Archers Assemble: Creating The Powell-Pressburger Partnership - Ian Christie

0:00 // Introduction — why Powell and Pressburger never start at the beginning 1:49 // Emeric Pressburger's journey from Budapest to Berlin to Paris to London 6:42 // Michael Powell's apprenticeship — 24 films in four years 9:41 // The Edge of the World and how Powell caught Alexander Korda's eye 10:59 // The Spy in Black — how Pressburger's radical rewrite united the partnership 18:38 // What the film reveals about Pressburger's genius for filmic construction 24:05 // Wartime filmmaking — 49th Parallel and the propaganda question 29:00 // The 49th Parallel — confronting Nazi ideology on screen 36:58 // How Arthur Rank's accidental monopoly created space for creative freedom 42:06 // Independent Producers and the stable of filmmakers Rank quietly nurtured 47:11 // The joint credit — why "written, produced and directed by" was so radical 48:46 // Auteur theory and the long battle to get Pressburger's name recognised 51:12 // Michael Powell on their partnership — the 1985 NFT interview 53:01 // Martin Scorsese and the restoration of the Powell and Pressburger legacy When Alexander Korda teamed Michael Powell with Emeric Pressburger in 1939, a lasting partnership between this Englishman and refugee Hungarian must have seemed unlikely. Yet they soon discovered a remarkable bond, pushing each other far beyond what they could do separately, and creating a unique body of filmmaking. This lecture explores how the partnership worked during the 1940s, drawing in collaborators from many backgrounds who also gave of their best, and benefiting from the unique conditions of wartime Britain. This lecture was recorded by Ian Christie on the 23rd of September 2019 Professor Christie was Visiting Professor in the History of Film and Media at Gresham College in 2017-2021. He is a renowned British film scholar and currently Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck, University of London and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has researched and published on many aspects of film history, including Eisenstein and Russian cinema, Powell and Pressburger, Gilliam and Scorsese, and is a regular broadcaster on cinema. He has also worked on many exhibitions, including Spellbound (Hayward, 1996), Modernism (V&A, 2006) and Revolution: Russian Art 1917-32 (Royal Academy, 2017). His exhibition, Animatograph!, will be at London Metropolitan Archives during September-October 2019, and his monograph Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema (Chicago University Press) will appear later this year. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/a... Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involve... Website: https://gresham.ac.uk X: https://x.com/GreshamCollege Facebook:   / greshamcollege   Instagram:   / greshamcollege   Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/greshamcolle... TikTok:   / greshamcollege   Support Us: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involve...