The filmmaking partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger was one of the most remarkable and visionary in cinema. They made an extraordinary range of films, from The Spy in Black and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp to A Canterbury Tale and The Red Shoes. With champions like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, and revived critical interest worldwide, they now find new generations of admirers. This illuminating new book looks closely at these classic films to explore their complex relationship to national identity, and their developing interest in exile, borderlands, utopias, escapism, art and fantasy. Moor reveals how the visual imagery of the films of World War II question current cinematic styles and how post-war films like The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman--in their highly expressive use of design, music and dance--are international in character.

Powell and Pressburger largely operated in a time when film was understood as at least translucent, with thoughts and motivations very much at the surface. They were unique in offering layered characters and perplexing situations, often in the contexts of intellectual concerns about the place of the exotic and pastoral, and the roles of art, fantasy, myth and the intellect in ordinary lives. Moor (English and film U. of Wales carefully analyzes these least traditional of filmmakers at the middle of the last century and gives interesting insights into such leading-edge films as Black Narcissus, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and the 1944 A Canterbury Tale, which most certainly did not fit the mold of wartime sentiment. Distributed in the US by Palgrave.
Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Powell and Pressburger largely operated in a time when film was understood as at least translucent, with thoughts and motivations very much at the surface. They were unique in offering layered characters and perplexing situations, often in the contexts of intellectual concerns about the place of the exotic and pastoral, and the roles of art, fantasy, myth and the intellect in ordinary lives. Moor (English and film U. of Wales carefully analyzes these least traditional of filmmakers at the middle of the last century and gives interesting insights into such leading-edge films as Black Narcissus, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and the 1944 A Canterbury Tale, which most certainly did not fit the mold of wartime sentiment. Distributed in the US by Palgrave. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Andrew Moor is Lecturer in Film, University of Wales.

Introduction: Magic Spaces: Migration, Home and the National * Alien Territories and Enemy Lines - The Spy in Black, Contraband, 49th Parallel, '....one of our aircraft is missing' * Satire Epic and Memory - The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp * Two Pastorals - A Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I'm Going * Post-war Masculinities: The Pilot and the Backroom Boy - A Matter of Life and Death * Post-war Femininities: Mopu, Madness and Melodrama - Black Narcissus * Art and Artists - The Red Shoes, The Tales of Hoffmann * Bibliography * Index

Introduction: Magic Spaces: Migration, Home and the National * Alien Territories and Enemy Lines - The Spy in Black, Contraband, 49th Parallel, '....one of our aircraft is missing' * Satire Epic and Memory - The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp * Two Pastorals - A Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I'm Going * Post-war Masculinities: The Pilot and the Backroom Boy - A Matter of Life and Death * Post-war Femininities: Mopu, Madness and Melodrama - Black Narcissus * Art and Artists - The Red Shoes, The Tales of Hoffmann * Bibliography * Index