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Edinburgh International Film Festival · 2005

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2005

Retrospective: Michael Powell

The EIFF programme says: "This year's retrospective recognises the contribution made by one of British film's founding fathers, Michael Powell. This retrospective marks the centenary of his birth.

Programme

16 films · 6 reviews

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49th Parallel

Wartime thriller about Nazi U-Boat survivors trying to make their way to safety.

(Country: UK; Year: 1941; Director: Michael Powell; Writer: Emeric Pressburger, Rodney Ackland, Emeric Pressburger; Stars: Richard George, Eric Portman, Raymond Lovell, Niall MacGinnis, Peter Moore, John Chandos, Basil Appleby, Laurence Olivier, Finlay Currie, Ley On, Anton Walbrook)

Age of Consent

A riff on Shakespeare's Tempest explores an ageing artist's relationship with a young girl who comes to serve as his muse.

(Country: Australia; Year: 1969; Director: Michael Powell; Writer: Norman Lindsay, Peter Yeldham; Stars: James Mason, Helen Mirren, Jack MacGowran, Neva Carr-Glynn, Andonia Katsaros, Michael Boddy, Harold Hopkins, Slim DeGrey, Max Meldrum, Frank Thring, Clarissa Kaye-Mason)

Black Narcissus

Review preview for Black Narcissus

Perfectly controlled lighting simulates the thin air that exhausts the once disciplined sisters.

Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
A group of nuns struggle to keep order in a remote Himalayan convent.

(Country: UK; Year: 1947; Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Writer: Rumer Godden, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Stars: Deborah Kerr, Flora Robson, Jean Simmons, David Farrar, Sabu, Esmond Knight, Kathleen Byron, Jenny Laird, Judith Furse, May Hallatt, Shaun Noble)

Full review

A Canterbury Tale

A land girl a soldier and an American GI try to solve a crime in Kent.

(Country: UK; Year: 1944; Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Writer: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Stars: Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Dennis Price, Sergeant John Sweet, Esmond Knight, Charles Hawtrey, Hay Petrie, George Merritt, Edward Rigby, Freda Jackson, Betty Jardine)

Contraband

A Danish freighter captain hunts a woman through the streets of London.

(Country: UK; Year: 1940; Director: Michael Powell; Writer: Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell, Brock Williams; Stars: Conrad Veidt, Valerie Hobson, Hay Petrie, Joss Ambler, Raymond Lovell, Esmond Knight, Charles Victor, Phoebe Kershaw, Harold Warrender, John Longden, Eric Maturin)

The Edge Of The World

Examination of the hardships of life on a remote Scottish Isle.

(Country: UK; Year: 1937; Director: Michael Powell; Writer: Michael Powell; Stars: John Laurie, Belle Chrystall, Eric Berry, Kitty Kirwan, Finlay Currie, Niall MacGinnis, Grant Sutherland, Campbell Robson, George Summers, Margaret Greig, Michael Powell)

Gone To Earth

Review preview for Gone To Earth

With dialogue like this, you don't need a scene at the village fair to reinforce olde worlde cliches of English rural life, but you get it, anyway.

Angus Wolfe Murray · 2 out of 5
A barefooted Shropshire lass marries the vicar and is seduced by the squire.

(Country: UK; Year: 1950; Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Writer: Emeric Pressburger, based on the novel by Mary Webb; Stars: Jennifer Jones, David Farrar, Cyril Cusack, Sybil Thorndike, Edward Chapman, Esmond Knight, Hugh Griffith, George Cole, Beatrice Varley, Frances Clare, Raymond Rollett)

Full review

'I Know Where I'm Going!'

A woman who is planning to better herself by marrying money, finds love unexpectedly after being stranded on a Scottish island.

