Well many thanks to
Natacha for telling me about this.
That was for the Conference on Popular European Cinema. It's
going on all weekend but I only wanted to go to the session titled
Powell and Pressburger - although I was tempted by some of the
others. Partly it was to give moral support to Natacha who was
presenting a paper there & partly to hear what the other papers
were about.
Although it wasn't due to start until 4:30pm I left early because I
realised that Warwick is just SE of Birmingham and just to the West
of Birmingham is where they filmed GTE (Much Wenlock & Longner
Hall if it's still there), so I thought I'd do a bit of location hunting
&
maybe get a few photos.
I made good time up the superslab & got to the Warwick turn off by
12:30. Great, I though, just 10-15 more miles, should be easy in
the 3 hours I had. But I reckoned without the massive snarl up that
is the M6 around Birmingham.
I was keeping half an eye on the traffic going the other way in case
it might have taken longer to get back but as it took me over an hour
to do the first 5 miles I gave up & headed back to Warwick. I'll
have to leave "God's little mountain" for another day.
[See
report on my later trip there.]
As I was therefore a bit early I had a chance to have a quick word
with the other 2 people presenting papers while they were setting
things up (while making sure I didn't get in their way) and told them
briefly who I was & about this group.
The first up was Adrienne McLean, assistant professor of film studies
at the University of Texas. She spoke about the reactions from the
critics (mainly in America) to TRS & ToH. Interesting how the dance
& ballet critics often had such a different view to the film critics. It
was also interesting how their opinions varied when they realised how
popular the films were. When they thought they were "elitist" they all
seemed to approve :)
Then Andrew Moor from the University of Bangor (North Wales) spoke
about P&P's "Lyceum streak". The phrase comes from Durgnat's phrase
for the way that after their wartime films they still didn't fit into the
norm for British films but they were, with films like BN & TRS bringing
a
touch of melodrama to the screens.
Then Natacha spoke about The Spectacle & The Spectacular in P&P
films.
Oh, I forgot to say. As it was a conference about European films the
papers were presented in various European languages (mainly English
& French)and Natacha had warned me that as she hadn't had time to do a proper
translation she was presenting hers in French.
Now French isn't one of my better languages - to put it mildly, but I was
able to follow it mainly because I know the films so well :)
She's promised me a transcript - haven't you Natacha !! :)
The 3 papers were followed by a Q&A which raised some interesting
points but it was a small room and VERY crowded (why do people always
underestimate the attraction of P&P - and people had paid to attend
this so they must be keen) so we soon retired to partake of a few glasses
of wine upstairs.
I got chatting to Adrienne & Andrew and they both promised to email me
transcripts which is why I haven't gone into their papers in much detail.
I'll post them when they send them.
It turns out that Adrienne was a dancer when younger which is why she's
tended to concentrate on TRS & ToH.
Andrew confessed that his favourite P&P films was probably ACT
(closely followed by Blimp) partly as his family came from East Kent. So
I told him about the trips down there & Paul Tritton's work in finding the
locations (and the "boys").
I thought I'd pass on some of the crazier ideas that have come out of
this group to see what they think of them :-
Comparing IKWIG to The Birds
Comparing ACT to Twin peaks
What did Babyface write on the carriage window?
etc etc
See here for details of these.
So a nice day out, 330 miles travelled and a couple more P&P "friends".
Steve
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