On Chesil Beach… The Small Back Room (1949), BFI, Cinema Unbound

What I really want sir is a bit of expert guessing and some expert advice on how to handle it when we get our hand on one…

 

This is another one of those films that just has to be seen on the big screen and the BFI’s restoration-in-progress digital 4k presentation brought home every nuance and, especially, bead of sweat on David Farrar’s brow as he battled alcohol addiction in his nightmarish confrontation with a giant bottle of scotch and then struggled to retain composure in a very personal battle with a fiendish German bomb lying amongst the shifting pebbles of Chesil Beach. This confrontation between man and booby-trapped explosive has never seemed so tense, more visceral and further away from my own experience of that stretch of beach from Abbotsbury to Weymouth.

This is also a return to top quality Powell and Pressburger after three well-made and under-rated films that are all good but just not this good. We’re set up for Sammy Rice (Farrar) and this fateful meeting by a devastating cameo from Renée Asherson as an A.T.S. corporal who has to relay the doomed attempt to defuse another of the bombs by another officer, and it’s never hit me so hard as she repeats his words, his brave joking about the situation – Wembley being packed for the FA Cup final between man and bomb – before getting to his last words as he realises the bomb has an inexplicable second wire… Not only has a character we like lost their life but we relive the detail through someone else’s grief. That’s inventive and leaves the audience helpless as the next man steps up.

 

Kathleen Byron

The Small Back Room is packed with such moments; overloaded with great cameos, humour and spirit. If you don’t want to live in a world in which Sidney James runs your local pub and Kathleen Byron has your best interests at heart, then I can’t help you. This is probably David Farrar’s finest moment or jointly with Black Narcissus and in both cases that’s down to Kathleen; it takes two to tango and whilst Sammy can’t dance – not with a tin leg he can’t – the relationship between Byron’s Susan and him is the core of the film. Kathleen perseveres with Sammy not just because she can see how far he’s fallen but because she sees how far he could still rise and she’s not willing to give up on her love, not by a long chalk!

Based on the 1943 book by Nigel Balchin, a psychologist who wanted to show the inner struggles not just of addiction but also of brave men injured and worn down by the War. Sammy has lost his leg in an unsuccessful attempt at bomb disposal and this has led to constant pain, suppressed by a mixture of “dope” – codeine? – and drink. He is too proud to take his tin leg off in front of Sue and every day is a constant struggle between using the drugs or hitting the hard stuff. She is with him all the way though, as they keep a bottle of Scotch to test his mettle in his flat and, whilst she lives across the hall, she and her cat, seem more at home in Sammy’s place.

 

Robert Morley and Jack Hawkins

The film is also about the “boffins” of the small back room tasked with developing new weapons. Sammy reports into Professor Mair (Milton Rosmer) and the unit is overseen by a-low content careerist called R.B. Waring (Jack Hawkins giving it the full narcissist...). Politics abounds and nothing appears to have changed with their low-content glad-handing minister, (Robert Morley credited as "A Guest") paying a visit and having to be entertained by a made-up experiment. He has no more idea what they do than the next fop and is by no means secure in his position and this could have all kinds of unpleasant ramifications for the team.

 

The unit is involved in testing a new gun and there’s a splendid sequence at Stone Henge with Sammy watching the test as Colonel A.K. Holland (Leslie Banks, last seen by me in the Powell Quota Quickie, Fire Raisers!) not impressed with the evidence of his own eyes; on the battlefield this new gun could cost lives. There’s another set piece when the unit has to present its findings to a committee of the Minister of War, civil servants, rival scientists and the General. It’s played partly as farce with loud roadworks obscuring the details and the minister looking at paintings for the ministry during Sammy’s reading of the statistics. But then the General asks him for his opinion and, to his credit he tells it like it is even though it’ll cost him the approbation of his seniors.

 

Michael Gough and David Farrar

“I’ll… hand it over to Susan. She’s got it all worked out in the way women always have… She’ll take it and make it into what she wants…”

But Sammy is mired in his own disability and frustrates Susan’s attempts to not only count his blessings but also to exert his force of personality and expertise. In the novel he’s over-thinking everything and relying on her to provide momentum, overlooking his achievements in a pattern Balchin well recognised from his patients’ struggles with what we would now term PTSD and imposter syndrome. He’s a work in progress and that’s something seen on both paper and on screen.

