Michael Powell never quite got the breaks he deserved.
While the films he directed in the 1940's (most in
tandem with co-director Emeric Pressburger) were
successful both in his native England and in America,
1960's EXTREMELY twisted horror film "Peeping Tom"
destroyed his standing with mainstream reviewers and
audiences. Auteurist critics raised Alfred Hitchcock
to the pantheon while dismissing Powell's creations
as baroque fantasies. Nor has home video served the
filmmaker well' a movie like 1947's "Black Narcissus"
uses unbearably rich colors to provide a psychological
backdrop for its characters (the cinematography won
an Oscar), but on VHS all you saw was a paint box that
had been left out in the rain.
Watch "Black Narcissus" on DVD. I mean that; Buy it,
rent it, WATCH IT, and hear yourself gasp when you
first see that convent in the Himalayas. The film's
about British nuns struggling with their sexuality -
in 1947! - in a place high in exoticism and low on
oxygen, and the hyperreal imagery is crucial to
understanding their dilemma. But hyperrealism is a
constant in Powell's work: the feeling that the
world is a place of sheer sensual overload that can
wreck creative souls, like the ballerina of "The Red
Shoes" (1948) even as it shakes sense into the
arrogant heroine of "I know Where I'm Going!" (1945)
In a way, Powell was the anti-Hitchcock. He saw the
dangerous beauty in life, whereas Hitch just saw the
booby traps.
Most of Powell and Pressburger's 1940's films are on
tape - there isn't one that's not worth seeing - but
to date only the above four are on DVD from Criterion.
They have all the trimmings you could want, but the
movies are all you need. From the wild Scottish
romance of "I know Where I'm Going!" (she doesn't,
as it turns out), through the Technicolor fever
dreams of art ("The Red Shoes") and ardor ("Black
Narcissus"), to the frightening psycho-voyeurism of
"Peeping Tom". Michael Powell's gift was that he
saw things with terrible clarity. Perhaps his films
have been waiting for DVD all along
