Put on your red shoes and dance: the endur­ing eupho­ria of Pow­ell & Pressburger

In the 1975 musi­cal A Cho­rus Line, audi­tion­ee Sheila says that she start­ed danc­ing after see­ing The Red Shoes as a girl before singing that ​“every­thing was beau­ti­ful at the bal­let”. Sheila rep­re­sents those for whom Michael Pow­ell and Emer­ic Pressburger’s 1948 bal­let film was a sem­i­nal cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence. Pow­ell him­self wrote in his 1992 auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Mil­lion-Dol­lar Movie, ​“It is no longer a film; it is a legend.”

Mil­lion Dol­lar Movie was also the title of an Amer­i­can TV series which broad­cast curat­ed films twice-night­ly between 1955 and 1966. It was this series which intro­duced Mar­tin Scors­ese to many of the films that inspired his sen­si­bil­i­ty, includ­ing those of Pow­ell and Press­burg­er. When I was a child I saw a DVD trail­er about film restora­tion which fea­tured Scors­ese talk­ing about how he had saved The Red Shoes through his pas­sion project The Film Foun­da­tion. I remem­ber the clips shown, with those deli­cious crim­son pointe shoes pop­ping off the screen. It ignit­ed my pas­sion for Pow­ell and Pressburger.

It seems that every­one who loves these films has a sim­i­lar sto­ry. I spoke to film schol­ar and silent film spe­cial­ist Pamela Hutchin­son about her new book, a BFI Film Clas­sic ded­i­cat­ed to The Red Shoes, about what she thinks con­tin­ues to appeal to new gen­er­a­tions. ​“Their movies engage all the sens­es, depict a vast, bewitch­ing uni­verse, and pro­fess a faith in the very spe­cif­ic qual­i­ties of cin­e­ma to build worlds and cre­ate impos­si­ble beau­ty,” she says. ​“This strand of exu­ber­ance has always been part of British cin­e­ma, but they brought it out to its fullest expres­sion with their films.”

The BFI is about to exploit this cin­e­mat­ic draw to the full, launch­ing the biggest ret­ro­spec­tive of the cre­ative partnership’s work to date from 16 Octo­ber. ​‘Cin­e­ma Unbound: The Cre­ative Worlds of Pow­ell and Press­burg­er’ will take over the BFI South­bank in Lon­don as well as venues across the UK, show­ing every­thing from Powell’s ear­ly ​‘quo­ta quick­ies’ and Pressburger’s UFA screen­plays to the duo’s final fron­tiers in tele­vi­sion and Aus­tralia. The aim is to intro­duce new audi­ences to their films, via Tech­ni­col­or clas­sics includ­ing A Mat­ter of Life and Death (1946) and Black Nar­cis­sus (1947), and offer unex­plored ter­ri­to­ry to fans with a pletho­ra of rar­i­ties like Hon­ey­moon (1959) and Bluebeard’s Cas­tle (1964).

The duo first came togeth­er at the bequest of leg­endary British film pro­duc­er Alexan­der Kor­da for 1939’s The Spy in Black, a Sec­ond World War espi­onage thriller con­ceived as a vehi­cle for Con­rad Vei­dt. ​‘Man of Kent’ Pow­ell and Jew­ish-Hun­gar­i­an emi­gré Press­burg­er were both con­tract­ed to Kor­da, and their repar­tee led to a shared writer-direc­tor-pro­duc­er cred­it under the ban­ner of their new com­pa­ny, The Archers. Three decades lat­er, long after the pair had fin­ished mak­ing films togeth­er, Scors­ese intro­duced Pow­ell to his new edi­tor, Thel­ma Schoon­mak­er. They fell in love and were mar­ried in 1984.

Since her husband’s death in 1990, Schoon­mak­er has worked with Scors­ese on secur­ing Pow­ell and Pressburger’s lega­cy. They have col­lab­o­rat­ed on restora­tions of their films, includ­ing I Know Where I’m Going (1945), The Small Back Room (1949), and Peep­ing Tom (1960) which are receiv­ing UK releas­es over the com­ing months. It will allow audi­ences to see their films in the full bril­liance of their orig­i­nal show­ings, and for many to see them for the very first time.

