Thel­ma Schoon­mak­er: ​‘Pow­ell left a lit­tle fur­nace burn­ing inside of me’

Thel­ma Schoon­mak­er has been edit­ing Mar­tin Scorsese’s films since 1980, when they col­lab­o­rat­ed on Rag­ing Bull. While work­ing on that film, Scors­ese intro­duced her to one of Britain’s great­est film­mak­ers, Michael Pow­ell. His career with Emer­ic Press­burg­er had long since end­ed, and his mar­riage to Schoon­mak­er rein­vig­o­rat­ed Pow­ell until his death in 1990. Since then Schoon­mak­er has been the execu­tor of Powell’s lega­cy, work­ing with Scors­ese both as edi­tor, hav­ing just attend­ed the pre­mière of Killers of the Flower Moon, and as a part­ner in restor­ing Powell’s films. With a major ret­ro­spec­tive of Pow­ell and Pressburger’s work about to open at the BFI, Schoon­mak­er reflects on the films, the man, and her enor­mous con­tri­bu­tion to cinema.

LWLies: How did you first meet Michael Powell?

Schoon­mak­er: Mar­ty went to the Edin­burgh Film Fes­ti­val in 1974 to col­lect an award for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any­more. They asked him who he want­ed to present it to him, and he said Michael Pow­ell. They had no idea who he was. No one did, but I found an Amer­i­can doing pub­lic­i­ty for Kubrick’s 2001 who knew where he was. He intro­duced Michael to Mar­ty at a lunch where Mar­ty bom­bard­ed Michael with ques­tions about how he did this and how he did that. Michael writes in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy that the blood start­ed to run in his veins again, it had been so long that he and Emer­ic had been liv­ing in oblivion.

Mar­ty brought Michael to Amer­i­ca, where we had already start­ed work­ing on Rag­ing Bull. Mar­ty had been edu­cat­ing me about Pow­ell and Pressburger’s films, send­ing me home with VHSs. I had fall­en in love with them, and then he said that Michael Pow­ell was com­ing for din­ner one night and asked if I would like to meet him. That’s how we met and even­tu­al­ly became involved, all thanks to Marty.

Did Pow­ell ask you to take care of his legacy?

Yes, he made me his execu­tor. When I lost him it was ter­ri­ble and I didn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly want to live any­more, but I had to help Scors­ese fin­ish Good­fel­las. That pulled me through. Michael left a lit­tle fur­nace burn­ing inside of me. It’s a great joy to con­stant­ly be involved in intro­duc­ing his films, and I’m work­ing very hard on his diaries, which he start­ed as his career began to fail until the end of his life, to hope­ful­ly get pub­lished. Liv­ing with the words he wrote every day is just incredible.

When you are work­ing on the restora­tions, do you have to try to see things from Powell’s perspective?

Oh yes, from what he said to me per­son­al­ly over the ten years we were lucky enough to live togeth­er, and also what he says in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy and the diaries. I nev­er get tired of look­ing at it. When we’re doing this we’re watch­ing the films over forty times but I do so hap­pi­ly. They’re sus­tain­ing, they are liv­ing. They are not old movies. They made films for the world, for humanity.

The colour of films like The Red Shoes is cen­tral to their appeal today, but fell out of fash­ion in Britain with the turn to kitchen-sink real­ism and black-and-white films. Could you talk about the process of restor­ing Tech­ni­col­or film?

The rea­son Tech­ni­col­or was so beau­ti­ful was because there were three strips of neg­a­tive being exposed in the cam­era. Over time they had shrunk, so dig­i­tal­ly we were able to realign them so they looked per­fect. There isn’t any blur­ring, and we remove mould, fix scratch­es and dirt, and make them beau­ti­ful again. But it was because Tech­ni­col­or was such a stun­ning, won­der­ful process.

We almost lost all these Tech­ni­col­or neg­a­tives when the CRI, Col­or Rever­sal Inter­pos­i­tive or Interneg­a­tive, was intro­duced and stu­dios start­ed throw­ing them away. The Rank Organ­i­sa­tion called the British Film Insti­tute and said we’re going to destroy these neg­a­tives unless you take them. And so the British Film Insti­tute some­how pulled them­selves togeth­er to save them. Rank dumped their film neg­a­tives in the park­ing lot, it was rain­ing, and the BFI scram­bled to take them in. That’s what we’ve been able to use in these colour restorations.

You’ve recent­ly restored I Know Where I’m Going, which is being released by the BFI in Octo­ber. How did restor­ing a black-and-white film differ?

Erwin Hilli­er was the bril­liant cam­era­man on that film, and he was involved in a trans­fer to video that was done by Cri­te­ri­on. Now we’ve restored it prop­er­ly from the orig­i­nal neg­a­tive, but it was impor­tant for Erwin to tell us how much den­si­ty to give it and so on. One of the most beau­ti­ful shots in film is towards the end where Roger Livesey says good­bye to Wendy Hiller and they walk away from each oth­er. He walks down a lit­tle road which is so beau­ti­ful, and cap­tures the great look of Scotland.

Michael said that Erwin drove him crazy on the film because Erwin would say, ​“Mick­ey, Mick­ey, just a moment, there’s a cloud com­ing that is going to cov­er part of the Sun”, and Michael would say, ​“Just shoot the damn thing!” But Erwin would win out. That’s why they got that beau­ti­ful shot! That’s a par­tic­u­lar favourite, it’s just heavenly.

