The Masters  
The Powell & Pressburger Images

Dedicated to the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and all the other people, both actors and technicians who helped them make those wonderful films.

A lot of the images have come from other web sites. The name of the web site is given where known. If I have unintentionally included an image or document that is copyrighted or that I shouldn't have done then please email me and I'll remove it.

I make no money from this site, it's purely for the love of the films.

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Collecting Studio Stills
By Steve Crook


It has been suggested that I should make a few notes about collecting studio stills as I appear to have gathered quite a few over the years.

Studio Stills are printed on a 10" x 8" format and are intended for publicising the film. As we are dealing mainly with still from the Powell & Pressburger films here I can add that The Archers often used very good stills photographers (Powell was a stills photographer for Rex Ingram and for Hitchcock) and they gave the stills photographers excellent access to the cast, crew and during the filming, not just for posed photographs. The studio stills for the Archers films are all in black & white - even when the film itself is in colour. This is not a disadvantage. They can be just as beautiful and artistic as the equivalent scene from the film. B&W photography (or cinematography) is as much an art form as colour photography - just a slightly different one. The creator of the image is just looking for different things.

The first rule is that there are no definite rules!
All I can do is to offer some guidelines as to what you should look out for. Of course original stills are worth a lot more than reproductions. There were many more American stills than British stills for any film - all those US theatres to advertise the film in, plus wartime restrictions on materials in Britain during and just after the war meant that not so many were made.

The main things to look for are:

A table of the codes for each film:
Something Always Happens (1934) 154 - ##
The Night of the Party (1935) 24 - ##
The Phantom Light (1935) P.L.157. P ##
The Price of a Song (1935) 608 - ##
Crown Vs. Stevens (1937) 181 - ##
The Spy in Black (1939) HP 2 ##
Contraband (1940) C-##
The Thief of Bagdad (1940) AK 02 ##
49th Parallel (1941)
aka The Invaders
COL-IN-## or
OF1 - ##
One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942) AK-1-##
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) M-P-M 3-##
A Canterbury Tale (1944) CT-##
I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) I.P.L.24 - ##
A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
aka Stairway to Heaven
103(A) - ##
Black Narcissus (1947) 114 (IP)-##
The End of the River (1947) 117 (IP)-##
The Red Shoes (1948) 136(IP)-##
The Small Back Room (1949) BL9/##
Gone to Earth (1950) BL12 - ##
The Elusive Pimpernel (1950)
aka The Fighting Pimpernel
DPI/PORT ## or
DFI/#.#
The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) BL19 - ##
The Wild Heart (1952) GB-##
The Battle of the River Plate (1956)
aka Graf Spee
290 - ##
Ill Met by Moonlight (1957)
aka Night Ambush
303P ## or
303 - ##
Miracle in Soho (1957) 307 ##
Luna de Miel (1959)
aka Honeymoon
H - ##
Peeping Tom (1960) PT-##
They're a Weird Mob (1966) TAWM - ##
Age of Consent (1969) 3 digit number along
the bottom edge

The '##' represents the numbers (& sometimes letters) for each picture in the series
More to be added as I find them.


Other P&P images