Yet Sammy is sharp as a tack and compassionate with it, a natural leader of men with more moral courage than most. Even as he is so hard on himself, he shows such emotional intelligence in dealing with a nervy co-worker, Corporal Taylor (another quietly striking cameo from Cyril Cusack), who is having marital issues and doesn’t want to accept his own weaknesses at work. Sammy firstly asks his advice about trembler fuses and then coaxes him to ask for help, agreeing to his leaving early to help his wife. Beautiful interplay between the two, Farrar raising his game alongside Cusack in another of the film’s poignant moments.

David Farrar and Cyril Cusack

The film starts with Captain Dick Stuart (Michael Gough) making his way to see the unit and explaining the mysterious items that may or may not be new German bombs. Sammy Rice is your man advises Professor Mair and with Susan’s help, Stuart locates him in the pub run by "Knucksie" Moran (Sid James) who has just advised her man against drinking whiskey, he knows he can’t handle it. Back at Sammy’s flat Stuart explains the explosive enigma and Sammy’s hooked… Mair’s right about his intuiting and expertise. The two take an instant liking as does Stuart to Susan who he offers to walk home before she tells him she lives across the hall. It’s one of Gough’s best roles too.

We’re hooked too and are rooting for these three from now on. If any film shows the importance of the Archers’ combination of script and direction it’s this one, the quality doesn’t really drop throughout and the whole team is magnificent. A micro-managed masterpiece of dramatic thought on screen. I look forward to the finalised restoration from the BFI, it’s worth every second of their painstaking devotion!

You've got to make up your mind whether you want to spend your whole life being a person it's just too bad about or not...

Try harder Sammy.

Wild at heart… Gone to Earth (1950), BFI, Cinema Unbound, film on film

For me making Gone to Earth was as happy an experience as a return to childhood…

Michael Powell, though Kentish to his core, also had forebears in Worcestershire and Wales and in the second volume of his autobiography, A Million Dollar Movie, he wonders why the myths of these past generations are more potent than our own childhood memories at least when concerning his ability to recreate the atmosphere and feeling on screen. He felt he hadn’t put enough Kent into A Canterbury Tale, whereas he was more satisfied with the atmosphere of this film made on location and with plenty of Shropshire folk. Perhaps it’s just easier working with myths especially in a film with a simpler story and fewer characters than ACT?

“When Esmond Knight roared, ‘Drop that dratted fox, gurl!’ or ‘Put ‘un in a coffin!’ it was the very tone and accent of my father’s bailiff, Joe Wood, whom he bought with him… to Kent.”

The landscape is remarkably well photographed by Christopher Challis and has a beautiful warmth on the BFI’s 35mm National Archive print, Technicolor bringing out the full flavours of striking Shropshire valleys and stark rolling hills, the complex contours of the bleed between England’s lush green and Wales’ abundant granite grey. This sense of place gives the film a character quite unlike anything else Powell and Pressburger produced and the swirling score from Brian Easdale is as heart wrenching as anything he produced for them.

Jennifer Jones and Foxy

The pair were also delighted with their star, American Jennifer Jones who, despite struggling a little with the accent, gives a performance of raw power, almost a part with the starkness of the countryside and her character Hazel’s choice between the carnal Squire Jack Reddin (tooth and claw…) played by David Farrar and the civilising pastor Edward Marston played by Cyril Cusack. Jones is as free as Pamela Brown in IKWIG, but, unlike Catriona Potts, she has yet to understand who she really is, being certainly a child of nature and the land as her protectiveness towards her pet fox shows, yet still unsure of human convention.

"What a beautiful woman, great-hearted girl, inspired actress, restless soul!"

Michael Powell

I haven’t fully appreciated Gone to Earth, an adaptation of Mary Webb's novel Gone to Earth (1917), until tonight’s screening with a packed NFT3 mostly rapt in appreciation of the visual delights on screen, apart from the odd guffaw at Farrar brooding from his high horse! Jones is indeed stunning, acting with a physicality matching her characters’ wildness and well-cast according to members of my party who have read the book which is, they both say, as much a celebration of and call to protect nature as it is about women’s role in rural society.

David Farrar

By gum Hazel, you’re…jam… you’re butter…

Jones is wild as the wind in the early stages, dressed almost in rags running the pathways across the rolling landscape barefoot before emerging in more” conventional” womanly form in the fine green dress she buys from Much Wenlock on market day. Her cousin Albert (George Gole) is struck almost dumb by her appearance describing her first as “jam” and next, the ultimate compliment, as butter! His mother is less impressed and won’t let her niece stay the night affronted by her look and resemblance to her gypsy mother. A fox amongst so many tightly wound chickens.

