Powell & Pressberger showoff: "Black Narcissus" vs. "The Red Shoes"

I'd go for "Black Narcissus." They're both unbelievably memorable, but "Black Narcissus" has no less than four truly great performances: Deborah Kerr, Jean Simmons, Kathleen Byron, and Flora Robson.

Plus some of the greatest lines ever captured on film:

"Spare her some of your own importance... if you can."

"Remember, the superior of all is the servant of all."

Black Narcissus has some great dreamlike images

Black Narcissus, with its languid, erotic tension and surprise twists is no contest. The Red Shoes is stunning but fairy-tale like and predictable.

[quote] four truly great performances: Deborah Kerr, Jean Simmons, Kathleen Byron, and Flora Robson

Fuck you, r1.

Although as a ballet fan I've seen "The Red Shoes" about a billion times, there's no question that "Black Narcissus" is the better film.

Haunting, sensual, brilliant performances by Kerr and Kathleen Byron, utterly unique in setting and subject matter. Plus it's technically brilliant in an unobtrusive way; the characters all seem overwhelmed by the beautiful setting, yet there was no setting at all. All the sweeping vistas and chilly winds sweeping down from the Himalayan peaks were created in a closed studio.

Kathleen Byron ringing the bell on the set, and the way it looked with the matte painting added.

Absolutely stunning, R7. I've been inspired to pick up the Criterion Blu-ray edition of this now. I've had the old DVD for years, but the picture quality is not great, and this is one of those films that deserves to be seen in all its glory. I'm going to Barnes & Noble tomorrow to get it.

Me too. Is the sale still going on ?

Ich kann nicht wahlen!

Until December 1st, R9.

Leading men: hot David Farrar (BN) vs. silly Marius Goring (RS).

No contest.

I had no idea until last night that Thelma Schoonmaker (Scorsese's longtime editor) was married to Pressburger. I guess that helps explain why Scorsese is such a passionate champion of their films.

Marius is the juvenile. Anton Walbrook is the leading man.

Black Narcissus has a positive anti-colonialist message while The Red Shoes carries forth the weird mid-20th century meme of gay men suddenly revealing themselves as madly in love with a woman (see Laura, All About Eve)

R13 He was 35 years her senior. That's super gross but luckily for them Schoonmaker always looked older than she actually was so they didn't even look that strange together.

I have to say Anton Walbrook's wardrobe is to die for. He wants to possess the Moira Shearer character, not fuck her.

What did they call her, Lemoni?

the cause of the vapors amongst the nuns

R5 I wanted to suck off Sabu after seeing this....and "Jungle Book" and "Cobra Woman" and well, everything else he was in.

R14, Walbrook is obviously a gay man that is obsessed with the ballet company he owns.

He thinks of the star ballerina as the investment that is making his ballet a success. He loves ballet passionately, and it’s his whole life, so he thinks she should feel the same. She wants to get married, but continue dancing. Her old school, chauvinistic husband wants her to never dance again, because he sees the ballet as something he needs to compete with.

She wants both halves of her life, both men are fighting over her because they want her to renounce the half that they have nothing to do with. Neither sees her as a person, she’s just an object they think should drop everything to be their doll.

If anything, the gay man at least has respect for her talent. The husband just wants an empty-headed, worshipful brood mare to throw away everything she loves, to prove she loves him more.

Now, THIS is what I call a great topic!!!!

My view is that we have an apples and oranges situation here. "The Red Shoes" is, literally and figuratively, a fairy tale. "Black Narcissus" is a much more adult story and explores issues such as spiritual hubris.

That said, in the TRS column I must put first and foremost the extraordinary performance by Antol Wolbrook as Lermontov, an unsung artist of the first order if there ever was one. His performance alone breaks through the fairy-tale conceit - but not enough to unbalance the film. The performance is nuanced within an inche of its life. The rest of the cast is very good, and Shearer's technicolor beauty (the hair colour was hers by birth, btw) and Wolbrook's intense monomania set each other off and anchor the film.

In the BN column is also an extraordinary cast, with, in my opinion, the slow breakdown of Sister Ruth as portrayed by Kathleen Byron first among equals.

Also in the column for TRS are the glorious scenes of the Riviera, shot on location.

BN was shot entirely in studio, with magician cinematographer Jack Cardiff pulling rabbits out of a hat with painted backdrops. He got an Oscar for Best Cinematography for this one.

I don't know - if I were forced to choose on merit, I would say that, oddly, I think TRS hangs together better but lacks depth; BN is not as easy to absorb but is more adult and, ultimately, a far more tragic story. One of its best moments: Flora Robson looking at the flowers she planted rather than potatoes, looking out over the "studio painted" Himalayan landscape and saying softly, "We've done nothing here."

Lermontov and Vicky Page are a cleaned up hetero version of the tensions between Diaghilev and Nijinsky. The film suggests ever so faintly that Lermontov's obsession with Page is, underneath it all, not solely artistic. The situation between Nijinsky and Diaghilev, who was also furious when Nijinksky married and fathered a child, was equally destructive, especially given that Nijinsky suffered from genuine mental illness. I thought Marius Goring a bit precious in the role of Julian Craster, the composer. Some of the RS borders on "twee" as we say in the UK and only gets away with it because it is a fairy-tale.

