sister Briony', Patsy Ferran as 'Sister Blanche', Karen Bryson as 'Sister Philippa', Charlie Maher as 'Con', Dipika Kunwar as 'Kanchi' and Gianni Gonsalves as 'Princess Srimati'. 

"Black Narcissus" was previously adapted in 1947, written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger...

...starring Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, Sabu,...

Take a look at more new footage from the upcoming BBC drama TV miniseries,"Black Narcissus" (referencing the Caron perfume 'Narcisse noir'), based on the 1939 novel of the same name by Rumer Godden, starring the late Diana Rigg as 'Mother Dorothea', Gemma Arterton as 'Sister Clodagh' and Alessandro Nivola as 'Mr. Dean', premiering November 23, 2020 on FX: 

"... a nun is sent to establish a branch of her order with her fellow sisters in the Himalayas, but struggles to temper her attractions to a 'World War I' veteran..." 

Cast also includes Aisling Franciosi as 'Sister Ruth', Jim Broadbent as 'Father Roberts', Gina McKee as 'Sister Adela', Rosie Cavaliero as 'Sister Briony', Patsy Ferran as 'Sister Blanche', Karen Bryson as 'Sister Philippa', Charlie Maher as 'Con', Dipika Kunwar as 'Kanchi' and Gianni Gonsalves as 'Princess Srimati'. 

"Black Narcissus" was previously adapted in 1947, written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

"Black Narcissus", referencing the Caron perfume 'Narcisse noir', is the new BBC drama miniseries, based on the 1939 novel of the same name by Rumer Godden, starring the late Diana Rigg as 'Mother Dorothea', Gemma Arterton as "Sister Clodagh and Alessandro Nivola as 'Mr. Dean', premiering November 23, 2020 on FX: 

"... a nun is sent to establish a branch of her order with her fellow sisters in the Himalayas, but struggles to temper her attractions to a 'World War I' veteran..." 

Cast also includes Aisling Franciosi as 'Sister Ruth', Jim Broadbent as 'Father Roberts', Gina McKee as 'Sister Adela', Rosie Cavaliero as 'Sister Briony', Patsy Ferran as 'Sister Blanche', Karen Bryson as 'Sister Philippa', Charlie Maher as 'Con', Dipika Kunwar as 'Kanchi' and Gianni Gonsalves as 'Princess Srimati'. 

"Black Narcissus" was previously adapted in 1947, written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger...

...starring Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, Sabu, David Farrar,...

Why is it that, when a horror film achieves something special, both the critics and the public tend to elevate it above and beyond the ‘lowly’ horror genre? David Lynch’s most humane and sympathetic film still makes our heads spin, and this new 4K remaster renders Freddie Francis’s great cinematography at its best. Lynch extends and develops the visual nightmares of his experimental Eraserhead for this true-life classic. Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller and Freddie Jones all give indelible, emotionally-moving performances. How many horror pictures hold up hope for social decency and personal dignity?

The Elephant Man

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1051

1980 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 123 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 29, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Freddie Jones, Michael Elphick, Hannah Gordon, Helen Ryan, John Standing, Dexter Fletcher, Lesley Dunlop, Phoebe Nicholls, Lydia Lisle,...

“The Nun,” a prequel to “The Conjuring” series of horror films, finds a young nun traveling to Romania to investigate a demon that has potentially latched itself onto a nun. With that premise, things are bound to get a little crazy. Of course, there’s a long history in film of taking chaste, pious women who have become nuns on film and testing their resolve, of taken their faith to wild extremes, or playing on that goodness for comedy. Say a few rosaries and check out these nun movies.

“Sister Act” (1992)

Whoopi Goldberg goes into the witness protection program and winds up a jump-roping, gospel singing, foul-mouthed nun with Maggie Smith looking down her nose at her in “Sister Act.” The film made an ungodly sum as the sixth highest grossing movie of the year and spawned a sequel.

“Black Narcissus” (1947)

Powell & Pressburger’s 1947 drama is about as lush and...

