The Red Shoes (1948) ****

 

Black Narcissus (1946)

 

A Matter of Life and Death (1946) ***

 

(This post was a participant of “The Archers Blogathon” hosted by The Classic Film & TV Café. To find other wonderful blog entries on this subject please visit the CMBA website.)

The Archers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, collaborated on eighteen films over a thirty year period (1939-72). Usually, it was Powell who did the bulk of the directing and Pressburger who came up with the story ideas and handled most of the production chores (especially when it came to editing and music). A Matter of Life and Death (1946) was the fifth film they made as the Archers, and is considered by many as their finest. While I don’t share that view (I just love those crazy nuns in Black Narcissus), I do think it is a creatively innovative production that exhibits everything that made the Archer collaboration one of the finest in all of cinema.

Initially, A Matter of Life and Death was conceived as a propaganda film to ease the hostility some Brits had toward American military personnel stationed in England during the war. There were complaints that some American soldiers were insensitive to the deprivations the British people endured as a result of rationing and bombing. I suspect if you were watching this in a British theater in 1946 you would have picked up on some of the propagandistic elements, but these were only a small part of a much bigger message about love and art.

Love at first sight is the most common device used by writers of novels and screenplays. Thankfully, the Archers weren’t common and so the lovers of this story are given their own unique love connection. David Niven plays Squadron Leader Peter Carter, a man about to be killed in a fiery airplane crash. Wanting to say goodbye both to his family and the world at large, Peter radios in to give his coordinates so someone can pick up what’s left of him after he jumps without a parachute. He makes contact with June (Kim Hunter), an American radio operator who listens sympathetically to his last words. In that brief conversation they fall in love, which only makes Peter’s coming demise even more tragic. But then there is a literal twist of fate when fog over the English Channel prevents Conductor 71 (Max Goring) from collecting Peter and ushering him into the Other World (that’s its actual name). And, so instead of making his way up a stairway to heaven (which happens to be what the film was called in America), he washes up on a beach near where June is stationed. Their love is affirmed when they meet along the road, and for the rest of the movie they must fight whatever might try to wrest away their happiness.

What I like most about A Matter of Life and Death is its distinctive artistry. Exhibiting the vastness of the universe and the smallness of human existence must have seemed a strange way to begin a film in 1946, but what an inspired way to begin a supremely unique endeavor. Whenever I watch the opening scenes, with the voiceover of the Universe, I can’t help but think how much of an influence this must have had on directors like Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick. Taking a page out of The Wizard of Oz (1939), the picture was shot both in Technicolor and black and white. Yet, instead of depicting everyday life in black and white and the the fantasy world as a Technicolor paradise, the Archers did something inspired—the Other World is presented in ethereal black and white while real life is shown in color. Cinematographer Jack Cardiff does an excellent job of presenting both worlds as individual realities. His panoramic shots of the Other World’s courtroom are simply masterful. I find it extremely troubling that his work (as well as every element of the film) didn’t merit an Academy Award nomination.

Alfred Junge’s set design, especially in the Other World, is brilliant. The one image most people remember is the endless escalator to heaven. Its construction was a monumental endeavor that took three months to complete, but it was well worth it. Watching Peter and Conductor 71 sitting on the steps and pondering which great mind (usually a passing statue) should represent him in his appeal is almost surreal. The backdrop of endless space is mesmerizing and actually creates a sense of peacefulness. In addition, the design of the Other World’s courtroom is eye-catching, too. The logistics of the massive amount of spectators in the gallery, as well as creating a set design that could hold all of those people, is just mind-boggling. Yet, Junge pulls it off seamlessly.

Other standout production innovations include the use of freeze-frames, the inventive transitions between Technicolor and black and white, and creatively designed perspective shots. If you’ve seen the film you know that whenever Conductor 71 meets Peter in the real world that time freezes—in his words, “time is a mere tyranny.” The most memorable instance of freeze-frame is when June is playing ping pong with Dr. Reeves (Roger Livesey) and the ball stops in midair while Peter and the conductor move about in live action. While this is an interesting scene, it is not what I consider to be the most inspired. That honor belongs to the one where the Archers place the point of perspective behind Peter’s actual eyeball when he goes under anesthesia. The viewer sees what Peter’s eye sees: the medical team, the gas mask, the closing eyelid, then blood vessels, and finally the transition into the black and white Other World. It’s just such an unusual shot design and so different from just about anything that you would see in cinema at that time.

