Pen-Ultima Thule – The Edge of the World (1937 cut), Birkbeck College

“Edge of the World was entirely saved for me by the editor (Derek Twist) … I mean, Flaherty with no story – at least I had the semblance of a story – took about six months to cut Man of Aran, and then it wasn’t any good…”

Michael Powell, Powell, Pressburger and Others (1978) BFI

The last few decades have seen a bonanza of different mixes, demos and alternate cuts of the output of the most familiar musicians from The Beatles and The Stones to even JS Bach, Erik Satie and Taylor Swift (not together…). Each new variation fascinates and paints a picture of the artists on route to their eventual well-known statements, the elements of Strawberry Fields Forever are interesting because they sound so different to the magical mix created by George Martin and his “Boys” and they show how decisions were reached in search of the perfected final version.

So it is with film, with a boom in “Limited Editions” featuring different cuts of even the most esoteric of films. Getting to see a different version of a classic film some of us have seen dozens of times is pretty rare though and to see Michael Powell’s first major “personal” cinematic statement in a form not seen since its original release in 1937 is not only rare it’s almost certainly unique and it happened again on screen right here on 8^th July 2025 in Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image Cinema a lifetime after it was last seen in this form.

How there came to be a copy of this Mark I release of the film is a story of its own and owes everything to conversations between passionate cineastes one of whom, Bob Geoghegan, Director of the Archive Film Agency and a man of many parts, knew he had a copy of the film safely stored on 35mm nitrate but not the exact age. SO it was that investigation revealed it to be a print from the year of release and one that was different from that we know in significant ways. He duly created a digital transfer from these materials for projection at this event.

Inspired by the evacuation of the Island of St Kilda a few years before, The Edge of the World has been recently restored by the BFI and I’d last seen this at Bologna in 2023 but this was something else entirely as Christopher Bird explained in his introduction to a room full of the very people you’d usually find in Il Cinema Ritrovato, some who’d come a long way for this rarity. Chris had scrupulously prepared a shot-by-shot comparison video for four key moments from the films, showing us three before revealing the fourth a very important moment from the ending shot which I won’t spoil.

Technically, Michael Powell is a much better filmmaker than Robert J Flaherty...

The video ran the two versions side by side and it was easy to see the gaps in the restored version against the fuller shots on this 1937 version. For whatever reason – and this is where the historians come in and dig deeper than the primary evidence – Powell re-edited the film in the 1940s no doubt when he had more success and clout behind him so that the version we have been watching all of lives is what he wanted us to watch some eight (?) years after it was first released. As he said in the quote at the top, Derek Twist brought this production home with Powell struggling with a limited budget and, after St Kilda’s owner refused, a last-minute change of location to the island of Foula across the North Sea to Shetland.

In general, the newly-revealed film showed more of the reaction shots to discussions between the main characters filling out the narrative and engaging us with more of the wonderful locals who we would see again when Master of Ceremonies, Professor Ian Christie, screened Return to the Edge of the World a BBC-funded documentary returning Powell, John Laurie and Grant Sutherland back to the remains of the society they filmed amongst. It’s a wonderful film and Laurie is full of mischief with a mystical twinkle greeting every islander who’s name he feigns to have remembered. A special time for both.

I’ve written about this film a number of times before on here but every viewing only makes it more impressive – not least because of the three or so “new” minutes but also the achievement of Powell’s team in making of the film was an epic adventure in itself. "200,000 feet on Foula" was Powell's original title for his book on the making of the film and references the immense amount of footage shot… thanks be to Mr Twist again!

Powell and drama-documentarist Robert Flaherty did not get on and their methods were so different with the Englishman choosing to use actual actors for his depiction of disappearing cultures. In the end the skill of the story making as well as the players and crew win the day for Foula. EOTW is about as political as Powell gets as he highlights the failure of government to support the islanders as they drown their dogs and cut their losses in the saddest of circumstances. I wonder what happened to the folk of St Kilda, Rachel Johnson, the last of the native St Kildans, died in April 2016 at the age of 93, having been evacuated at the age of eight… what stories did she and other tell of their traumatic changes? Powell caught the dramatic truth better than his rival over on the Irish Aran.

