The films of Michael Powell (1905-90) and Emeric Pressburger (1902-88), among them I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), A Matter of Life and Death (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948), are landmarks in British cinema, standing apart from the realist and comic mainstream with their highly stylised aesthetic and their themes of romantic longing and spiritual crisis. Powell and Pressburger are revered by film lovers and film-makers (Martin Scorsese has called them 'the most successful experimental film-makers in the world'). In this first-ever collection of essays on Powell, an international group of critics and scholars map out his film-making skills, providing new readings of individual films, analysing recurrent techniques and themes, and relating them to contemporary debates about gender, sexuality, nationality and cinematic spectacle. Powell, with and without Pressburger, emerges as a film-maker of lasting originality and significance.

Author Biography

Ian Christie is the author of Arrows of Desire: the Films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (1985, 1994) and has written and edited four other books about their work. He has organised many retrospectives and played a part in the films' restoration. He is currently Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a regular broadcaster. Andrew Moor is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Wales in Bangor. He is author of Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces (2005) and contributed essays on Powell and Pressburger to a range of other publications.