And the end of BN is truly harrowing. Love them both and perhaps we can have some other PP threads: I Know Where I'm Going v. A Matter of Life and Death?

Two unique films. I can't really choose except via the mood of the moment.

Oh, factoid: Wolbrook was gay but not out, he was married. He also came from a family of noted circus performers.

R21

Gay, you say?

Anton Walbrook never married. He had occasional relationships with women and had a long term male partner. After Walbrook’s death his partner committed suicide.

R24 - I stand corrected - I thought he had married.

Walbrook was in a long term relationship with his partner. He had bought a florist’s shop for him to run. A few days after Walbrook’s death from a heart attack, the partner killed himself.

If you read Walbrook’s interviews from that era, he is extremely cagey about his sexuality as you would expect for the time. He took care of his mother until her death; they were Austrian immigrants living in Germany, that fled Germany during the Olympics of 1936. Walbrook was half Jewish.

Hitler temporarily made it easier to escape because of all the international travelers. His circumstance are not too different than Pressburger’s, who said he left the front door unlocked when he left, so the Nazis wouldn’t have to break it down. People weren’t allowed to take much when they left, and had to leave 90% of their money behind as a sort of “tax.” So they escaped with nothing.

Walbrook came to England unable to speak English. He was a successful German actor, but it was a necessity to learn English to get jobs in British films. He locked himself in a hotel room and studied it for six weeks, and came out speaking heavily accented, but passable, English.

Walbrook did one film in America, an English-speaking remake of his hit, The Soldier and The Lady. He hated American food and traveled with his own cook. He had thought to come to America and stay, but after experiencing such American delicacies as pie and corn, he returned to England and stayed there.

An interesting story I read about Walbrook online was by a son of a cop who arrested him for cruising in a park. The son said his dad arrested him, but the matter was hushed up and Walbrook soon made bail. The charges were dropped I believe. There seems to be no record of it.

The public in the era probably thought he was straight.

"This is no place for a nunnery"

Walbrook’s governess who looked after him and his younger sister when they were children was English, so Anton could speak English to some extent before he came to the UK. Apparently he never felt that he was truly fluent and worked hard to overcome his accent as this presented a barrier to being cast in the sort of leading man parts he had played in Germany and Austria before the war. He rarely played comedies in English, for example, being typecast as a mysterious and/or vaguely sinister foreigner.

Anton Walbrook is of course perfectly cast as the enigmatic impresario Boris Lermontov in The Red Shoes, a part which allows him to use all the brilliance and Scorpionic magic at his command. I love everything about him in that movie.

Anton

On TCM this Wednesday:

Black Narcissus - 6:15 ET

The Red Shoes - 8:00 ET

What's the twist in BN? It doesn't say on Wiki.

Has anyone read the book by Rumer Godden? I love her work, but somehow never got around to reading Black Narcissus.

Moira Shearer was the real deal, a Prima Ballerina with the Royal Ballet. Or perhaps a Secondi Ballerina, for much of her career Margot Fonteyn was the biggest star at the Royal and Shearer came second, but Shearer was one of the best ballet dancers of her era. She had a second career as an actress, both during her career as a dancer and later, but "The Red Shoes" is the only film to show her full glory as a dancer. She also danced in the bizarre "Tales of Hoffman", in one of the weirdest sequences ever put on film, but that film was so peculiar that nothing in it was glorious.

Powell and Pressburger had the right idea about casting. There was no way to fake ballet dancing then (there is now, hence "Black Swan"), so they did the right thing and found a top dancer who photographed beautifully to play the lead. She learned the art of screen acting for the film, and if she didn't measure up to Walbrook's subtle brilliance, she still glowed on screen. Well, she had better things to do than be a movie star.

R14, I think in every case (All About Eve, Laura, The Red Shoes) you could argue that what is being portrayed isn't a romantic relationship at all. The gay men in those films are all impresarios/critics/men of taste who see themselves as creators of their fabulous female protégées. They want to control them, not have them go off and be housewives.

There were a lot of films made in the 1950s about the evils of sexual repression, "Black Narcissus" being far and away the best, and of course, "A Summer Place" being the worst. We are joyously ripping up "Summer Place" on another thread, as is right and proper, but "Black Narcissus" treats the subject so much more honestly and subtly. The nuns come to a place where sensuality and sexuality creeps under their skin, and unlike most films where sex is treated as the be-all and end-all, the nuns all react quite differently, and don't all throw themselves at the one man. One nun does and is rejected, one successfully resists the temptation, one just plants flowers instead of veggies. And the butch nun is completely unchanged, she thinks life is good just the way it is!

Still, it's ironic, that so much is made of sex and sensuality, in the old palace that was once a harem. The women of a harem hardly get more action than nuns over their lifetime, they all have to share one man and some of them probably only got a few tastes of dick before that one man died or got too old to get it up. Living in a traditional harem is a lonely and horrible existence, and if the husband/owner dies or is more interested in younger women, then the women of the harem just spend their entire lives there, with nothing to do except maybe see their children, if they ever have any. It's like prison, with servants and a wardrobe budget.