The wonder movie of 1946 sees the Archers infusing the ‘Film Blanc’ fantasy with amazing images and powerful emotions. Imagination and resourcefulness accomplishes miracles on a Stairway to Heaven, with visual effects never bettered in the pre-cgi era. Michael Powell’s command of the screen overpowers a soon-obsoleted theme about U.S.- British relations.

A Matter of Life and Death

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 939

1946 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 104 min. / Stairway to Heaven / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 26, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Marius Goring, Roger Livesey, Robert Coote, Kathleen Byron, Richard Attenborough, Bonar Colleano, Joan Maude.

Cinematography: Jack Cardiff

Film Editor: Reginald Mills

Production Design: Alfred Junge

Original Music: Allan Gray

Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger came into their own making wartime movies, most of which steered far clear of the accepted definition of propaganda. After their Anglo-Dutch...

Mubi is showing Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Small Back Room (1949), The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) in November and December, 2017 in the United States in the series Powell & Pressburger: Together and Apart.The story goes that when they were casting their first flat-out masterpiece together, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger sent a letter to an actress outlining a manifesto of their production company, called "the Archers." At the time, the Archers was freshly incorporated, with Powell and Pressburger sharing all credit for writing, directing, and producing, and their manifesto had five points. Point one was to ensure that they provided their financial backers with "a profit, not a loss," which may raise eyebrows among those who are used to manifestos burning with anti-capitalist fire—but then, in a system like commercial cinema, profitability buys freedom.

It’s not exactly remarkable that cinema has been around long enough to chart the rise of modern psychology. The first century of film covers society’s entire 20th, a hundred-year span rife with innovation in a great many fields. But as art is keen on investigating the psyche, it’s little surprise that cinema would try to keep pace in some way with the study and expression of it. From the psychological thriller to the psychodrama to most horror films, the study of the mind onscreen sometimes unfolds perfectly naturally, and other times feels like a stiff lecture from somebody who read a really fascinating article in Time the month before. Look no further than Psycho for an example of both, but look to three films that played at the TCM Classic Film Festival for some pretty wild takes.

Based on a novel by a prominent psychologist (once president...

No, not a blind Sherlock Holmes, but a blind Van Johnson, who directs his butler, his girlfriend Vera Miles and the London police to thwart a crime based on something he overheard in a bar. Henry Hathaway directs a complicated murder mystery that plays like a combo of Rear Window and Wait Until Dark, with a cranky Van Johnson as the central character.

23 Paces to Baker Street

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 103 min. / Street Date February 21, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Van Johnson, Vera Miles, Cecil Parker, Patricia Laffan, Maurice Denham, Estelle Winwood, Liam Redmond, Isobel Elsom, Martin Benson, Queenie Leonard.

Cinematography: Milton Krasner

Film Editor: James B. Clark

Original Music: Leigh Harline

Written by Nigel Balchin from the novel Warrant for X by Philip MacDonald

Produced by Henry Ephron

Directed by Henry Hathaway

In the 1950s the murder mystery thriller came of age, as creakier older formulas...

"The music seemed extraordinarily fresh and genuine still. It might grow old-fashioned, he told himself, but never old, surely, while there was any youth left in men. It was an expression of youth–that, and no more; with sweetness and foolishness, the lingering accent, the heavy stresses–the delicacy, too–belonging to that time."—"The Professor's House," Willa CatherHis last words, in a hospital four months later, are said to have been 'Mind your own business!' addressed to an enquirer after the state of his bowels. Friends got to the studio just before the wreckers' ball. Pictures, a profusion, piles of them, littered the floor: of 'a world that will never be seen except in pictures'"—"The Pound Era," Hugh Kenner***Heart Of FIREOften when I go to a movie, usually one made before 1960, I think about the opening scene of The Red Shoes, of Marius Goring and his...

Hammer have had something of a renaissance on Blu-ray recently, with StudioCanal releasing a number of classic titles in new hi-def editions. And now, released as part of Network’s ‘The British Film’ collection, comes two of Hammer’s “sexier” films of the 70s: the infamous Twins of Evil, starring Playboy Playmates Mary and Madeleine Collinson; and Countess Dracula, which features a career-defining performance from Ingrid Pitt in the titular role.