Christie and co also presented us with some fabulous extras including Smith (1939) a public information film promoting a charity helping ex-servicemen, The Embankment Fellowship Centre, which was once lost not just to film archives but also film history. This was introduced by the remarkable Mark Fuller who’d actually found the only remaining copy by tracking down the charity - now called The Ex-Service Fellowship Centres - who revealed that they not only have materials about the project but also a copy of the film! They are now called Veterans Aid and the film is available to view on their website.

We also saw the poignant, An Airman's Letter to His Mother (1941) which is so revealing of the times in which Powell made films and the nature of lived experience during wartime.

My thanks to the following:

• Christopher Bird
• Ian Christie
• Mark Fuller
• Bob Geoghegan

And also the audience of some of the most cinematically curious people in the country and, indeed, in the town!

The next event at the BIMI is Voices from the Chorus presented by Ian and Robert Denning. Full details are available on the Birkbeck website.

The shock of the old… Short Sharp Shocks Volume 3, BFI Flipside 47

“Dead letters, sir. Doesn’t that sound like dead men?”

 

The BFI’s ongoing mission to explore strange old worlds continues with another splendid set of shocking shorts for the Flipside series. What we have here are two Blu-ray discs of strangeness and charm ranging from Orson Welles in Ireland to Dexter Fletcher’s junkie dreams via a very disturbing slice of “found-footage” horror. As a whole the stories twist and turn in delightfully unexpected ways, and each leaves its mark even in the most relaxed of viewing environments: a home invasion of unexpected impacts.

 

As with the previous two sets, BFI Flipside series that revisits the heyday of the supporting programme, with a series of very off-the-beaten path British short films presented in High Definition for the first time, all the better to absorb the uncanny atmosphere of three decades and more of filmmaking in the inner reaches. As before there’s a fabulous booklet* and extras including specially commissioned interviews with some of the directors of these films.

 

Michael Laurence amd Orson Welles take a trip

Return to Glennascaul (1951) kicks off in fine style with Mr Welles being interrupted on the set of Othello to recant the strangest of encounters in the darkened roads of western Ireland. Written and directed by Hilton Edwards it is a tidy tale that was nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject.

 

We find Orson driving through some mean weather on a dark and tempestuous night when he comes across a man (Michael Laurence) who’s car has broken down. He offers a lift and the man accepts before describing a similar road-side incident some years previously when he’d been invited for a cup of tea or something stronger… by a mother and daughter who lived in a large house near his own. After staying longer than he wanted to he returns the following morning to find his uncle’s cigarette case which he’d left on their mantlepiece only to find the building dilapidated and long empty… and more mystery awaits.

John Laurie

Strange Stories (1953)

Here are two odd tales told by John Slater (later Detective Sgt Stone of Z-Cars!) and Valentine Dyall, the first of which is an adaptation of The Strange Mr Bartleby a short story written by Herman Melville after Moby Dick and which was later turned into a film with John McEnery as the titular Bartleby and Paul Scofield as the man who employs him. Here John Laurie is the man who would “prefer not to” after being recruited by Norman Shelley at his solicitor’s office. There’s an added character in a young woman (Naomi Chance) who employs the lawyer to track down a missing man. It's an eerie tale and Laurie is perfect as the inscrutable and exasperatingly alien Bartleby.

There’s a second story with a young couple, Charlie (Colin Tapely) and Marie (Helen Hunter) attempting escape to Tasmania after the accidental killing of a man they owed money to. Whilst the captain of the merchant vessel they book is suspicious it’s their own paranoia and guilt that makes the journey a painful one.

Strange Experiences: Grandpa’s Portrait and Old Silas (1956)

These are two, blink and you’ll miss them minisodes – as no one calls them – featuring the urbane Peter Williams sat in a comfy chair reading these tales of the mildly unexpected.

 

George Votsis in old Covent Garden

Maze (1969)

Things get decidedly groovier 13 years later with this free-running tale of mysterious London connections all soundtracked by a band made up of members of the legendary prog band Family. The music is fab as are the locations as we follow a series of ace faces, an immigrant dishwasher (George Votsis) starts from Covent Garden when it was still a vegetable market, through the West End to a restaurant where a blonde woman (Stephanie Cleverley) who we’d seen arguing with a man near Bow Street, is finally reconciled. It’s a very neat construct and was put together by Bob Bentley for his degree show at the Royal College of Art’s Film and Television School.