While the overall story is entertaining, I enjoy watching A Matter of Life and Death for its artistic merits. Powell and Pressburger’s cinematic vision is a celebration of creativity and artistry.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) **1/2

You’d think a film about a career British Army officer’s effort to make the Home Guard strong enough to withstand a German invasion during WWII would please the likes of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the War Office.  Yet, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s (AKA the Archers) The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) was a mild annoyance to the British government, who worried that the film would send the wrong message to Britons. As such, they deprived the Archers access to military equipment and personnel.  Being the Archers, however, meant that they knew how to improvise with whatever they could get their hands on and design what they couldn’t. The end result was a comedy of manners that is both filled with a bit of British introspection and a lot of war-time propaganda.

Major General Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey) is the epitome of the honor bound British officer. To him even war must be conducted in a civilized manner.  We first meet him while he is on leave from the Boer War in South Africa. After reading a letter from a woman living in Berlin that a man he knows is spreading lies about British conduct in South Africa, Candy decides he must put an end to such deplorable behavior. In Berlin he meets the letter’s author, Edith Hunter (Deborah Kerr), and insults what seems like the entire German Army.  This infraction leads to his being challenged to a duel, in which he and Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook) are forced to wield sabers against one another although they’ve never even met.  When both are injured they recuperate together in a nursing home and a lifelong friendship develops, despite the fact that Theo ends up marrying Edith, the love of Candy’s life. 

The second section of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp focuses on Candy’s time in WWI. By this time he has seen many uncivilized things, but sticks to his principles because the Germans, the perpetrators of all sorts of horrors like using mustard gas and torturing POWs, are losing the war.  At a convent he spies a British nurse who looks a lot like Edith. Once home, he finds Nurse Barbara (again Deborah Kerr) and marries her. They spend a few happy years together before she dies while they are stationed in Jamaica.

The last part of the movie looks at how alien the world seems to Candy amidst Nazism and WWII.  Once again he has found an Edith replacement in Angela (yet again, Deborah Kerr), his personal driver.  He and Theo are reunited when the retired German soldier flees the insidiousness that has taken over his nation. It is Theo’s unpleasant duty to inform Candy that WWII is not a gentleman’s war and that, “If you preach the Rules of the Game while they use every foul and filthy trick against you, they will laugh at you! They'll think you're weak, decadent!” Ah, the stiff British upper lip would never be the same—for either Candy or Britain.

Time is the most important theme that runs through The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Amidst sporadic German air raids, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was shot at Denham Film Studios and at various locations throughout London and Yorkshire. The end result is a film that spans four decades and vast amounts of land. The Archers use two particular methods to show the passage of time. Candy is an avid hunter, and so they chose to use mounted exotic animal heads from the various countries Candy was stationed in. The second method was through a scrapbook that he and Barbara used to document their excursions throughout the British Empire. This was an especially effective tool because once Barbara dies the Archer’s return to showing the passage of time with dead, mounted animal heads again.

The Archer’s also analyze time introspectively. Manners, decorum, honor, and warfare change immensely with the passage of time. How Edith behaves during the Boer War is markedly in contrast to Angela’s more liberated personality during WWII.  When you felt insulted in 1903 you challenged someone to a duel. By 1939, if you felt slighted you started a world war.  And, then there’s Candy.  Poisonous gas, torture, concentration camps, and a whole host of atrocities he didn’t even know about, like the Holocaust, were anathema to a man who believed there was a code that both a soldier and society should live by.  Colonel Blimp, our title character, by the way is Candy.  While the title might say ‘the life and death of’, Blimp does not actually die physically. No, he dies metaphysically as a result of the complete destruction of the civilized world by barbarism and Nazism. Most people don’t really consider anymore just how powerful Britain was before WWII, but they controlled a quarter of the globe via trade and colonialism. After the war the British Empire fell on hard times, and like Colonel Blimp, it died, too.

