Category: Films

Review: The Films of Michael Powell & The Archers by Scott Salwolke

The Films of Michael Powell and The Archers [1997] – ★★★1/2

A good, introductory book on The Archers’ craft, and how the times in which the directors worked impacted their cinematic masterworks.

“In my films, images are everything” (Michael Powell).

The Red Shoes (1948), The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Black Narcissus (1947), A Matter of Life & Death (1946) – these are some of the greatest films ever produced, but how did one unlikely duo of British film-makers, Michael Powell (1905-1990) and Emeric Pressburger (1902-1988), better known as The Archers, manage to achieve such level of cinematic mastery, while also working in a tricky political and economic situation, and more amazingly, without the support from Hollywood? In his bibliographical non-fiction, Scott Salwolke may not be unveiling all the keys to the mysteries of The Archers’ craft, but he certainly provides a fascinating historical background to many of their cinematic masterworks, focusing on the film-makers’ influencers and revealing how their films emerged to be so different from those of their contemporaries.

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Non-Fiction Reviews: “Making Movies”, “Gomorrah”, & “Pure Invention”

I. Making Movies [1995] by Sidney Lumet – ★★★★

This book on movie-making is by American director Sidney Lumet (1924 – 2011) who was probably best known for directing a number of “legal” films including 12 Angry Men [1957], Murder on the Orient Express [1974] and The Verdict [1982]. It provides a deep insight into the “magical” process of making movies, from deciding whether to do a movie (Lumet almost always decided “instinctively”) to the final editing process and running previews. Lumet was a “trier” and a “doer”. He tells us in his book that he did not believe in waiting around for opportunities and liked to create his own luck. His eagerness to create chances reflected the sheer variety of films he directed. Cinematic success is hard to pin down, he states. That is also his first lesson to us: “nobody knows what that magic combination is that produces a first-rate piece of work” [Vintage, 1995: 9]. Even a great script or a great star-actor does not guarantee success.

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