There’s so much going on it’s a delight of atmosphere and expectation its rediscovery heralded by Bentley: It is a wonderful thing to share this ancient film. I had imagined it lost in the labyrinth itself, never to be seen again, but it has re-emerged from the subterranean depths and into the light, like Proserpine, Empress of Hades.

 

Skinfliker (1973)

Disc two gets off to an uncomfortable and hard-hitting start with Tony Bicât’s experimental film about the kidnapping and killing of a government minister by a group of dissidents, who aim to document everything on camera in an echo of mythical “snuff” films as well as a precursor of the ‘found footage’ horror genre.

It’s got rough edges and an uncomfortable restless energy that reflect the almost banal humour of the situation and the protagonists’ amateurish terrorism, all the more frightening and neither they nor we know if they’ll be able to follow through.

The film itself went through a similar test with Bicât challenged by the BFI who asked if he had any experience of film making; “I said I’d seen a lot of films. ‘So why should the BFI Production Board give you money to make Skinflicker?’ Because, I said, I love the script and only I know how to make it.” Turns out he was right and you won’t forget this in a hurry.

 

Banal tortures, boardering on the slapstick and yet...

COI: Broken Bottle and Don’t Fool Around with Fireworks (1973)

As is often remarked, it’s amazing that my generation survived into adulthood what with all the dangers to life constantly highlighted by public information films. The titles speak for themselves and we did take heed… hence the people at the BFI wouldn’t be around to tell the tales via Flipside!

We also had to worry about boot boys, skinheads and large groups of lads by the chippie but some risks stood out for themselves.

 

The Terminal Game (1982)

We’ve been worried about AI for a lot longer than the Daily Mail might suggest and this slice of near-sci-fi shows just why as a computer programmer investigates a colleague’s suspicious death against a backdrop of irresponsible big business and uncontrollable new technology… Geoff Lowe, you saw the future and it doesn’t work…

Some great locations here too including the darkly sentient St Alphage House on the Moorgate to London Wall Highwalks, now mostly lost to new buildings as we keep on building forward.

Music is provided by the excellent Colin Towns who I saw playing keyboards with Ian Gillan in 1982!!

 

St Alphage's Tower, looking increasingly like a computer

Wings of Death (1985)

This is the short that first impressed Derek Jarman with the exceptional Dexter Fletcher whom he subsequently cast in Caravaggio, although he clearly failed to watch him in Bugsy Malone and Stephen Moffatt’s The Press Gang!

There are echoes of Chatterton in the opening shot, as Nichola Bruce and Michael Coulson’s film explores the fevered dreams of the young addict played by Fletcher as he tries to escape his fate. It’s fraught with a twisted magical realism that bears comparison with Lynch as well as Jarman, as Fletcher’s character finds weirdness in everyone, he meets even the little girl playing with her “dead” dollies on the stairs, and the hotel receptionist eating like a pig and resembling his mother.

It's a standout on the set and reminiscent of so many shorts that accompanied longer films up to this time, often at the Scala in Kings Cross and which would leave us slightly out of joint as we staggered back into the night air after a viewing, a little bit more eager to get home than when we arrived…

Dexter Fletcher

 

Shockingly special features!!

A Vandyke Production: Roger Proudlock and Strange Stories (2023, 7 mins): the BFI’s Vic Pratt looks back on the tiny post-war independent film company that produced Strange Stories

Getting Lost (2023, 20 mins): interview with Bob Bentley, writer and director of Maze

Touch a Nerve (2023, 26 mins): interview with Skinflicker director Tony Bicât

Actor Henry Woolf’s personal pencil-annotated copy of the Skinflicker script by Howard Brenton

A Game of Two Halves (2023, 28 mins): interview with The Terminal Game writer and director Geoff Lowe

Playing Music (2023, 8 mins): renowned composer Colin Towns looks back on his score for The Terminal Game

The Terminal Game original trailer

Wings of Death: Behind the Scenes (2023, 7 mins): co-director Nichola Bruce’s chronological edit of her 8mm footage of the shoot

Flying High (2023, 31 mins): the directors of Wings of Death look back on the film

Rare photographs taken on the set of Wings of Death by Steve Pyke

Image galleries for Maze, Skinflicker, and Wings of Death

Newly commissioned sleeve artwork by renowned illustrator Graham Humphreys

*First pressing only: Illustrated booklet with an introduction from the BFI’s Vic Pratt, William Fowler and Josephine Botting, an essay on Skinflicker by Sarah Appleton, notes and credits for each film and for the special features

 

So, yet another must-watch set and you must-buy either direct from the BFI’s online store or the shop itself on the Southbank.