R36 - Great post. And to add to it, one of the things I love about BN is how the beauty of the physical environment stands in as what is irrepressible in human nature. The nuns may be able to restrain themselves to one degree or another, but they cannot restrain the vast views that make a focused pragmatism impossible.

PP films may seem very different from each other, but the theme of the inevitability of human desire and emotion runs through many of them - the Himalayan landscapre breaks down the nuns' barriers to human desire. TRS also has this in it - Vicky is torn apart by loving two things equally; Lermontov is destroyed by his passion for creation through others. I Know Where I'm Going has a young Wendy Hiller stubbornly resisting her feelings for Roger Livesey as she prepares for an advantageous marriage, and A Matter of Life and Death has a young couple fighting against all odds including the decree of Heaven to hold on to each other.

Btw, Kerr and I think Powell had an intense affair.

You can feel Sister Ruth's pussy twitch.

R13, you have it backwards: Schoonmaker met Powell as a result of Scorsese championing the forgotten filmmaker. The two of them fell in love, married and now she is his widow.

Thank you, r39. That’s an even better story!

R32 -It's not a "twist", per se. The film ends with the Himalayan environment having defeated the little group of Anglican nuns, with the tragic death of one, and the humbling of the group's leader, Sister Clodagh, whose will to power takes a beating but opens her up to her own failings and perhaps greater spiritual evolution as a result.

Both underwhelming but not a waste of time. Black Narcissus is dated, with its faux orientalist setting, but it's fun.

"...Sister Clodagh, whose will to power takes a beating but opens her up to her own failings and perhaps greater spiritual evolution as a result. "

That's one of the things I like about "BN", the fact that it's one of the few films ever made where a female protagonist does NOT throw over everything she believes in for some man. Yes, her relationship with him is a profound experience that changes her forever, but in the end he's just part of her spiritual journey and not her reason for living.

Which is great, as it never would have worked out between them.

We went to town on BN, last year at this time...

I still haven’t watched all of Decalogue and can’t afford the Bergman box set.

Moira Shearer was fantastic in The Red Shoes, especially for someone who was not really a trained actress; I love her performance in that film, and it is lush and beautiful. It was also terribly aped by Darren Aronofsky in Black Swan, but nobody (save a few cinephiles) were aware of it.

Yes, OP, the wonderful ”Black Narcissus" has a more engaging plot; it’s tight with small cast of characters in a contained setting.

The 'Narcissus' script was taken from a published book whereas the wonderful ‘Red Shoes' is an original script (as R21 states) stolen from the relationship of Serge Diaghilev and Vaslav Nijinsky (which also ended badly).

These two clever filmmakers can be criticised for their lack of discipline. Their ‘Stairway To Heaven’ and the terrible ‘Canterbury Tale’ have multiple, discursive, if not disorganised plots.

@ R17~

R47 - I take exception to what you call Stairway to Heaven but in Britain was called A Matter of Life and Death having multiple disorganised plots. It has two parallel plots: the earthly and the heavenly, and they are perfectly woven together. And TRS is taken from a work of literature: Andersen's fairy tale of the same name. Both Godden's novel and Andersen's story had to be "scripted" for their films.

And TRS does have two parallel plots: Andersen's original story about the destructive cost of obsession, and that cost played out amongst the three major characters in their real lives.

Neither film is hard to understand and the parallel plots are cleverly fit together in both.

I haven't seen it in YEARS, but I remember Canterbury Tales as being charming.

The only Powell film I was never crazy about was The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

Canterbury Tales!

Moira in a trunk...

I love the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. It’s set in WWII. The movie ends in the days of the Blitz.

It’s one of those movies that draws you in. There’s a speech towards the end, by Anton Walbrook, that was done in one take. It describes how his character wound up in England. He is a German widower of an Englishwoman. His best friend is an English general. He really has no one but his friend, and is having to start over at his age in a new country. The whole film describes how he got to this place.

In those days, the British were very skeptical of German refugees, and called them enemy aliens. It wasn’t a friendly place for many Germans, including Pressberger himself, who was classified as an enemy alien, even though he was a Jewish German fleeing Hitler, and wrote this most patriotic, British of scenes.

The character, a German citizen, is being interviewed by an immigration official for permission to stay in England. Walbrook’s performance tells you that on some level, he was speaking his personal truth, as well as the character’s.

If you watch it, notice that while he’s talking, the outdoor street noises fade away, and the street noises come back as soon as he’s done.

Churchill was very much against this movie, which presented a a German National in a sympathetic light. He met Walbrook in his dressing room at a stage performance of a play to complain. Walbrook said, only in England could I have performed it.

Blimp never did much for me either. It's a good enough film but it's terribly overlong and not nearly as witty as their other films are. I still think the crazy "A Canterbury Tale" is their best WWII-era effort and definitely one of the most unique films ever made.