No discussion of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp would be complete without mentioning how propagandistic it was. No, Churchill and the War Office didn’t really like it, but it did a very good job of convincing viewers that to defeat the Nazis they would have to dispense with good old British honor. The most telling line in the entire film comes from Theo the German: “This is not a gentleman's war. This time you're fighting for your very existence against the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain - Nazism. And if you lose, there won't be a return match next year... perhaps not even for a hundred years.” With a message like this it is difficult to see why Churchill disliked the movie so much—but, of course, the rumors that Candy was actually a caricature of Churchill might have had something to do with that.

Overall, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is an entertaining war film.  It’s not quite as funny today as it might have been in 1943, but the questions it raises in relation to personal and national conduct in times of war are just as relevant now as when the film was released.  One need only consider the United States’ War on Terror and the questions that Zero Dark Thirty (2013) raised about how far a nation should go to defend itself.

I Know Where I’m Going (1945) **

The Archers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, collaborated on eighteen films over a thirty year period (1939-72).  While their first true “Archer” production (where they share writing, directing and producing credit) didn’t come until 1943 with The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, they had previously worked on four films together.  Usually, it was Powell who did the bulk of the directing and Pressburger who came up with the story ideas and handled most of the production chores (especially when it came to editing and music incorporation). Some of their endeavors are quite memorable, like Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948), while others are easily forgotten, such as The Battle of the River Plate (1956) and Ill Met By Moonlight (1957).  Somewhere in-between their masterpieces and their flops is located I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), which stars Wendy Hiller as a young woman who’d rather marry for money than love.

Manchesterian Joan Webster (Hiller) is supposed to marry wealthy industrialist Sir Robert Bellinger (Norman Shelley’s voice—he’s never seen) on the Isle of Kiloran, but the weather (or fate) in the Scottish Hebrides has other plans.  For some reason I’ve never really liked Hiller. I don’t know exactly why, but I think it’s her voice—it just rubs me the wrong way. Still, she was a decent actress who was nominated for three Oscars (she won one for Separate Tables [1958]) and she worked in the industry for nearly sixty years.  In I Know Where I’m Going! she does a nice job of portraying her character’s steely determination to not be sabotaged by love (and an island full of eccentric Scots).  However, I like her much more in the beginning of the film when she is calling her bank managing father “Darling” (George Carney) than I do when she is risking poor Kenny’s (Murdo Morrison) life to get across to Kiloran. 

Roger Livesey (an Archer veteran) gives his usual steady performance as Torquil MacNeil (what a name!). A kilt-wearing naval officer, Torquil is the broke Laird of Kiloran (FYI a laird is one step below a baron) and the owner of the Isle of Kiloran.  He sees in Joan a woman he would like to tame, but unlike Petruchio, he attempts to do it with kindness and patience. Too bad his childhood friend Catriona (Pamela Brown) is married, because she is much prettier and, more importantly, way more interesting than Joan.  It just grates on my nerves when the supporting actress is more enjoyable than the lead actress (see Kristen Scott Thomas and Andie MacDowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral [1994]).  In addition to Livesey and Brown’s nice acting turns, Captain C.W.R. Knight is a hoot as Colonel Barnstaple, a falconer with a delightful sense of style.

What I think sets this movie apart from a number of others during this period is it’s cinematography. This was most probably cinematographer Erwin Hillier’s best work over his thirty year career.  It is said the he didn’t use a light meter at all, which must have made his task more difficult than usual, especially when you consider the weather conditions.  There are many long distance shots that capture the overall majesty of the Scottish shoreline.  As someone who has spent time in the Scottish towns of Carnoustie and Killin it was a reminder of just how beautiful the land of Scots can be.  Hillier also used a hand-held camera to capture some of the close-up shots—most notably the ones of the boat struggling against the Corryvreckan whirlpool.  Interestingly enough, what most people don’t know is that Livesey never once set foot in Scotland for any of the location shots because he was doing a play in London at the time they were shot. 

Overall, I Know Where I’m Going! is a somewhat enjoyable light romantic comedy.  Other than some very fine photography, there is not much else that stands out.  Still, it was nice to learn a little bit about Scottish customs, and the bagpipes weren’t played so much that I  wanted to hit mute too often, either.