 

Always look on the Flipside of life!

 

For whom the bell tolls… Black Narcissus (1947), Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII, 2023 Part 2

If, watching one of the greatest British films, on a fresh 35mm copy (created in 2020 from an interpositive printed from the original three-strip negatives...) and on the biggest screen possible with thousands of others in Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore is not peak Cinema Ritrovato then I don’t know what is… In fairness this is a festival with many summits yet how many of those are introduced by leading Archers-ologist and “friend of the band” Ian Christie and, especially, one of cinema’s finest editors and, for ten years, Mrs Michael Powell, Thelma Schoonmaker.

 

If Ivan was Man of the Week in Silence then surely our Man of the Week in talkies, and some silents, has definitely been Michael Powell as we’ve been treated to restorations of some of his so-called Quota Quickies which in an excellent primer for the series, Christie and Schoonmaker explained were often budgeted on one pound sterling per foot in an attempt to protect British film when the American talkies were just out-competing the domestic industry. An act of parliament resulted which insisted that British films be shown before any imported headliner. They were of varying quality but, as Alexander Korda’s Reservation for Ladies (1932 and recently screened on stunning nitrate stock at the BFI) showed, an able director could do a lot with the right talent available.

 

Powell, who learned his trade in the South of France working in any capacity he could to aid Rex Ingram, first produced a series of silent comedy travelogues in which he played the odd butterfly collector who also did all his own stunts. They’re charming and a vital piece in the projected Powell history I had never seen, slapstick but doing the main job of making the locations look interesting.

Riviera Revels, Michael Powell as Cisero Simp in the snow 

The “quickies” followed and these were definitely a mixed bag each one of which shows the director making the most of cast, crew and budget as well as his tightly regimented small ensembles. First up,  Hotel Splendide (1932) is a fun piece with that well-drilled troupe making the most of classic but predictable misunderstandings; pretty much a farce with extra beats for cross-dressing and criminality. I was less impressed with His Lordship (1932) about an impoverished nobleman who prefers plumbing to the ‘ouse of Lords, it’s still worth watching though for some cheery songs that occasionally rise above mere British “pluck” (code: giving your all on a limited budget).

 

Something Always Happens (1935) was my favourite not least for the easy-going assurance of Ian Hunter whose character Peter always believes his salvation is only just a flash of luck and sales genius away… the stakes rise suddenly when he “adopts” a waif and stray (excellent performance from young John Singer as Billy and then meets an attractive young women, Cynthia (Nancy O’Neil) who encourages him to pitch his revolutionary ideas about forecourt trading to the market leader and notorious corporate killer, Benjamin Hatch (Peter Gawthorne) who is, unbeknownst to Peter, Hatch’s daughter.

 

Nancy O’Neil and youngJohn Singer with Ian Hunter

Peter heads off to the competition and really brings it on the Hatch crew who, at some point are going to have to recognise the man’s business genius as well as the fact that he’s won the heart of hard-hearted Hatch’s daughter.  Powell was pleased, writing in his autobiography, A Life in Movies: “A very good comedy… We played it all out for laughs and great speed, excellent dialogue. It was about a chap who never pays for anything.”