I watched COLONEL BLIMP a few weeks ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. I suspect some people become weary of the blowhard Blimp, but Roger Livesay is so terrific that I didn't mind (he's even better as the male lead in I KNOW WHERE I"M GOING). I couldn't get more than 30 minutes into CANTERBURY TALE - it was very dull and the decision to use a non-actor as the male lead backfired.

Getting back to the OP's question, I would rate BLACK NARCISSUS over THE RED SHOES, though Anton Walbrook is brilliant. The only Powell/Pressburger film - other than CANTERBURY TALE - I can't stomach is TALES OF HOFFMAN.

Oh, and avoid the godawful 1969 Powell film AGE OF CONSENT. Even James Mason and a young Helen Mirren can't save it. Another one I stopped watching after 30 minutes.

A CANTERBURY TALE features a "sex pervert" (The Glue Man) who, in the blackout, splooges glue all over young women who consort with American soldiers. It's pretty kinky stuff for 1944.

R52 - Good Lord, that woman's colouring, and it was all hers.

Remember in TRS how her hair looked in that amazing gown and little tiara she wears to the old ruined villa where she goes and finds out she's got the part, and Craster and the conductor and Lermontov are despairing over the shabby score?

What a colour that was. Her non-ballet costumes were by the great French coutourier, Jacques Fath.

You could wear that gown today (minus the tiara and cloak) to the Oscars, if you had the colouring for it naturally, which most don't.

R56 The Glue Man is utterly revolting. His sprays his glue which means he masturbates over sleeping women.

R54 Blimp needs to be seen on a big screen.

It is their version of Gone With The Wind. It was designed as a vehicle of the new young star Wendy Hiller.

There's a scene in Part 2 where they're sitting at home after dinner and she (Wendy Hiller) chides her husband (Roger Livesey) for his absent-minded humming,

That scene was written for that pert young star Wendy Hiller (who unfortunately went off to have a baby) and replaced by Powell's 'younger filly' Deborah Kerr who was scarcely more than a teenager at the time. And so they were forced to bring yet another bizarre fake and confusing conceit where the three different woman were played by the same young filly.

Fath was fab.....

"Black Narcissus" is the better film, but "Red Shoes" wins on costumes! Here's the gown that others have gushed over, and I wish I could find a gif of her sweeping up the overgrown garden stairway while wearing it. Such a magical moment. The gown and cloak could definitely be worn today... but I don't know about her accessories.

The only person in "BN" who wore anything worth looking at was Sabu, in his silken finery.

That dress is a classic and perfectly suited for her coloring. But the little tiara looks cheap with it. Is that fake beads? That’s what it looks like. It looks like something a little girl would buy from a dime store. I’ve never seen anything like it.

In the 1950s in the U.S., sets of rhinestone earrings and a matching necklace were popular, in colors and in white. This movie is a little before that, but the necklace style is a slightly larger version of the popular 1950’s evening wear bib necklaces. They usually came with clip earrings. My mom had sets in several colors, so they must have been inexpensive.

I wondered if the bead-looking accessories were as a result of rationing still going on a couple years passed the war. Maybe they had shortages of imports like costume jewelry parts, since they had shortages of everything else.

Now that I think about it, Mom’s rhinestone sets were backed with metal. Look at those accessories. No metal anywhere. Maybe they were still having postwar metal shortages? The jewelry set in the movie looks homemade.

Love both movies. I love all of Michael Powell's movies.

R49 I say that 'A Matter of Life and Death' (AKA 'Stairway to Heaven') has multiple disorganised plots.

1. The filmmakers were asked by the Ministry for Information to make a film displaying The British Character and to encourage good relations with The Americans.

They embodied this with a British pilot thrown into an intense relationship with a radio operator (who for some unknown reason) is an American.

Unfortunately the pilot was played by the most effete person possible (bar Ernest Thesiger) which is why Marius Goring has to play a character who is even more effeminate.

2. To explain all this metaphysical folderol we have Roger Livesey who is more masculine and his subplot with all its beloved boys'-toys is more interesting than the main plot.

3, The scenes in the icy Afterlife with stone-faced Kathleen Byron resemble Auschwitz. And here great scads of Literature and philosophy are discussed at length by Massey and Abraham Sofaer which may be all very interesting but it slows down the drama even more.

This film is a curate's egg.

For the NAMBLA audience, AMOFLAD features a naked ephebe playing a flute (the lonely shepherd encountered by Niven on the beach). How that got shot in 1945 I cannot imagine.

I largely disagree, r64, but I love that you used the phrase "curate's egg".

I think Gone to Earth is underrated

Saw [italic]The Red Shoes[/italic] for the first time last night. Moira Shearer was a hot bitch in this. Hard to believe she was only 22.

Charleston....

The full "Tales of Hoffman" movie is on YouTube, and if you haven't seen it it's a festival of weirdness!

And features Moira Shearer dancing ballet while lip=synching a coloratura aria, because wind-up dolls can do that. Very strange film.

How do you solve a problem like Maria?