 

Trudging home barefoot she bumps, quite literally, into Squire Reddin racing along with his horse and trap. He offers her shelter whilst drinking her in with his eyes and getting her to put on a dress owned by his dead wife, he peers at her as she tries it on and is lost in lustful reverie, announcing to himself that deciding “she’ll do”. Reddin is almost a recluse in the book and whilst clearly taking part in the rural community of fox hunting broods mostly alone with his long-suffering manservant, Vessons (Hugh Griffith) the two locked in something like a proto-typical Steptoe and Son relationship. Vessons tries to protect her from the Squires animal desires only to later turn against her when she’s finally brought into the house supplanting his role, upsetting their balance. Why does she not belong?

Cyril  Cusack

Hazel accompanies her father to the local fair and the newly arrived vicar Marston is transported. He’s played by the protean Cyril Cusack, here, a kindly but naïve Christian man who doesn’t quite know how to save the woman who strikes him so firmly. In the book the local community come to love Hazel but here she exposes the hypocrisy not just of the so-called good man of the town but Marston’s mother.

Marston wants to “save” and civilise her and she is placed in clothes that gather up to her neck, constraining her within polite expectations and formality, the costume design from Ivy Baker and Julia Squire plays an even bigger role than usual. Hazel sings with beautiful eloquence yet she talks only in short, stabbing sentences that remind me of Paul Auster’s character in City of Glass who grows up in isolation only learning to speak when finally exposed to the outside world. Hazel is more expressively confident in caring for her Foxy than with people although she grows more fluent as she engages with her twin paths of possibility.

The couple are married and yet even as this happens and Hazel is subsequently baptised in a pond near the church, Reddin is always nearby, sneering from his horse and doing everything but twirl his moustache. Truth is, he’s just as entranced by Hazel as Marston and as the fight to capture her heart both fail to realise that they are both biting off more than they can chew.

For her part, Hazel seeks advice from beyond this realm and following her mother’s scribbled book of folklore and magic, takes herself atop God’s Little Mountain and recites a magical incantation as she pledges herself follow whatever nature reveals as her choice. She wants to hear the faerie music and, suddenly through soft gusts of wind is carried the mysterious sound of a harp. The camera cuts away to reveal her father playing someway off, but she believes the coincidence and makes no attempt to rationalise the moment.

This is a supreme Powell and Pressburger moment… subtle but clear and part of a story that blends characters and countryside in ways that are just a magical realist step away from either Black Narcissus or The Red Shoes: there’s the same passion, struggle with human nature and men struggling to control women. You can waste too much time trying to rank their films and if this film has been in the lower reaches for many it can only be because it just doesn’t quite have the story dynamic to match those truly great films. Whatever, it is still The Archers in their prime if not at their very best.

 

The writer and director, by Powell’s own account, agreed suspecting that the film was “not great, or even big, by their american producer David O. Selznick’s standards…” but they underestimated his affection for their star (he was besotted) and he announced he was going to take over the film and upset by a perceived lack of screen time for Jones, had the film re-cut and partially re-shot by director Rouben Mamoulian and retitled as The Wild Heart*. According to Powell, this was only after he’d shown it to King Vidor, William Wyler and Josef von Sternberg all of whom admired the film and did not want to work on it.

Selznick unsuccessfully attempted to sue Korda's company for not keeping to the spirit of Webb's novel, and in the end London Films was given the British rights to the film, while he retained the American rights which is why both versions can be seen now. It’s certainly an irony that the only way to get a Blu-ray copy of Gone to Earth is to obtain the US Kino Lorber disc of The Wild Heart which has the original – and far better – film as an extra. It looks slightly anaemic in comparison with the 35mm we saw tonight so hopefully, someday, we’ll get a domestic release with the depth and vitality this film deserves.

 

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 

Call of duty… The Small Back Room (1949)

I’ve sat many times on Chesil Beach, a Dorset oddity formed of a bank running parallel with the shore producing a long thin natural lagoon unlike anything else in Britain. The bank consists of pebbles piled deep onto the sand below: it’s hard to walk on and exhausting in the heat – the natural and perfect spot to fish for mackerel or to just surrender to the sun and the stones…

Try those same conditions with only one good foot a raging alcoholic hang-over and a mission to disarm a German mine with enough booby traps to defeat even the most sober two-footed engineer and you have the setting for the extraordinary denouement to this quietly devastating film.