Despite being made during Hammer early-70s fallow period, where the studio was running out of stories, out of budget and were being left behind by more “extreme” horror films and exploitation movies emanating from the Us (after all this was just after the release of Night of the Living Dead which ultimately changed the face of the genre forever), both Twins of Evil and Countess Dracula are beloved by fans of the studio, and with good reason.

Twins of Evil

Stars: Peter Cushing,...

And here we are. The day after Easter and we’ve reached the top of the mountain. While compiling this list, it’s become evident that true religious films just aren’t made anymore (and if they are, they are widely panned). That being said, religious themes exist in more mainstream movies than ever, despite there being no deliberate attempts to dub the films “religious.” Faith, God, whatever you want to call it – it’s influenced the history of nations, of politics, of culture, and of film. And these are the most important films in that wheelhouse. There are only two American films in the top 10, and only one of them is in English.

courtesy of hilobrow.com

10. Andrei Rublev (1966)

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

A brutally expansive biopic about the Russian iconographer divided into nine chapters. Andrei Rublev (Anatoly Solonitsyn) is portrayed not as a silent monk, but a motivated artist working against social ruin,...

Black Narcissus(1947)

Written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

UK, 1947

Black Narcissus is the story of a group of nuns, led by Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr), who attempt to build a hospital and school for girls deep in the Himalayas. Resting on a windy cliff 9,000 feet above a small village, their new home is an abandoned palace that housed all the concubines for the General, who is deceased – his son now runs the village. The women struggle with repressing their passions in this exotic and isolated location, and tension mounts between Clodagh and the mentally unstable Sister Ruth, who are both attracted to the dashing Mr. Dean, a British agent to the reigning General. Directed by the powerful duo of Powell and Pressburger, with director of photography Jack Cardiff, who won an Oscar for his revelatory work, Black Narcissus’ power comes from its alluring suggestiveness and dreamy setting,...

Beyond the Hills

Directed by Cristian Mungiu

Written by Cristian Mungiu

Romania, 2012

Dreadful anticipation, the kind that most mainstream horror films strive for and fail to achieve, permeates every second of Beyond the Hills, a new film from Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu. The film, a patient, uneasy drama about the nature and presence of evil set against the backdrop of a small Romanian monastery and its newest member, grows more and more disturbing as its players go to the extremes to banish out the perceived other from their would-be purified community. Though Beyond the Hills has a too-slow first act, on the whole, the film is quietly devastating.

Cosmina Stratan plays Voichiţa, a young woman ensconced in that monastery since leaving an orphanage where she spent her childhood. As Beyond the Hills opens, she picks up her old friend from the orphanage, Alina (Cristina Flutur), so they can live out...

This restored silent from 1928 is terrific – and the exotic and futurist London locations are a treat

Anthony Asquith's 1928 black-and-white silent, Underground, restored three years ago with a great new score by Neil Brand, is now on general release, and it's terrific: an elegantly crafted melodrama with exotic and futurist London locations, and echoes of Lang and Hitchcock. Norah Baring is fascinating as the wronged woman, Kate, given to strange Ocd mannerisms and sightless staring: a performance to compare with Kathleen Byron in Powell's Black Narcissus. Two men fall in love with the same woman – demure shopworker Nell (Elissa Landi) – whom they see on the London Underground. Bill (Brian Aherne) is a decent chap who works on the Tube, but Bert (Cyril McLaglen) is a rougher, moodier sort, who is prepared to exploit his ex-girlfriend Kate in a plot to destroy Bill's chances. This love triangle evolves into a quadrangle,...

Forty 1940s Films: ‘Black Narcissus

Written & Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Starring Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, Sabu, and Jean Simmons

UK, 100 min – 1947.

Black Narcissus recreates the western world’s allure for the exotic – with a twist. This is no escapist, romantic drama in the style of Arabian Nights. With Black Narcissus, Powell and Pressburger fill the screen with sexual tension and repressed desire that correlate with Britain’s failed attempts to maintain its empire, post war.

The ‘exotic’ in Black Narcissus are the Himalayas, where five nuns, led by Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) are sent to establish a convent. They arrive to find the palace promised to them, by the Old General (Esmond Knight), to be where the General’s father kept his women. Their first obstacle then seems to be reforming the wild nature of the people they refer to as “children.” Soon though, the nuns are affected by the windy environment,...