I just saw this on Moira Shearer's IMDB biography:

[quote]She was little-known and only in her early 20s when Michael Powell approached her about starring in The Red Shoes (1948), and she had never been in a film; Powell offered her £1000, a considerable sum for most people in those days (many earned less than that in a year) and was surprised when she held out for £5000, which he did eventually pay her. He also directed her in her two other films, The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) and Peeping Tom (1960), but she had little affection or respect for him and usually spoke harshly of him in interviews both during his lifetime and after his death.

I just found this interview with Shearer from 1994, when she was 68 years old, and she talks about her experiences working with Powell:

[quote]I had seen his films and, yes, I did admire his cinematic expertise, which is exactly what I still feel today. His films were never my favourites because there was always something cold and rather pretentious about them, but they were certainly never dull. There is a lack of humanity in them all - but then, he was lacking in warmth and humanity. He was technically very imaginative and original, but he was also extremely egocentric, unlike his collaborator, Emeric Pressburger, a delightful Hungarian whom we all liked very much. Emeric wrote the scripts for their films - unfortunately a glossy, melodramatic one for The Red Shoes - but that was the way of most films of the '30s and '40s.

More from the same interview:

[quote]I enjoyed acting but I would have liked it a lot more if I could have been directed by someone of kindness and understanding. Powell was very difficult with actors. He didn't give any of us detailed direction and, perhaps it's unkind to say this, I don't think he could. He didn't seem at all interested in the performances of actors; his main concentration was the camera itself, the experiments with colour, tricks, effects - all the things at which he was brilliant. But he was uneasy with actors and was known as a bully, especially with women. Each day he would pick on someone, always someone in no position to stand up to him, and simply go on and on with cruel sarcasm until the victim was a wreck and quite unable to function properly.

[quote]And I'd like to mention the two vast volumes of autobiography that he completed at the end of his life. The kindest view of them is that his mind had gone in old age. But, knowing him, I think the welter of lies about so many people and past situations was quite deliberate. I particularly disliked the way he wrote of his dead wife, Frankie - it was disgraceful and almost certainly untrue.

Mee-yow Moira Shearer!

^ We don't know the circumstances of that Moira Shearer interview. It was after 1988 when Michael Powell released his mammoth, self-aggrandising, semi-gaga memoir which boasted of rutting ALL (except two) of his female stars.

'The Red Shoes' was a big money-spinner and Metro-Goldfish-Mayer sought her out to star in a big movie for Gene Kelly. But she went off to marry a dark-haired man who was as small and uninteresting as Julian Craster.

Powell obviously worked Shearer hard and he was sufficiently smitten to build the indigestible, unwatchable 'Tales of Hoffmann' around her but she did return to his web to appear in his very ugly, little film called 'Peeping Tom in 1960.

Peeping Tom Trailer.....

^ Ugly. Tawdry. Awful.

But a handsome German plays the psycho villain.

At least it makes a change from all those sympathetic noble, honourable Germans that the perverse Powell presented in 'Blimp', '49th Parallel' and 'Battle of the River Plate'.

I like Peeping Tom--it's perverse and dark, but it was ahead of its time.

Which came first? Psycho or Peeping Tom?

R64 - Well, we must agree to disagree here. Like Pooh-Bear in "The Mikado", I wish to associate myself with the comments of R66. I am aware of the film's origins, by the way - that doesn't take anything away from its artistry.

Goring was average height for a man of his time; Niven, on the other hand, was well over 6'. I met him in the mid-1970s, and he was considrably less fine-boned and fruity than is suggested upthread. He had ya divine voice, beautiful manners, and gave off thoroughly hetero vibes.

Who did you think they should have cast as the airman the Messenger misses in the fog? A more brutish type like Trevor Howard or Jack Hawkins? That isn't a criticism, I adore both acotrs, but I just don't see either one mentioning Moses and Jesus as the plane is going down in flames . . . I thought Niven a good choice.

Niven was given the role because Sam Goldwyn was handling the film's US distribution. Niven may be satisfactory in cocktail comedy but he's incapable of playing drama or indeed playing any character outside of a cocktail comedy.

A masculine star like David Farrar or Trevor Howard would have made a hero we could root for.

The effete Niven also destroyed the costume drama 'Bonnie Prince Charlie' in 1948 and Michael Powell's 'The Elusive Pimpernel' in 1950. Niven wears wigs making him look like Gladys Cooper throughout 'Bonnie Prince Charlie' and he even goes in drag in that sad failure of a film.

[Quote] masculine star like David Farrar or Trevor Howard

Masculine? Our dear Trevor?

R71, that sounds like it would be fun to watch while high.

[quote]Niven wears wigs making him look like Gladys Cooper

He should take that as a compliment!

Well, I think Farrar and Howard would have unbalanced the film's magical premise, they were too heavy. I thought Niven did fine as Peter - the Niven, Hunter, Livesey balance worked well, and, as I said, I think that that fruity Englishman bit was a niche he fell into and milked. I thought he did quite well as Edgar Linton in Wuthering Heights, as well. He knew he would never be an A-list leading man, he didn't have the look. He struck me in the evening he surprisingly turned up at a party i went to in the 1970s, around the time his first book was published, as someone who didn't take himself too seriously.

To each his own, as they say. I didn't have a problem with him in AMOLAD.

His first book was hilarious.