The Red Ensign (1934) was another more successful project helped considerably by the lead actor, Leslie Banks as shipping magnate David Barr. It’s a bit of a propaganda film calling for workers to support the ideas of new leaders as the country fought to revive its merchant navy – those who fly the Red Ensign – in the face of competition from across the globe. Barr has a revolutionary new idea to improve loads and capacity but he needs to persuade his stuffy old directors to invest and his loyal workers to skip the odd payment, it’s flag-waving fantasy but still effective drama. I wonder what happened…

 

Judy Gunn is not impressed with Louis Hayward

The Love Test (1935) was promising with Judy Gunn’s Mary Lee being the leading scientist of a group dedicated to the discovery of flame-proof celluloid. When the time comes and her boss has to resign for his health, Dr Mary is the obvious choice to run the team but, not so, comes the response from all but one of the old school chauvinists who will now be working under her. Rather disappointingly they decide the thing to do is to get one of the team, John Gregg (Louis Hayward) to romance her and put her off the project through his manly wiles… He doesn’t want to do it but former school bullied like Thomson (Dave Hutcheson), clearly have no interest in science just one-upmanship.

 

It's a rather depressing premise and one that threatens to run away with the film in then end… thank Heavens for a classy, brassy secretary Minnie (Googie Withers in her first part?), who outshines most of the dinosaurs. 1935, and industrial competition at a height and these men only want to mess around to bring their female boss down? I don’t think so.

 

On a lighter note, the Phantom Light (1935) is a perfectly serviceable adventure featuring some lovely location work in Snowdonia as well as the classic situation of an isolated lighthouse in a storm with a killer on board. Ian Hunter is in board as is the ace Gordon Harker, so you know it’s going to be well acted. Then there’s Liverpool’s Binnie Hale to prove that high heels are the correct response to any crisis and Donald Calthrop to provide much needed gravitas.

Close to the edge... Eric Berry and Belle Chrystall

By 1937, Powell had achieved enough to be given a larger project, The Edge of the World, to be filmed on the remote island of Foula with a cast including Finlay Currie and the great John Laurie which examined the recent depopulation of the island of St Kilda in the 1920s as the economy dwindled, young folk opted for the mainland and the critical communal mass broke down.

 

Here Powell is the anti-Flaherty – the two we not on good terms as per Ian Christie - with the Englishman preferring to use actual actors for his acting and presenting a way of life in more pointed and honest ways. EOTW is about as political as Powell gets as he highlights the failure of government to support the islanders as they drown their dogs and cut their losses in the saddest of circumstances. I wonder what happened to the folk of St Kilda, Rachel Johnson, the last of the native St Kildans, died in April 2016 at the age of 93, having been evacuated at the age of eight… what stories did she and other tell of their traumatic changes?

 

It’s a beautiful film to watch with highly-skilled cinematography, consistency of tone and vision, "Edge" is infused throughout with Powell's trademark mysticism. It clearly features many of the signature elements that would underpin his wonderful career. Made over many difficult months in the remote and inhospitable environment of the island of Foula, having been refused permission to film on the deserted St Kilda, the making of the film was an epic adventure in itself. ("200,000 feet on Foula" was Powell's original title for his book on the making of the film and references the immense amount of footage shot.)

 

Apart from Currie and Laurie there are smart turns from Eric Berry as the gifted engineer Robbie Manson who wants to use his skills in the wider world; Belle Chrystall, as his sister Ruth (possibly the only woman with plucked eyebrows in the whole of the western isles...) who is being romanced by Niall MacGinnis’ Andrew Gray. The three are the future of the island and that’s on or off depending on the outcome of a treacherous cliff race and the immovable object of Laurie versus Currie’s gentler but no less resolute pragmatism.

Findlay and John

It's a film to relish on the big screen as is Black Narcissus which looks simply remarkable for a film of its vintage and which was filmed largely in studio and in England… across every element this is near perfection from Powell and Pressburger, Jack Cardiff and Alfred Junge with W. Percy Day's eye-boggling matte painting. The colours are stunning, the images sparkle, and Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, David Farrah and company are all magical. The film manages to convey an eerie sense of place, huge scale and yet all crowded in by the distance all around and the endless wind pushing through everything, a restless force that crushes all but the hardiest of souls.

 

There’ll be more time to examine all of these things in more detail for the BFI’s Autumn Powell Festival but this selection, and the stunning centrepiece, really whetted the appetite not just for a broader appreciation of Powell and Pressburger’s work, but also the director’s separate projects. It’s going to be a fascinating programme and likely one which will make us see the Archers and their most frequent collaborators in a different light: the best of British Cinema operating at a high level less than a decade after we almost lost the industry for ever. Thank goodness the Government of the day intervened and that we still had the talent to make the most of the opportunity offered.

