Martin Scorcese is recognised for his skill as a filmmaker – including as the maker of some highly personal documentaries surrounding film history and filmmakers. But he is also recognised as a patron of the accomplishments of English director Michael Powell, whose Renaissance as a filmmaker began in the 1980s — and was intensified by his marriage to Scorcese’s accomplished right-hand editor Thelma Schoonmaker (both unforgettable guests at Sodankylä in 1987).
Scorsese’s documentary film about Powell (and his Hungarian screenwriting partner Emeric Pressburger), produced and hosted by Scorcese and directed by David Hinton, is indeed the most loving and personal of Scorcese’s productions surrounding film history. And it should be no cause for disappointment that the film goes through Powell’s life (1905-1990) and film career in chronological order, from Powell’s favourite of his own films, A Matter of Life and Death (1946) to the queen of ballet films, The Red Shoes (1948), and Peeping Tom (1960), which, despite its catastrophic critical reception, is one of the quintessential works of modern horror. To Scorsese, the Powell-Pressburger duo’s The Archers company logo was a warranty seal of the true magic of cinema.
With the help of archival materials and film excerpts, a rich big picture emerges of perhaps the most creative director-screenwriter pairing in history, whose influence on Scorsese’s own filmography is also highlighted. In brief: “What life and art are all about.”
Timo Malmi