Black Narcissus is sexier - very sexy for the Brits - But The Red Shoes is entirely populated by gingers.

"But The Red Shoes is entirely populated by gingers"

Pardon?

R89 His first book was frivolous. It celebrated the immoral notion that idle drunkenness and lechery is both desirable and amusing.

R92 I admit it is not for everyone. You have to enjoy entertainment like Wodehouse.

David Farrar had bewitching violet eyes and BDF.

David Farrar should have played Julian Craster.

David would have supplied the sex appeal so Victoria Page would be hard pressed to decide whether she should give her body to public art or to private physical pleasure. Anton Walbrook tearing her in one direction and sexy David in another.

David Farrar had the sex appeal to play opposite Jennifer Jones in that gypsy film. David could have been another Gregory Peck.

Goring is very unappealing in The Red Shoes, but it works for the film in the same way that Leslie Howard does in Gone With the Wind. Scarlett’s obsession for milquetoast Ashley is inexplicable, as is Victoria Page’s impulsive decision to marry Julian who promptly wrecks her career. Everything Lermontov says is true— Julian wants to turn her into a housewife. If Julian had been played by a more attractive actor we wouldn’t care so much that she had given up ballet for him.

"[R71], that sounds like it would be fun to watch while high. "

I haven't watched P&P's "Tales of Hoffman" since I quit drinking, because it's not a movie to watch sober!

R92 - It's about Hollywood and the acting business, remember? Not a doctoral thesis on the woes of society.

R96 - Do not agree. Craster doesn't expect her to become a housewife and, in fact, she goes on dancing - Lermontov only stops her from dancing "The Red Shoes" ballet anywhere. Vicky is human: it's absurd to expect her to offer her entire emotional life up on the altar of a career that would be over by the time she's forty. They fall in love as they work together intensively on the ballet - something that has been known to happen in show business business (Francesca Annis lifted Ralph Fiennes from Alix Kingston whilst playing Gertrude to his Hamlet in that ghastly New York production, which, for my sins, I saw). It's an old story with plenty of form in the real world.

It is only Lermontov who insists that Vicky must be either/or. It's a form of narcissistic possessiveness that is particularly virulent in those who can't do the thing they are obsessed with. Nowhere does Craster express a desire for Vicky to stop dancing. He gives up, in fact, his own brilliant opening night at Covent Garden when she is seduced once more into dancing The Red Shoes for Lermontov. He doesn't ask her to give up dancing: he asks her to give up their common enemy.

R85 Trevor Howard was a superstar heartthrob thanks to his role in David Lean's 'Brief Encounter'.

Howard was discharged from the armed force for mental instability; he was also a drunk and died partly from cirrhosis of the liver. But I have never heard anything but hetero rumour about him. He also declined a CBE, if I remember. I think he was one of those "eccentrics" that, for our sins, the British have become famous for producing.

I have heard Trevor Howard declining a CBE was a lie he pedalled.

He was never masculine. His popularity due to ABE was a one-off.

DL Fave David Farrar's finest hour for P & P was starring as a binge-drinking, disabled "boffin" in THE SMALL BACK ROOM (49). Byron plays his masochistic girlfriend.

Whose first book? Niven's? The second one is mostly character portraits. One is of the actor who played Bill Sykes in the Niven "Oliver Twist." Drunkeness is certainly not celebrated in that sketch.

R104 - That actor was the great Robert Newton, whose career was undermined by his alcoholism. And that wasn't the Niven"Oliver Twist", it was David Lean's, and in my opinion one of the finest films to come out of Britiah cinema. Newton's most famous role was, of course, Long John Silver in "Treausre Island".

^* all of which is to say, David Niven wasn't IN Lean's "Oliver Twist".

Yes, "Niven's" was a mistake. And Newton wasn't in "Treausre Island."

Hoffman

R107 - Begging your pardon, but Newton's Long John Silver is his most famous role:

"Newton is best remembered for his portrayal of the feverish-eyed Long John Silver in the 1950 film adaptation of Treasure Island, the film that became the standard for screen portrayals of historical pirates. He would continue to portray pirates in Blackbeard in 1952 and Long John Silver again in the 1954 film of the same name, which spawned a miniseries in the mid-'50s. Born in Dorset in the West Country of England and growing up in Cornwall near Lands End, his exaggeration of his West Country accent is credited with popularising the stereotypical "pirate voice". Newton has become the "patron saint" of the annual International Talk Like a Pirate Day."

I repeat: Ar-men.

[Quote] Begging your pardon, but Newton's Long John Silver is his most famous role:

Re-read EXACTLY what you wrote.

Re-read yours:

"Newton wasn't in Treasure Island".

He was.

You made two factual errors: Niven was in Oliver Twist (he wasn't) and Newton wasn't in Treasure Island (he was).

I'll take I Know Where I'm Going over both.

Plus, you misspelled "Treasure" in "Treasure Island".

Yes, "Niven's" was a mistake. And Newton wasn't in "Treausre Island.""

[Quote] "Treausre Island".

[Quote] "Treausre Island".

[Quote] "Treausre Island".

Identify the error.