By Allen Gardner

The Samurai Trilogy (Criterion) Director Hiroshi Inagaki’s sprawling epic filmed from 1954-56 is an early Japanese Technicolor masterpiece, rivaling the scope of filmmakers like David Lean and Luchino Visconti. Toshiro Mifune, Japan’s greatest actor, stars as real-life swordsman, artist and writer Musashi Miyamoto, following his growth from callow youth to disciplined warrior. The three films: the Oscar winning “Musashi Miyamoto,” “Duel at Ichijoji Temple,” and “Duel at Ganryu Island” are an incredible story of human growth, tender love and sublime, blood-soaked action. Not to be missed. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Interviews with translator and historian William Scott Wilson; Trailers. Full screen. Dolby 1.0 mono.

The 39 Steps (Criterion) Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 story of spies, conspiracies and sexual tension put him on the map on both sides of the Pond. Robert Donat stars as an innocent thrust into a deadly plot alongside a cool blonde (Madeleine Carroll...

The Fountainhead with Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper Photo: Courtesy of TCM

Liza Minnelli, Kim Novak, Robert Wagner, Tippi Hedren and Debbie Reynolds in person. Black Narcissus, Vertigo, Cabaret, and The Fountainhead projected on gigantic screens at Grauman's Chinese and Egyptian Theatres. Could any classic film fan wish for more? You could. And, at this year's annual TCM Classic Film Festival, which takes place from April 12th through the 15th, you'd get more: Kirk Douglas, Stanley Donen, Angie Dickenson, Norman Lloyd, Rhonda Fleming, and Norman Jewison appearing at special events and screenings of Two for the Road, Chinatown, Casablanca, The Longest Day, and The Thomas Crown Affair. But before going on about this year's festival, a look back is essential.

Chinatown's Faye Dunaway and Jack NicholsonPhoto: Courtesy of TCM

TCM 2010 & 2011

TCM's 2010 festival featured an opening night restoration of George Cukor's A Star Is Born (1954) starring Judy Garland and...

Watching the Powell/Pressburger classic in the place it's set gave it a darker, more subversive slant

I've just returned from the Isle of Mull in Scotland. It was a holiday which quickly assumed the character of a secular pilgrimage to the key locations in the 1945 Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger classic I Know Where I'm Going!, a sublime and utterly distinctive romantic comedy, set towards the end of the second world war.

It stars Wendy Hiller as the headstrong, self-possessed and rather conceited young Englishwoman, Joan Webster, who travels to the Hebrides to marry a wealthy industrialist on the remote island of Kiloran. Foul weather strands her on the neighbouring island of Mull the night before their wedding – the first time in her life anything or anyone has ever interfered with her plans. Yet, little by little, she finds herself beguiled by the island and the islanders – in particular Torquil MacNeil,...

This week clip joint focuses on the power of the pout, bringing you five of film's most kissable lipstick scenes

Lipstick and cinema grew up together. Commercially available lipsticks hit the American market in the 1890s, just as Koster and Bial's Music Hall began exhibiting the first moving pictures. Before then lipstick was considered the preserve of the stage actress and the prostitute, a preconception that cinema's luxuriantly lippy-d stars helped to erode.

In the black and white world lipstick provided definition. It helped make great performances ("You know how to whistle, don't you Steve? ...) iconic and later, powered the signature pouts of actors such as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. Rouged lips came to dominate the silver screen, selling beauty, sex and glamour – the promise of Hollywood applied through the application of a tinted, waxy pigment. Here are five clips that explore the power of that painted pout:

1) The old "look,...

Deborah Kerr, pony, Michael Powell on the Black Narcissus set The Criterion Collection has posted a series of images providing a glimpse behind the scenes of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1947 classic Black Narcissus. Set in the Himalayas, this adaptation of Rumer Godden's novel was filmed entirely in Britain, chiefly at Pinewood Studios. Make sure to check it out here. In the beautifully nuanced Black Narcissus, Deborah Kerr stars as an Anglican nun sent to a convent in the Himalayas. The location's rarefied air and the presence of David Farrar brings to the surface the nun's latent ambivalence toward her vows. Tragedy ensues when another nun, played by Kathleen Byron, falls madly in lust/love with Farrar's character. Also in the Black Narcissus cast: Flora Robson, Sabu, Jean Simmons (in heavy makeup as a local girl), and Esmond Knight. For her efforts in both Black Narcissus and I See a Dark Stranger,...