 

See them all at the BFI in October, meanwhile thanks to the Cinema Ritrovato for showing the international appeal of Britain’s greatest film makers.

 

*I missed just one film in the strand, Her Last Affair (1936), something to save for London especially as it features another show-steeling turn from Googie Withers not to mention John Laurie.

W. Percy Day's craft and 

The art of war... The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

'No people in the world other than the English would have had the courage, in the midst of war, to tell the people such unvarnished truth…' Anton Walbrook to Winston Churchill (allegedly…)

Of all the war films made by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger perhaps none challenged the notion of propaganda quite so much as Colonel Blimp. They didn’t want simple preaching but to engage their viewers in their own rational support for war. There are no simple atrocities, no easy clichés and there are even Germans to admire: following on from Eric Portman’s character in 49th Parallel – a brave soldier doing what he must for his country.

Roger Livesey and Anton Walbrook

Perhaps Pressburger’s European view gave them “balance” but I don’t think he was alone in thinking that in order to truly win support for the war you had to help people really understand it and not just generate hate. You also had to respect the opposition and to differentiate professional soldiers from the Nazis: ”the single most evil concept ever bought to life by the human mind”.

In Colonel Blimp extra spice is added by the Archers’ ostensible attack on the traditionalist “Blimps” running the forces who were more wedded to misguided concepts of honour than the need to fight like-with-like against a new generation of enemies who are entirely unrestrained by principle and the Rules of War.

Blimp in the bath

Naturally, elements of the establishment were confused... The fact that Colonel Blimp had been a cartoon strip specialising in buffoon-bashing didn’t help and nor did the good Colonel’s vague resemblance to Britain’s larger than life Prime Minister…But it was never that simple: it never is in the films of Powell and Pressburger.

Colonel Blimp starts off showing us the old and the complacent: stubbornly sticking to the way things should be done… but then it shows us how this man came to be. Turns out he was far more daring, far more dashing than even the young Captain who decides to humble him by attacking six hours before their manoeuvers are due to start.

Protean charmer...

Powell cleverly swims us back in time after Blimp, (Clive Wynne-Candy - played by protean charmer Roger Livesey) pushes this upstart into the bath at his club then emerges out the other side forty years and several dozen promotions lighter. He’s a hero from the Boer War recently awarded the Victoria Cross and  he sets off to Germany in order to help a young Englishwoman who has sought his help in silencing a pro-Boer propagandist: Edith Hunter (Deborah Kerr – we’ll see more of her…).

Deborah Kerr 1 and Deborah Kerr 3...

Candy can’t help but get into trouble driven on by chivalry and his sense of duty. He ends up having to fight a sabre duel with a German officer, Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook) another who respects honour above his own life and even his natural distaste for the duel. This scene is so well done, as the build-up is shown  in painstaking detail…all the rules of the Prussian duel-book are followed and then, as our two men engage with elegant flashing blades, Powell’s camera lifts up and far above the gymnasium, as snow falls in picture-book silence over the scene around the hall.

The duel...

Cut forward a few hours to a hospital in which both men are recovering, Candy from a slice across his upper lip – eight stiches - and Kretschmar-Schuldorff from a gash on his forehead – 12 stitches… a score-draw, honours almost even. Edith is persuaded to stay on to help provide a cover for Clive’s unauthorised adventure: the fight is to have been over her honour and not the respective armed forces of Britain and Germany. How elegantly the rules are obeyed by both sides.

Anton Walbrook and Deborah Kerr

If it wasn’t clear by now, it soon is apparent that these two military men share similar values. In spite of speaking little of each other’s language the two soon become firm friends with Edith as an interpreter, card companion and romantic interest… Clive is too unaware to notice but even as he congratulates Theo on his engagement to Edith he realises that he has made the most awful mistake…

Clive leaves but he never stops loving Edith. As the year’s roll on and into the War to End All Wars… he keeps seeing her face and eventually marries a Yorkshire nurse Barbara Wynne (Deborah Kerr), after the war, who looks very much the same.