You could never call Powell and Pressburger films unsubtle but The Small Back Room is probably as seemingly understated as anything they ever did during their golden stretch of the forties and early fifties. It tackles issues of disability, extra-marital relationships and alcoholism with delicacy and poise: there was no Hays code in Blighty but there were censors bred in the post-Victorian era who didn’t want to see overt co-habitation of consenting adults, near violence towards women and an heroic man reduced to “dope” and booze to cope with his weakness.

The results feel so much like a silent film with great expressionist moments and a quite superb physical performance from David Farrar as the emotionally-crippled scientist who also happens to have just one foot. He is such a masculine presence and bravely plays out his character’s weakness with sensitivity and an immaculately-remembered limp. He is more than ably supported by Kathleen Byron who plays slightly against type as his sympathetic and steadfast partner… both of them so far away from their roles in Black Narcissus.

Kathleen Byron and David Farrar

Based on a novel by Nigel Balchin with screenplay from Pressburger with the aid of Powell, The Small Back Room followed on from The Red Shoes – perhaps surprisingly but is no less concerned with nurturing love versus natural drive.

Sammy Rice (Farrar) is the brains behind a specialist team working away in the back rooms of a London ministry. He lost his leg before the war and is constantly reminded of its absence by the pain of his artificial foot. He refuses to remove the prosthetic in the company of his lover Susan (Byron) an obvious symbol that he feels like an incomplete man without it. He drinks to numb the loss and the pain of his own inadequacy.

Susan and Sammy on their Wednesday night out

Susan may see through it, but he’s punishing himself for just not being strong enough to cope with either his disability or his over-bearing masters in the ministry. He’s the lead scientist in the unit but can’t leverage this value on superiors who are mostly careerist pen pushers who wield their influence far more effectively than their talents should allow… any resemblance with the Rank Organisation is clearly deliberate: their lack of vision holds Sammy back more than his long-lost right foot…

Key signifiers in the landscape of Sammy's living room: picture, bottle and phone

Powell and Pressbuger make stunningly good use of words in this film. Where others may well show the viewer what has happened they get their characters to “tell” using their notes or third parties. A young bomb disposal expert Captain Dick Stuart (Michael Gough) arrives looking for Sammy and after locating him in his local pub goes back to his flat where he fills us all in on the story over Susan’s coffee. There’s a new German bomb which has taken the lives of a number of children as well as army officers who have failed to disarm it. We could see the deaths and the explosions but this way we are drawn into the story that we know must end in the intimacy of a close encounter, winner takes all, involving Sammy and the bomb.

...and Susan's familiar

Bomb disposal is the closest of encounters and is the battle of minds between the designer and the disposer. Later on one of the officers is killed and, again, rather than show the events, we learn in the most heart-breaking manner of the young man’s death as his Corporal (Renée Asherson who is just perfect) reads out his transcript of his encounter her voice going thick with emotion as she recalls the forensic bravery and fragile jokes of the man she clearly loved attempting and failing to outwit the enemy.

Renée Asherson's moving cameo

The film is almost perfectly paced and we know that Sammy will at some point have to face down the same opponent: whether he’ll be defeated in the same way or succumb to his own failings we genuinely don’t know and it is gripping cinema even when our heads cry out that it’s just an actor and what looks like a thermos flask…  we believe.

Before all of that we witness what Charles Barr in his commentary describes as perhaps the most complex pairing not just in an Archer’s film but in all British cinema of the period. We also see how this forms the backdrop for Sammy’s day-to-day battles as part of the expert but under-valued team that works away trying to “solve” the War in the small back room of the title.

Sammy on Salisbury Plain

Barr talks about the film’s “restrictive narrative”, one that is focused almost entirely on Sammy – hardly anything ever happens when he’s not there and there are almost no point of view shots and no sudden screen changes to other characters: everything happens with Sammy there. This adds to the focus on character all aided by the expert cinematography of  Christopher Challis.

The supporting cast is uniformly superb with Milton Rosmer as Professor Mair who runs the unit and Jack Hawkins as R.B. Waring the salesman responsible for raising their profile and getting them into trouble with the pursuit of certain technologies for convenience and profit, not necessarily effectiveness.

The team present their findings to a Whitehall committee

Such short term-ism and petty politicking is very much the British disease (then as now) and Powell and Pressburger were undoubtedly making comment based on their own experience. R.B. laments that he is tired of people who “know their job”  as if competency smothered commerciality. The director and writers certainly knew their jobs and were craftsmen of integrity in much the same way as the film’s heroes.