Natalie Portman excels in this gripping ballet psychodrama from Darren Aronofsky. Peter Bradshaw applauds a film about fear, love and hatred

Fantastically deranged at all times, Darren Aronofsky's ballet psycho-melodrama is a glittering, crackling, outrageously pickable scab of a film.

At its centre is young ballerina Nina Sayers, played by Natalie Portman. She is beautiful, vulnerable, sexually naive and susceptible to mental illness. To play the role of a lifetime, Nina must delve deep into her own dark side. As her hallucinations and anxiety attacks escalate in tandem with her progress in rehearsal, artistic breakthrough fuses with nervous breakdown. This is a movie about fear of penetration, fear of your body, fear of being supplanted in the affections of a powerful man, love of perfection, love of dance, and perhaps most importantly of all, passionate and overwhelming hatred of your mother.

Portman has decisively moved out of the ugly...

The Brits are best known for Merchant/Ivory-type films – adaptations of classic novels, Shakespeare, class. This is ironic for a number of reasons, perhaps most notably because neither Merchant nor Ivory are British. Though it might be fair to say that a number of the great British directors weren’t sensualists, but even there if you watch the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, there is great passion, and great sensuality. Powell and Pressburger’s Black Narcissus practically drips with under the surface eroticism. Deborah Kerr stars as a nun sent to the Himalayas to start a school, but once there she fights against the environment to stay in control of her fellow nuns and herself. My review of Criterion’s Blu-ray of Black Narcissus after the jump.

When a rich general gives a large temple in the Himalayas to an English nunnery, five nuns are sent to colonize it and assist the locals.

Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes

The Films

You have to feel sorry for Britain’s film community. Directors don’t get recognized until they make it to Hollywood, at which point they become absorbed into the American system. Hitchcock and Chaplin were not only English by birth but by nature, predisposed to dry comedy and, certainly in Hitch’s case, dark irony. Yet they’re among the purest examples of Hollywood filmmakers, two of the five most influential directors funded by the American system, and they’re but early examples of America’s way of denying England its own cinematic glory.

As such, the relative obscurity into which Michael Powell and his frequent collaborator, Emeric Pressburger, have fallen is at once tragic and completely foreseeable. In their heyday, the British director and the Hungarian ex-pat screenwriter, operating under the moniker The Archers, could easily have secured work in Hollywood,...

DVD Playhouse—July 2010

By

Allen Gardner

Two From Powell/Pressburger Criterion releases gorgeous new transfers of two of the greatest films to come out of post-war Britain, from that period’s greatest filmmaking team: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Black Narcissus was originally released in 1947 and caused a sensation with its explosive story about a nun (Deborah Kerr), cloistered in a remote convent in the Himalayas, who must battle elements both external (the punishing weather) and internal (temptations of the flesh over duty to the spirit). Also features stellar turns by England’s greatest actresses at the time: Flora Robson, Kathleen Byron and a young Jean Simmons. One of the most dazzling films ever made, bolstered by Oscar-winning cinematography from Jack Cardiff. Bonuses: New transfer, supervised by Cardiff, editor Thelma Schoonmaker Powell; Introduction by filmmaker Bernard Tavernier; Commentary by Powell and Martin Scorsese; Featurettes; Documentaries and interviews; Trailer. The Red Shoes,...

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made many films, but the two works that have come to define them are Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948). These films are very different yet they share a lush, perfectionist aesthetic that elevates their dramatic stories to unmatched sensory heights.

In Black Narcissus, a group of English nuns -- including Deborah Kerr, Flora Robson, and a beautifully spooky Kathleen Byron -- move to the Himalayas to start a convent. The exotically and erotically decorated building they occupy was once home to a harem. The lingering spirt of fleshy desire invades the minds of the nuns, clouding their thoughts and causing them to do unpious things like: plant flowers instead of food; dream of past romances; and most importantly, lust after a fancy land owner who rides a miniature pony. The end result, at least for one nun, is madness. 