Deborah Kerr 2 and Roger Livesey

Clive encounters Theo in defeat at a prisoner of war camp and the two eventually re-connect as Clive and his other victorious friends try to persuade the German that there’s life after defeat…

Time shifts forward shown by the growth of Clive’s hunting trophies in his den… a succession of Zebra, Rhino, Elephants and other now endangered species attach themselves all showing the locations of their “bagging”  -  a clever device: how else to show the extent of Empire?

Livesey and Laurie

Another shift to 1943 sees Clive considerably older and now relegated to the Home Guard. He’s still aided by his former driver from the Great War: Murdoch played by the great John Laurie…without whom no P&P film would be complete! His new driver is altogether younger and better looking:  a redhead called Angela "Johnny" Cannon (Deborah Kerr again…).

So, women have gone from agitating for men to help them, getting stuck in as war nurses and finally to active combat (albeit as a driver) – so equal they even have men’s names…

"Johnny’s” boyfriend is the over-eager young man who shows Clive and co that you now need to break the rules of war in order to win and this is a message reinforced by Theo as Clive encounters him again as a refugee trying to escape the Nazis.

Theo is detained by suspicious immigration officers and gives a moving account of just how low his country has fallen under the rule of men he barely considers German. This was highly personal not just for the Austrian Walbrook but also for the Hungarian Pressburger whose grandson, Kevin Macdonald, confirms just how close to home the feelings expressed were.

Wake up calls...

Theo too feels that Clive and many Britons needed to adjust to the requirements of fighting total war against an enemy that would do anything to win: never mind kicking off early. Clive cannot take it in and refuses to accept his redundancy even after he gets side-lined… Yet, it’s the death of the Blimp but not of the Colonel … his self-respect is re-focused and he knows there’s still a place for his values only if he puts his faith in those of the younger generation.

Like all Powell and Pressburger films, Colonel Blimp leaves much to ponder but by treating its audience with such respect it leaves them thinking even at a time when the government just wanted them fighting. Yet the majority of those who saw the film would have been on the Home Front and would have needed such rational fare to help sustain them through the closing years of this bitter conflict… a time when the game genuinely did change and Britain did indeed have to find itself anew in the World that remained.

The admirable Anton

The three (five!?) leads are magnificent, Deborah Kerr playing three women kind of based on one, with such conviction that you might be confused if you didn’t already know her face so well. Anton Walbrook acts in such powerful silence that he draws the eye in almost every scene: so sad and angrily-dignified, he sees much more than Candy, having lost early enough in life to learn the skills of adaption.

Then there’s Roger Livesey, initially so unrecognisable as the dashing Laird of Kiloran from I Know Where I’m Going, but who clearly relishes the chance to play a character with less depth and more journey… Were P&P addressing the nature of heroism? Was Candy too insensitive to be a real hero or just blinded by absolute certainty and belief in the greatness of his country?

Old and middle-aged Candy

The Archers, as always, manage to celebrate Britishness whilst also poking holes in its contradictions. But you’re always more hurtful to the one you love and above all they believe in the fairness as much as the fighting spirit: trusting in both.

All filmed in amazing Technicolor by the magical Jack Cardiff, Colonel Blimp looks freshly minted in the recently-released Blu-Ray edition. It comes with an old-fangled DVD and a half hour documentary on the film along with comments on the restoration from Archers mega-fan Martin Scorsese.

I haven’t seen the film for a while and it’s never looked better: Powell and Pressburger on Blu-Ray…you know it makes sense!

It’s available from Movie Mail and all Amazons at very reasonable prices…

The moving finger writes… Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)

A wispy dream of a film, Albert Lewin’s labour about love has a cracking start full of intrigue, invention and fragile mortality.

It begins with a portentous quote from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: "The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

The villagers crowd to view the tragedy

A Spanish fishing boat has uncovered something terrible and we see the villagers of Esperanza  running across the beach from all directions as the camera pans outwards through a tolling bell on a high tower and revealing a young woman looking down in horror through a telescope on a platform way above the shore. It’s a great set-piece and seems to have been improvised largely around the location as found.

Amidst the distress that follows we learn that one of the two dead was known and loved very well by the local expats - a mix of archaeologists, drunks and speed racers – and is an American singer called Pandora…

There goes the fourth wall...