(Country: UK; Year: 1945; Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Writer: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Stars: Wendy Hiller, Roger Livesey, Pamela Brown, Finlay Currie, George Carney, Nancy Price, Catherine Lacey, Jean Cadell, John Laurie, Valentine Dyall, Norman Shelley)

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Powell & Pressburger's great classic about a life well-lived

(Country: UK; Year: 1943; Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Writer: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Stars: James McKechnie, Neville Mapp, Vincent Holman, Roger Livesey, David Hutcheson, Spencer Trevor, Roland Culver, James Knight, Deborah Kerr, Dennis Arundell, David Ward)

A Matter Of Life And Death

Review preview for A Matter Of Life And Death

Undoubtedly one of the best films ever made.

Scott Macdonald · 5 out of 5
A wartime aviator begs a celestial court to let him escape death so he can be with the woman he loves. Out on re-issue in cinemas.

(Country: UK; Year: 1946; Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Writer: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Stars: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Robert Coote, Kathleen Byron, Richard Attenborough, Bonar Colleano, Joan Maude, Marius Goring, Roger Livesey, Robert Atkins, Bob Roberts)

Full review

Peeping Tom (Face Of Fear)

Review preview for Peeping Tom

Peeping Tom is a film all about watching and identification, a film whose real horror hinges on the way it implicates the audience in its dark voyeurism.

Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
A young photographer becomes fascinated by expressions of fear, with deadly consequences.

(Country: UK; Year: 1960; Director: Michael Powell; Writer: Leo Marks; Stars: Karlheinz Böhm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey, Maxine Audley, Brenda Bruce, Miles Malleson, Esmond Knight, Martin Miller, Michael Goodliffe, Jack Watson, Shirley Anne Field)

Full review

The Red Shoes

Review preview for The Red Shoes

The dance sequences are brilliantly performed and well worth watching the film for in their own right.

Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
A dancer is torn between the man she loves and her obsessive commitment to her craft.

(Country: UK; Year: 1948; Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Writer: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger and Keith Winter, based on the book by Hans Christian Andersen.; Stars: Marius Goring, Jean Short, Gordon Littmann, Julia Lang, Bill Shine, Léonide Massine, Anton Walbrook, Austin Trevor, Esmond Knight, Eric Berry, Irene Browne)

Full review

The Small Back Room

Wartime thriller about an embittered scientist called upon to defeat a new type of German-made bomb.

(Country: UK; Year: 1949; Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Writer: Nigel Balchin, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Stars: David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, Jack Hawkins, Milton Rosmer, Cyril Cusack, Emrys Jones, Michael Goodliffe, Sid James, Leslie Banks, Michael Gough, Geoffrey Keen)

The Spy in Black

Powell and Pressburger's first collaboration, sees a German spy conducting covert operations in Scotland.

(Country: UK; Year: 1939; Director: Michael Powell; Writer: Emeric Pressburger, Roland Pertwee, based on the novel by J Storer Clouston; Stars: Conrad Veidt, Sebastian Shaw, Valerie Hobson, Marius Goring, June Duprez, Athole Stewart, Agnes Lauchlan, Helen Haye, Cyril Raymond, George Summers, Hay Petrie)

The Tales Of Hoffmann

Review preview for The Tales Of Hoffmann

The passage of time - and a beautiful 4k restoration - have been kind to this reimagining of Jacques Offenbach's opera, with its deliberately operatic gestures and colours and stylised production design feeling sharply avant garde even today.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
A poet recalls three doomed romances.

(Country: UK; Year: 1951; Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Writer: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Dennis Arundell; Stars: Moira Shearer, Ludmilla Tchérina, Anne Ayars, Pamela Brown, Léonide Massine, Robert Helpmann, Frederick Ashton, Mogens Wieth, Robert Rounseville, Lionel Harris, Philip Leaver)

Full review See: George A Romero talks zombies, religion and genocide in Karlovy Vary

The Thief of Bagdad

A thief helps a rightful king, who has been usurped, try to regain his throne.

(Country: UK; Year: 1940; Director: Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan; Writer: Lajos Biró, Miles Malleson; Stars: Conrad Veidt, Sabu, June Duprez, John Justin, Rex Ingram, Miles Malleson, Morton Selten, Mary Morris, Bruce Winston, Hay Petrie, Adelaide Hall)