Cyril Cusack and Michael Gough

It is not just Sammy who saves the day but the rock-solid perceptions of his partner, the principled professional soldiers such as Stuart, Colonel A.K. Holland (Leslie Banks) and Colonel Strang (Anthony Bushell) who is with Sammy when the going really gets tough as well as the flawed but inspired engineers in his team – the stuttering Corporal Taylor (brilliant Cyril Cusack) and the dedicated Till (Michael Goodliffe). These are people whose steadfast commitment still stirs a race memory of selfless sacrifice in response to the call of unconditional duty.

The moment arrives...

Ultimately the concern is how the individual must rouse themselves to fulfill this sense of duty and not just for any sense of national pride but through personal responsibility to those we love and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in our name.

Whether this was a message cinema-goers still wanted to hear in 1948 is open to doubt as the film struggled in spite of warm reviews. Now it stands out as another of Powell and Pressburger’s films that is almost perfectly realized. David Farrar could have gone to Hollywood but stayed to work with Powell who he described as knowing how to move the art of the talking picture forward at a time, just a decade and a half after its introduction, when there must have been some doubt.

Two extraordinary people take the tube

Powell delivered arguably more than any other British film-maker of his time and his work retains many rich textures that still unravel at their own pace.

I watched the Criterion DVD which is available either direct or from Amazon.

Sidney James

There’s also a lovely cameo from Sid James as 'Knucksie' Moran, a patient barkeeper who tries to look after Sammy – you’re reminded of just how good an actor Sid was when given the chance.

Patrick Macnee also makes a brief appearance on the committee. RIP Mr Steed

Super natural Shropshire... Gone to Earth (1950)

Michael Powell’s cinematographer, Christopher Challis, described Gone to Earth as "one of the most beautiful films ever to be shot of the English countryside". This is hard to deny as the director brought his unique sense of cinema to the depiction of the rolling hills of Shropshire near the border of England and Wales.

What he had done for Scotland in I Know Where I’m Going, the hebridean islands in The Edge of the World and to north Wales in the early film The Phantom Light, Powell brought to Shropshire. He created a heightened sense of the real through cinematography, painstaking location selection and expertly eerie sound recording.

The use of sound in P&P films played a crucial part in the creation of mood. With studio recorded sound mixed with on site recordings there is often dead silence punctuating the dialogue interrupted by almost over-amplified moments. It’s almost as if they used the limitations of audio recording to create a sense of expectation and the tension of still moments before something major is bound to happen.

Jennifer Jones recites a magical incantation as she pledges herself to her fateful course of action. She wants to hear the faerie music and, suddenly through soft gusts of wind is carried the mysterious sound of a harp. The camera cuts away to reveal her father playing someway off, but she believes the coincidence and makes no attempt to rationalise the moment. This is what Powell and Pressburger expect of us too…just believe and lose yourself.

Jones plays Hazel Woodus, a pure being of nature and as wild as the fox she keeps as a pet. She sings with a frail beauty that emphasises her purity and runs barefoot and wild through the hills - pure "jam" as one of the admiring locals calls her.

David Farrar is the epitome of rugged English masculinity playing the dis-likable rogue, John 'Jack' Reddin. He encounters Hazel late one rainy day and quickly decides that "she'll do". He knows what he wants and lures the innocent towards the decadence of his decaying manor house. At the same time, the newly arrived priest, Edward Marston played by the superb Cyril Cusack, also takes a more worshipful fancy to the pursued.

Hazel is torn between the two but marries the cleric only to find the draw of wild Jack too much to resist. She follows her base instinct and runs to his home only to be followed by Edward who is willing to risk reputation to be with her. Torn between the two extremes, is there any way Hazel can find peace - to strike a balance between nature and (a) man?

There's great support from a host of British character actors - especially Hugh Griffith and Anton Knight - along with a village full of actual villagers: funny how you can always tell! Jennifer Jones is simply outstanding. Her rural accent may be variable but it doesn't matter, she has the look and the ability to make us fall for this character. She is true to her self and in the end loves nature more than man. As Powell later wrote: "What a beautiful woman, great-hearted girl, inspired actress, restless soul!"

The film was controversial on a number of levels. Powell struggled to find a dog pack as the film was seen to be anti-hunting (it's far more complex than that) whilst producer David O. Selznick, upset by a perceived lack of screen time for Jones, his then girlfriend, had the film re-cut and retitled as The Wild Heart.

Unfortunately Gone to Earth has gotten rather collectable - I hadn't realized, sorry! - but is still available at inflated prices from Amazon. Not as powerful as the very best Archers films it is still a top quality production with many of the hallmarks of their glory years: the very best and most consistent partnership in British film history. Hopefully a re-release isn't far away.