The owner of the house on the hill is Professor Geoffrey Fielding (Harold Warrender) and, as he mulls over the tragedy, he turns startlingly to face the viewer and starts telling the whole tale... The distant sound of gypsy music increases in volume and is revealed as the Professor's memory of a local group performing before the expats. The gypsies are everything the Brits are not, passionate and  true to themselves, they play and dance with abandon... a foretaste of what is to come.

Now that's a pasodoble!

Pulling back from the gypsy dancing, we soon see Pandora languidly dazzling all around her one of whom (Marius Goring) is drinking himself to death over her. After asking her one more time if she will marry him he drinks the poison he has popped in his wine glass and drops dead in front of her.

Almost unmoved by this inevitable waste of a miss-guided life, Pandora simply walks off.

Ava Gardner

The next day at the Professor's home, Pandora ignores the facile grieving and sets her sights on Stephen Cameron (Nigel Patrick) a British land speed record driver who may have been dating the Professor’s niece Janet (Liverpool’s own Sheila Sim). Yet even the professor admires her directness and her honesty… perhaps the younger men are too distracted by her beauty: too sexually acquisitive?

She drives off with Nigel in his racing car – his pride and joy – and, stunningly, asks him if he would push it over the cliff in order to prove his love to her. This is duly does and there’s some marvellous shots of Pandora throwing her head back in ecstasy as the machine falls to the sea behind her.

Pandora is impressed by sacrifice

This is then followed by a strangely impressive shot of Pandora’s profile – huge in the foreground – whilst Nigel stands small, trying to make sense of what he has just done.

Man Ray is rumoured to have worked on the film and such moments might reflect such input but, then again, the cinematography is from Jack Cardiff fresh from his triumphs on The Red Shoes. This is a sumptuous-looking film and – allowing for some deterioration even on the restored Blu-Ray – must have looked stunning on the big screen.

Pandora swims out

Mere moments after having agreed to marry Nigel, Pandora becomes fascinated by the boat in the bay and swims out to investigate… she arrives to find an almost empty ship with a single occupant, painting a portrait of a woman who looks uncannily like herself.

Pandora is shocked when she meets this strange man – a look of recognition or of love? She tries to regain her stride but she has been shaken to the core.

At first sight...

The man is revealed to be Hendrick van der Zee (James Mason) a Dutch sailor who hides a rather substantial secret…

It’s from this point that the film begins to lose some of that early energy as the viewer calculates the ways in which things will play out. Yet the chemistry between the simply gorgeous Gardner and the manly Mason is good and both act exceptionally well – blasting pretty much everyone else off-screen (such a shame Goring got “injured” so early on…)

The genuinely great, James Mason

Gradually the mystery is revealed as Hendrick becomes involved in local society. He translates a sixteenth century journal for Fielding who begins to realise that his translator is also, incredibly the author… Can it be that this is the same man?

I won’t give much away as this story relies so much on mystery and anticipation to work.

Bull fighting and car racing... the men compete

But there’s a long way to run as a famous bullfighter Juan Montalvo (Mario Cabré), returns to his home town and sets himself on winning back Pandora. There’s a dangerous sporting stand-off between him and Nigel who breaks the land speed record in a sequence filmed in Pendine, South Wales (I’d recognise that long, flat beach anywhere!). Juan responds by fighting bulls and getting cross.

But who will Pandora chose…

The film is a stylistic delight and strangely charming… OK the story may be fantastic but then isn’t that what we want? It’s a more spiritually straightforward counter-point to A Matter of Life and Death at a time when audiences still needed to believe that there’s more to life than death… and we haven’t changed that much.

Ava Gardner

I hadn't really watched Gardner properly before and she is indeed very beautiful... perfectly cast as a Pandora every bit as mythical as the Dutchman: the two eternally destined to be together or not at all.

Watch it and be entranced by Gardner and Mason and to marvel at a fantasy that is ultimately disarmingly frank. As Professor Fielding says: "the measure of love is how much you are willing to sacrifice for it" and there's simply no easy answer to that.

It’s available here in a fine new Blu-Ray/DVD combo.

John Laurie's in it too!

Pendine Beach in South Wales, home of the World land speed record once upon a time.