[Quote] Newton's most famous role was, of course, Long John Silver in "Treausre Island".

My response noted your error. You just missed it. Continually.

This is the reason the word "whatever" was invented.

Oh, come off it already. Jesus, you are tiresome.

[Quote] Oh, come off it already. Jesus, you are tiresome.

You got a taste of your own medicine.

Look, imbecile, a typo and a factual error are actually two very different things. Your joke was funny once, after which it wasn't.

It wasn't meant as a joke. It was meant to trip up the misspeller, which it did. More than once.

Yes, that would be your idea of a joke, as no one on earth except someone who resented having been caught in a factual error could would sit on so absurd a point for so long.

No wonder your arse hurts.

That is quite an inelegant sentence. Kudos.

You idiots leave me no choice......Barbara!

^ Girl, girls, please!

This puerile unpleasantness is blighting this tribute to Powell and Pressburger!

I can't believe the twit upthread thought I actually thought "Oliver Twist" was directed by David Niven, especially in a passage refererring to Robert Newton found in David Niven's memoirs... Anyway, I agree that this thread should get back on topic.

Why did Moira Shearer return to the fold for "Peeping Tom"?

Your last film appearance for Michael Powell was his notorious Peeping Tom.

Yes, I did that out of kindness of heart. Michael Powell arrived on my doorstep in 1959, with an ashen face and a large script under his arm. Could I help him? A small part - it would only take four days - the actress he had cast, Natasha Parry, had flown off to New York. At least, would I read the script? So I did, and thought it quite interesting, stupidly forgetting his sadistic streak. It was only four days in the studio and I saw nothing else of the filming, so the finished article was quite a shock.

Hmm... the script wasn't representative of the finished project?

Re The poster upthread who said he would take "I Know Where I'm Going" over both of them had a point - it's one of my favourites of P&P and it is very rarely shown compared to the iconic TRS and the exotic BN. But the thing about P&P is that although their oeuvre share themes, the films are so very different from each other that one keeps running into the "apples and oranges" issue.

I'm very fond of Livesey. Odd fact: he was married in real life to actress Ursula Jeans (sister of actress Isabel Jeans), whose brother was married to one of Livesey's sisters.

He was also tall and quite good looking when he got out from under all that facial hair he so often wore onscreen - a few years earlier, and Livesey might have played the airman in AMOLAD.

Livesey had one of the most distinctive voices in all of British cinema. It was quite sexy, really--even if he wasn't physically appealing.

Dear Candi I'd say Roger had one of the more distinctive male voices in British cinema.

But there were plenty of distinctive women, for example—

I love the powdery, greyed hues of the sets and costumes in those P & P (primarily 40's and early 50's-era) color films. They stand out as being very distinctive of the time precisely because you don't see those hues as much today. With Blu-ray, we can be more certain that we're seeing those color palettes as they were designed to be seen.

"Why did Moira Shearer return to the fold for "Peeping Tom"? "

I presume she got tired of being overshadowed by Margot Fonteyn at the Royal Ballet, and wanted to do more acting. But since she did very little film acting and it'd been a long time since "The Red Shoes", she took what she was offered even if it wasn't a great part or a congenial director.

What happened to her, later in life?

Wiki

No one expected Fonteyn to go on as long as she did, including Fonteyn herself - a large part of that longevity was driven by financial concers: after her husband was confined to a wheelchair after an assassination attempt, Fonteyn was struggling with huge bills for his care; dancing was her only way to keep earning money.

By the time Nureyev came along and jolted Fonteyn's career into a second renewal, Shearer herself was already "over".

So far as I know, Shearer was happily married and to businessman and broadcaster, Sir Ludovic Kennedy, had four children and grandchildren, and gave up both film and ballet to live the life of a well-heeled upper-class wife and mother.

Her beauty lasted almost right up until her death, I think, if photos are to be believed, looking a bit like Greer Garson.

R133 - you just beat me to it, I had just put up my post when you provided the link.

R134

R131 That IS a freaky image.

Is that from 'The Red Shoes'? Or 'Hoffman' (which I find difficult to watch) or 'Rosalinda' (which seems to have disappeared).

Red Shoes and Hoffman seem to the the only films with a hint of queerness in them (I imagine Portman and Walbrook were discreet)

R130 - Ah, Joan Greewood and that husky voice. Hiller's voice was quite distinctive, so was Kerr's, so was Edith Evans' and Mararet Rutherford's.

So, for that matter, was Flora Robson's. For all her talent, Robson said once if she could be born over again, she would rather have been beautiful. But I can still hear her at the end of "Wuthering Heights", with a sob in her voice, speaking about Heathcliff's and Cathy's love, at last free to have "its unlived days and uneaten bread".

R136 That's from Hoffmann, for which production and costume designer Hein Heckroth was nominated for two Academy Awards, in 1952. A similar palette appears in The Red Shoes, for which Heckroth won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction three years earlier.

Dear R1 Thank you for telling me I gave a truly great performance in 'Black Narcissus'.

But let's be frank, I had only 12 lines to say.

I had recently come back from the United States renouncing a seven-year contract from Jack L Warner— and I just did not want to go on playing George Raft's mother or John Garfield's aunt.