Depictions of tempted nuns have a long,...

Cop Out

I missed Kevin Smith's homage to the buddy cop genre and can't wait to pick this up. His movies always have great extras as well.

Extras include:

"Maximum Comedy Mode" - Picture-in-Picture walk-ons, stretches of audio and video commentary, more than an hour of deleted scenes and outtakes, additional behind-the-scenes footage, wisdom from the Shit Bandit, pop-up production factoids, storyboards, etc.Focus Point featurettes:a Couple of DicksThe New Buddy Cop DuoKevin Pollak - Man of a Thousand Voices and InterestsImprovising - Now That's FunnyPoh Boy's Diamond VaultStunts-Brooklyn StyleTracy Morgan Speaks SpanglishDave's Calling CarKevin Smith DirectsThe individual Shit Bandit wisdom shorts

The Losers

Got mixed reviews but as a fan of the comic I wanna check it out.

Extras include:

Zoe and The LosersBand of Buddies: Ops TrainingAction-Style StorytellingAlternate EndingFirst Look - Batman: Under the Red Hood

The Runaways

Have heard good things about this Joan Jett biopic.

Following last weekend’s general release of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, those of us who’ve seen it (and perhaps many who haven’t yet) are contemplating cinema’s ability to capture and partially emulate the dream state, as well as that film’s commentary on the structures of consciousness and our inherently subjective experience of reality. This week’s new Criterion releases may not be the first films that come to mind when we think of works that influenced or remind us of Inception, but they both have plenty to say about disoriented psyches functioning as best they can under mind-bending pressure, using vivid color and evocative compositional schemes to masterful effect in the process.

Yes, I’m talking about Powell & Pressburger’s signature works from the late 1940s, The Red Shoes (read James’ review of the Blu-ray) and Black Narcissus. Both films have been available on Criterion Laserdisc...

Movie heavens tend to be rural, because we've been brainwashed into thinking cornfields are preferable to, say, Paris. But does it have to be so boring?

"It's heaven!" says a dead girl as she drifts through one of the CGI landscapes in Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones. To which you feel like replying, "Duh, no. It's a field of corn." What is it about fields of corn? There was one in the afterlife in Steven Spielberg's Always as well, though at least that had Audrey Hepburn in it.

You wouldn't catch me dead in a cornfield, which I'd worry was just waiting for creepy children, crows or crop-dusting planes to roll up. Jackson hedges his bets by piling on dozens of other backdrops, ranging from Caspar David Friedrich to The Sound of Music, but like most film-makers' visions of the beyond, they're all corny. It's as though their...

Rereleased, the 1948 ballet classic stands the test of time. By Peter Bradshaw

The Red Shoes, the 1948 classic by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, has now been vividly restored for a cinema rerelease and it just blazes out of the screen: profoundly serious, sublimely innocent, yet deeply and mysteriously erotic. This is the compelling parable of the destructive demands made by art upon the artist, and upon performing artists expected to sublimate their emotions into a quasi-sexual submission to their director – a parable that seems to change into a portrait of psychotic disorder or actual demonic possession. It is also, incidentally, a portrait of an age in which the marriage contract instantly nullified a woman's professional identity. Moira Shearer is the beautiful English ingenue Vicky Page, who, on the premature retirement of her ballet company's leading lady, is catapulted to the position of prima ballerina. She has been promoted by Boris Lermontov,...

Photo: Criterion Collection

Last night I watched Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1947 Oscar-winning Black Narcissus telling the story of a group of nuns who set out to establish a school in the desolate Himalayas. Of course, that short description does nothing to describe what actually happens in this film. There are hints along the way, and you realize the setup is perfect once you go back and watch it again (which I did this morning), but the most striking character arc belongs to Sister Ruth played by Kathleen Byron. We are first introduced to Sister Ruth as an empty chair and Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) saying, "But Sister Ruth is ill," and asking, "Do you think our vocation is her vocation?" To which Mother Dorothea (Nancy Roberts), "Yes, she's a problem. I'm afraid she'll be a problem for you, too." With that said, here are ten screen captures of...