In his mem­oirs Pow­ell writes about the idea of the ​‘com­posed’ film, in which music and image are com­bined as total­ly as pos­si­ble. What is your per­spec­tive on that concept?

On Black Nar­cis­sus, he worked with Bri­an Eas­dale on the score, who timed that sequence at the end when Sis­ter Ruth comes out on the roof to the music. Scors­ese was so impressed by this that he used that idea in Good­fel­las when De Niro is knock­ing off all the peo­ple who par­tic­i­pat­ed in steal­ing the mon­ey. And he shot, actu­al­ly, with ​‘Lay­la’, the won­der­ful piece of music, and he des­ig­nat­ed cer­tain bars for cer­tain shots, so when I was edit­ing it I had to make sure I was fit­ting that prop­er­ly. He real­ly took that idea from Black Narcissus.

In The Red Shoes, when we enter Vicky Page’s sub­con­scious, the pro­duc­tion design by Hein Heck­roth and Cardiff’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy are very impor­tant, but the edit­ing by Regi­nald Mills isn’t often dis­cussed. Can you talk through the edit­ing of the bal­let from an editor’s perspective?

The bal­let is sup­posed to be intrigu­ing and non-clas­si­cal, jump­ing time frames, because Michael want­ed to show what the dancer was feel­ing, not the audi­ence. The edit­ing is what allows her clothes to get more worn, with­out any care for con­ti­nu­ity. The knife turns into a twig, the dancers speed up and slow down. Mar­ty was very intrigued by all those devices, like the news­pa­per that turns into Robert Help­mann, and even the sim­plic­i­ty of jump­ing into the shoes. The red shoes are wired, and if you stop on the frame you can see the wires. Mills cuts out what’s in between when they were prepar­ing to drop Shear­er in. These are visu­al tricks that peo­ple of the silent era were used to. But Mills was invent­ing a new way of edit­ing film, it’s unlike any­thing else at that time.

Powell’s last film, Bluebeard’s Cas­tle based on Béla Bartók’s opera, is going to be shown in the UK for the first time in Decem­ber. What has the process been like bring­ing that film back to life?

I’ve read Michael’s diary on this film and he loved mak­ing it. They had very lit­tle mon­ey, work­ing for a Ger­man tele­vi­sion sta­tion, fund­ed by the opera singer Nor­man Fos­ter. It was his idea to talk to Hein Heck­roth who was design­ing sets for opera in Frank­furt and he then called up Michael. It was a big sub­ject and they had no mon­ey, but Michael made it work. Then it was dif­fi­cult to get the mate­ri­als togeth­er for restora­tion, but for­tu­nate­ly some­thing did exist that we could work on and there are some video ver­sions with hints of what things should look like. It was an ardu­ous process but it was great fun.

The film is sung in Ger­man rather than the orig­i­nal Hun­gar­i­an, and only has lim­it­ed sub­ti­tles which Pow­ell pro­vid­ed. Why did he not decide to trans­late the whole opera for Eng­lish-speak­ing audiences?

Well this is very inter­est­ing. I’m still con­flict­ed about whether pos­si­bly it was just a mon­e­tary issue to not have sub­ti­tles. but I don’t think so. From what Michael told me he want­ed peo­ple to watch the film and not read sub­ti­tles, because of course in opera there’d been tons of them. He decid­ed that he would just give them a lit­tle bit of a sum­ma­ry of what’s hap­pen­ing so they can get the emo­tion from the music and the performance.

This inspired Mar­ty when we were work­ing on Killers of the Flower Moon. A great por­tion of it is in Osage, and he decid­ed not to have sub­ti­tles in cer­tain places. There’s an argu­ment between DiCaprio and Lily Glad­stone, and you get the idea that she’s upset about the doc­tor giv­ing her a shot because she doesn’t trust them, but there are no sub­ti­tles in that scene. The actors were trained to speak Osage and Lily did it so well that the train­er said she sound­ed like her moth­er. She’s phe­nom­e­nal. And so Mar­ty said no sub­ti­tles here. So that was some­thing that Michael was feel­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly with opera. Where you real­ly want to see the singer emote as well as sing beau­ti­ful­ly. It’s a rad­i­cal idea.

What film would you like to restore next?

Gone to Earth, but there’s all kinds of prob­lems with that. Selznick cut into the orig­i­nal ver­sion so we’re miss­ing frames and things, so that’s going to be a real­ly hard one. But it’s beau­ti­ful. The evo­ca­tion of that part of the bor­der between Eng­land and Wales where Michael’s father grew up. And she’s won­der­ful, Jen­nifer Jones. I think it’s prob­a­bly the best thing she ever did! The BFI will con­tin­ue to be instru­men­tal to that, as they have been through­out the res­ur­rec­tion of Pow­ell and Pressburger’s lega­cy. It’s their vault with all the neg­a­tives and prints, it’s crit­i­cal what they’ve done, and I hope they’ll be allowed to go on doing it!

Cin­e­ma Unbound: The Cre­ative Worlds of Pow­ell + Press­burg­er runs at the BFI South­bank from Octo­ber 17 until Decem­ber 21, with screen­ings and events also tak­ing place at oth­er venues around the UK.