And look what happened to poor Gladys Cooper. She became addicted to her sun lounge at the Pacific palisades and she turned into a wrinkled prune.

R14 I'm not sure how you say 'Black Narcissus has a positive anti-colonialist message'.

Is it because the English nun's mission failed?

The mission would probably have been ejected in the Big India/Pakistan partition of August 1947. Wiki says 14 million people were displaced with a death toll estimated at between 200,000 to 2 million.

R140 - If I remember correctly, 500,000 people died in the partition conflict and creation of Pakistan in one year. There's a scene in Jewel in the Crown where a train full of Muslims is attacked by Hindus who slaughter just about every Muslim on board, and as it pulls into the next station, women waiting for the train on the platform begin passing out as they see the bloody bodies hanging out the windows of the train. It's a well-done scene: you see the women sinking down to the platform before you see the train itself.

People forget how murderous and violent it was.

"[R14] I'm not sure how you say 'Black Narcissus has a positive anti-colonialist message'. Is it because the English nun's mission failed? "

Pretty much IMHO, although I'm not the person you were speaking to. The nuns' mission failed because they didn't understand the culture, people, or locale, and they realized that trying to march in and impose their belief system was doomed to failure, as contrary to imperial beliefs, the locals weren't a bunch of blank slates who were eager to let their white masters write on them. No, the nuns came slap up against the unknown and unknowable, and found their methods and faith inadequate, so inadequate that the place influenced them much more than they influenced the place.

I think Sister Clodagh (sp?) would have kept her faith and vocation after the events of the film, but would have a much broader understanding of human nature and the fallibility of religious people after that.

"[R14] I'm not sure how you say 'Black Narcissus has a positive anti-colonialist message'. Is it because the English nun's mission failed? "

Pretty much IMHO, although I'm not the person you were speaking to. The nuns' mission failed because they didn't understand the culture, people, or locale, and they realized that trying to march in and impose their belief system was doomed to failure, as contrary to imperial beliefs, the locals weren't a bunch of blank slates who were eager to let their white masters write on them. No, the nuns came slap up against the unknown and unknowable, and found their methods and faith inadequate, so inadequate that the place influenced them much more than they influenced the place.

I think Sister Clodagh (sp?) would have kept her faith and vocation after the events of the film, but would have a much broader understanding of human nature and the fallibility of religious people after that.

R33 I haven't read Rumer Godden's book "Black Narcissus' about the Protestant nuns nor have I read her book about Catholic nuns called 'In this House of Brede'.

But I have watched the TV version of it starring Diana Rigg on Youtube.

It is cold. There are some common themes; a relatively inexperienced protagonist, a general feeling of discord, and an ending in a departure. But, apart from that, the presentation of the two stories is like chalk and cheese, fire and ice.

Black Narcissus is the most artfully shot cinematic masterpiece ever .

It’s “showdown”, Op. Not “showoff”!

Yes, R146, I wasn't sure of the OP's intention.

I realized this immediately after I posted it R146, and was surprised no one corrected me earlier

Well, the misspelling troll can't even spot their own misspellings, so...

And look at the pompous cinemaphile who didn't know David Niven wasn't in what was possibly one of Britrish cinema's ten greatest films, and couldn't remember the name of the actor (Robert Newton) who played Bill Sykes in that film?

Because the alleged cinemaphile for all his superiority, quite clearly hasn't ever seen Lean's "Oliver Twist", or he would never have forgotten that Niven wasn't in it, nor Newton's searing portrayal of the brutal Sykes. You don't forget a performance like that nor the actor who gave it unless, of course, you've never seen the film.

So, really, what can one expect?

I wrote Niven's "Oliver Twist." There are context clues that I mixed up the Davids. Big whoop.

^*British cinema's . . .

Just to keep the (now blocked) spelling troll happy.

"Five COUNT-ies? Oh, I don't think I should like that. I hate crowds."

"And though I distinctly asked for bread and butter, you have given me (drops voice an octave) cake ...

Joan Greenwood is my new goddess.

[quote]Joan Greenwood is my new goddess.

You have a treat in store if you haven't seen Tom Jones yet.

^ Timing and intonation is vital in playing Oscar Wilde. Actors have a real task making his characters human even though they speak outrageous epigrams.

I adore Joan Greenwood and like Dorothy Tutin. Each time I watch this clip I listen for the cuckoo in the background. It has good comic timing too.

Fuck! I ordered the non-Criteron version by mistake !Is it any good?

R154 - And not just because of the marvellous Greenwood - just about everyone you could ever hope to see doing a terrific turn is in that film. Look for Angela Baddeley, too, who later went on to fame as the cook, Mrs Bridges, in Upstairs, Downstairs.

Deborah won a special Oscar after many nominations and no win. Sadly I can’t say the same about a certain dear friend..

R156 not sure if the release you got is here, but this has comparisons of several of them. Criterion almost always reigns, and I think that's true here

Thank you r159. I bought the Criterion and getting a refund on the other one. Gonna watch BN this weekend and have Red Shoes on my DVR.