The film-making partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger was one of the most remarkable and visionary in cinema. They made an extraordinary range of films, from The Spy in Black and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp to A Canterbury Tale and The Red Shoes. With champions like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, and revived critical interest worldwide, they now find new generations of admirers. This illuminating new book looks closely at these classic films to explore their complex relationship to national identity, and their interest in exile, borderlands, utopias, escapism, art and fantasy. Moor reveals for example how the visual imagery of the films of the Second World War question current cinematic styles and how post war films like The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman are in their highly expressive use of design, music and dance utterly international in character.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger formed one of the greatest creative partnerships in the history of British cinema - The Archers. Their films were often controversial - Churchill tried to suppress the release of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Later, The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman startled and enchanted cinema audiences with their use of colour, form amd music. However, in the last ten years the magic, poetry and passion of their work has been acknowledged around the world and they are firmly in the pantheon of film masters. This book is a comprehensive analysis of their films and is a useful guide to their work.

This collection of interviews reveals the mind and the tactics of a master filmmaker who is woefully under-known, even as his films are widely celebrated throughout the world

"Much, much more than the reminiscences of a film director. It's a rich, beautifully detailed history of a time, a place, and a world gone by--the British film industry from the 1920s through the late 1940s, in which every remembrance . . . is filtered through [Powell's] poetic genius . . . as absorbing as any novel".--Martin Scorsese. 30 photos.

For fans of The Passenger, this thrilling tale of an ex-Nazi surgeon hiding in plain sight in 1960s London by the celebrated filmmaker is a lost noir gem, introduced by Anthony Quinn and narrated on audio by Mark Gatiss. 'Stunning: incredibly good, thought-provoking and tense.' Ian Rankin 'This extraordinary novel had me hooked from start to finish.' Sarah Waters 'An outstanding novel: gripping, tense and darkly unsettling.' Jonathan Freedland 'A wonderfully compelling noir thriller and audacious and challenging act of imagination.' William Boyd 'One of the best London novels of the 20th century.' Benjamin Myers Nothing is more inviting to disclose your secrets than to be told by others of their own ... London, June 1965. Karl Braun arrives as a lodger in Pimlico: hatless, with a bow-tie, greying hair, slight in build. His new neighbours are intrigued by this cultured German gentleman who works as a piano tuner; many are fellow émigrés, who assume that he, like them, came to England to flee Hitler. That summer, Braun courts a woman, attends classical concerts, dances the twist. But as the newspapers fill with reports of the hunt for Nazi war criminals, his nightmares become increasingly worse . 'A haunting, remarkable novel, as startlingly original as any of Pressburger's films.' Nicola Upson 'A dark and harrowing window on the past: the ending will haunt your dreams.' Janice Hallett

The classic story of a gifted dancer caught between two men and the greatest love of her life, the ballet.

Winston Churchill hated The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and tried to have it banned when it was released in 1943. But Martin Scorsese, a champion of directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, considers it a masterpiece. It's a film about desires repressed in favour of worthless and unsatisfying ideals. And it's a film about how England dreamt of itself as a nation and how this dream disguised inadequacy and brutality in the clothes of honour. A. L. Kennedy, writing as a Scot, is fascinated by the nationalism which The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp explores. She finds human worth in the film and the pathos of stifled emotions and unfulfilled lives. 'If he is unaware of his passions, ' she writes of Clive Candy, the film's central figure, 'this is because his pains have become habitual, a part of personality, and because he was never taught a language that could speak of emotions like pain.'. This edition includes a foreword by the author exploring the film's continuing relevance in an age of Brexit, when English and British national identity are deeply contested concepts.