The sea­son has been divid­ed up by theme rather than show­ing the films chrono­log­i­cal­ly, mov­ing through fan­ta­sy and spec­ta­cle, myth and land­scape, nation­al­ism and con­flict, opera and bal­let, and out­siders and obses­sives. Talk­ing about the inspi­ra­tion for the struc­ture, cura­tor James Bell says, ​“We start­ed from the BFI Nation­al Archives col­lec­tion and moved from there. For exam­ple, we have a beau­ti­ful rare print of Oh… Ros­alin­da!! [1955], and we want audi­ences to be aware that this is an irre­place­able expe­ri­ence.” The cen­tral place of orig­i­nal film prints in the sea­son fol­lows the resound­ing suc­cess of the BFI’s inau­gur­al Film on Film fes­ti­val in June. ​“That proved there’s an appetite for see­ing the orig­i­nal arte­facts,” Bell reflects.

Many films in the pro­gramme are being shown on orig­i­nal prints where pos­si­ble, with sev­er­al shown on new­ly restored prints includ­ing Con­tra­band (1940), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), and The Tales of Hoff­mann (1951) made by the BFI with Nation­al Lot­tery fund­ing and the Keep Film on Film cam­paign. The crown­ing jew­el of the sea­son will be a nitrate print of Black Nar­cis­sus, trans­port­ing the audi­ence right back to the film’s first glo­ri­ous exhi­bi­tion in 1947.

Bell has also been painstak­ing­ly remas­ter­ing Powell’s ear­ly films in 4K. ​“I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed that we’re bring­ing in a film called Behind the Mask (1936), a trun­cat­ed post-war release ver­sion of Powell’s last quo­ta quick­ie, Man Behind the Mask, which was pre­vi­ous­ly on the BFI’s most-want­ed list,” Bell says. ​“We didn’t have a copy of it in the archive but man­aged to track one down to an archive in the States and bring it over.”

The new 35mm print of The Red Shoes is due for release in Decem­ber, per­fect­ly timed with the pub­li­ca­tion of Hutchinson’s book. Asked to reflect on why this film stands out in a stag­ger­ing body of work, she says, ​“Of all the films that they made this is the one that most fer­vent­ly states the case for art as a vital, essen­tial part of life. Its extend­ed, Tech­ni­col­or bal­let sequence is rav­ish­ing and dis­turb­ing, a state­ment all its own about what cin­e­ma can do, unteth­ered from con­ven­tion. I can’t wait for peo­ple to dis­cov­er it all over again.”

Part of that new jour­ney of dis­cov­ery will come with The Red Shoes: Beyond The Mir­ror, a free exhi­bi­tion at the BFI South­bank from Novem­ber fea­tur­ing cos­tumes, pro­duc­tion designs, ephemera, and the red shoes them­selves. Bell is delight­ed to be open­ing up items in the BFI Spe­cial Col­lec­tions to the pub­lic for the first time, includ­ing an array of mate­r­i­al from unre­alised projects through online chan­nels. ​“They retell the sto­ry of Pow­ell after Peep­ing Tom, when he’s washed up com­mer­cial­ly but artis­ti­cal­ly that’s com­plete­ly not the case,” Bell says. ​“The ener­gy is undimmed. If any­thing, it’s even more rad­i­cal than before.” Those projects range from a film of The Tem­pest star­ring James Mason and Mia Far­row to a ver­sion of Ondine intend­ed for Audrey Hep­burn and an adap­ta­tion of Ursu­la Le Guin’s The Tales from Earthsea.

Unlike most BFI sea­sons, this is a nation­al cin­e­mat­ic event. There will be aro­ma-focused immer­sive screen­ings of Black Nar­cis­sus, on-loca­tion screen­ings for I Know Where I’m Going and The Edge of the World (1937), an instal­la­tion at Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cot­tage in Dun­ge­ness, and oth­er events from Cardiff and Der­ry to Cam­bridge and Manchester.

It is extra­or­di­nary to think that by the 1960s Pow­ell and Press­burg­er had com­plete­ly fall­en out of fash­ion in Britain when look­ing at the sheer scale of the pro­gramme. After Pow­ell was exiled for the scan­dal of Peep­ing Tom, he made a film of Belá Bartók’s opera Bluebeard’s Cas­tle for Ger­man tele­vi­sion in 1964. The film has been restored by Schoon­mak­er and Scors­ese to be released in the UK for the first time in Decem­ber, along with a Blu-ray release. Decades after the film­mak­ers left us, there are new films and mate­ri­als for audi­ences to dis­cov­er. To para­phrase Con­duc­tor 71 in A Mat­ter of Life and Death, we are starved of Tech­ni­col­or. Thanks to the BFI, no more.

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.