Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: Allan Gray

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Showing posts with label Allan Gray. Show all posts

Sunday, January 12, 2020

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1943)

Anton Walbrook, Roger Livesey, and Deborah Kerr in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Cast: Roger Livesey, Anton Walbrook, Deborah Kerr, James McKechnie, Roland Culver, Ursula Jeans, Valentine Dyall. Screenplay: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger. Cinematography: Georges Périnal. Production design: Alfred Junge. Film editing: John Seabourne Sr. Music: Allan Gray.

This time around, I had to ask myself: Why does Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1943) feel timeless when The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a film from the same year, seems so dated? Is this just the American in me, forced to dredge up knowledge of British history that might be more ingrained in a Brit? (Though I really doubt that most Brits today are familiar with David Low's political cartoons from the 1930s and '40s that featured Colonel Blimp, a corpulent old walrus of a Tory, who satirized British complacency and jingoism.) Or is it that the Powell-Pressburger film is more detailed and searching, more engaged with what it means for a country to go to war, than the Warner Bros. romance, which is "still the same old story," cast in a wartime mode, so that we respond more immediately and viscerally to it? This is a handsome movie, with beautiful Technicolor and some engaging performances, but it takes work to appreciate its story, whereas you can just let Casablanca wash over you.

Saturday, July 6, 2019

I Know Where I'm Going! (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1945)

Cast: Wendy Hiller, Roger Livesey, Duncan MacKechnie, Finlay Currie, Pamela Brown, Murdo Morrison, Margot Fitzsimons, Catherine Lacey, Valentine Dyall, Petula Clark. Screenplay: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger. Cinematography: Erwin Hillier. Production design: Alfred Junge. Film editing: John Seabourne Sr. Music: Allan Gray.

A stubborn young Englishwoman travels to the Hebrides to marry a man who lives on a remote island, but her journey there is interrupted by bad weather. Stuck on the Isle of Mull, she finds herself falling in love with another man, a naval officer who also plans to journey to the island on shore leave. Lo and behold, she and the officer begin to fall in love, which only makes her more desperate to complete her journey. Complicating things, there's an ancient curse on the naval officer. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's film manages to overcome some dodgy psychology and hokey superstition with the aid of fine performances by Wendy Hiller as Joan, the stubborn young woman, and Roger Livesey as the officer under the weight of the curse, making their characters persuasive and credible. Erwin Hillier's cinematography is superbly atmospheric, and incidentally overcomes an unusual handicap: Although much of the film is shot on the Isle of Mull, Livesey never went there because he was performing in a play in London. His scenes were all filmed in the studio and a double was used in the location shots.

Thursday, April 18, 2019

A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1944)

A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1944)

Cast: Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Dennis Price, John Sweet, Esmond Knight. Screenplay: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger. Cinematography: Erwin Hillier. Production design: Alfred Junge. Film editing: John Seabourne Sr. Music: Allan Gray.