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The Red Shoes is a 1948 British drama film written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It follows Victoria Page, a ballerina who joins the world-renowned Ballet Lermontov, owned and operated by Boris Lermontov, who tests her dedication to the ballet by making her choose between her career and her romance with composer Julian Craster.
Michael Latham Powell was an English filmmaker, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger. Through their production company The Archers, they together wrote, produced and directed a series of classic British films, notably The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951). His later controversial 1960 film Peeping Tom, while today considered a classic, and a contender as the first "slasher", was so vilified on first release that his career was seriously damaged.
A Canterbury Tale is a 1944 British film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger starring Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Dennis Price and Sgt. John Sweet; Esmond Knight provided narration and played two small roles. For the post-war American release, Raymond Massey narrated and Kim Hunter was added to the film. The film was made in black and white, and was the first of two collaborations between Powell and Pressburger and cinematographer Erwin Hillier.
Emeric Pressburger was a Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is best known for his series of film collaborations with Michael Powell, in a collaboration partnership known as the Archers, and produced a series of films, including 49th Parallel (1941), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951). He has been played on screen by Alec Westwood in the award-winning short film Òran na h-Eala (2022) which explores Moira Shearer's life-changing decision to appear in The Red Shoes.
A Matter of Life and Death is a 1946 British fantasy-romance film set in England during World War II.
Peter Alexander Goehr is an English composer and academic.
Walter Goehr was a German composer and conductor.
Roger Livesey was a British stage and film actor. He is most often remembered for the three Powell & Pressburger films in which he starred: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I Know Where I'm Going! and A Matter of Life and Death. Tall and broad with a mop of chestnut hair, Livesey used his highly distinctive husky voice, gentle manner and athletic physique to create many notable roles in his theatre and film work.
I Know Where I'm Going! is a 1945 romance film by the British-based filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It stars Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey, and features Pamela Brown and Finlay Currie.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is a 1943 British romantic drama war film written, produced and directed by the British film making team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It stars Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr and Anton Walbrook. The title derives from the satirical Colonel Blimp comic strip by David Low, but the story itself is original. Some regard the film as the greatest British movie ever made and it is renowned for its sophistication and directorial brilliance as well as for its script, the performances of its large cast and for its pioneering Technicolor cinematography. Among its distinguished company of actors, particular praise has been reserved for Livesey, Walbrook, and Kerr.
Denham Film Studios was a British film production studio operating from 1936 to 1952, founded by Alexander Korda.
The British film-making partnership of Michael Powell (1905–1990) and Emeric Pressburger (1902–1988)—together often known as The Archers, the name of their production company—made a series of influential films in the 1940s and 1950s. Their collaborations—24 films between 1939 and 1972—were mainly derived from original stories by Pressburger with the script written by both Pressburger and Powell. Powell did most of the directing while Pressburger did most of the work of the producer and also assisted with the editing, especially the way the music was used. Unusually, the pair shared a writer-director-producer credit for most of their films. The best-known of these are The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951).
Ill Met by Moonlight (1957), released in the USA as Night Ambush, is a film by the British writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and the last movie they made together through their production company "The Archers". The film, which stars Dirk Bogarde and features Marius Goring, David Oxley, and Cyril Cusack, is based on the 1950 book Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe by W. Stanley Moss, which is an account of events during the author's service on Crete during World War II as an agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The title is a quotation from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the book features the young agents' capture and evacuation of the German general Heinrich Kreipe.
Erwin Hillier was a German-born cinematographer known for his work in British cinema from the 1940s to 1960s.
Alfred Junge was a German-born production designer who spent a large part of his career working in the British film industry.
Arthur Lawson (1908–1970) was a British art director. He had a long association with film directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, beginning in 1943 when he was floor manager on The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Three years later, when Powell and Pressburger, also known as The Archers, made A Matter of Life and Death, Lawson had graduated to assistant art director. He worked with Alfred Junge on the sets for Black Narcissus in 1947, and earned an Oscar for the set designs on The Red Shoes in 1948. Lawson's association with Powell continued right through to Peeping Tom (1960). He received a BAFTA nomination for The Bedford Incident in 1965.
Wanted for Murder is a 1946 British crime film directed by Lawrence Huntington and starring Eric Portman, Dulcie Gray, Derek Farr, and Roland Culver.
Walter Percy Day O.B.E. (1878–1965) was a British painter best remembered for his work as a matte artist and special effects technician in the film industry. Professional names include W. Percy Day; Percy Day; "Pop" or "Poppa" Day, owing to his collaboration with sons Arthur George Day (1909–1952) draughtsman, Thomas Sydney Day (1912–1985), stills photographer and cameraman, and stepson, Peter Ellenshaw, who also worked in this field.
Fred Daniels born George Frederick William Daniels, 1892 – 1959. Daniels was a pioneer of still photography in the film industry and recognised by the BFI.
Eric Gray was a stills photographer whose work was featured in Picture Post. His career was mainly in the British film industry and it was based on two Anthony Asquith pictures, Shooting Stars and A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929), that his reputation began to emerge. During this period stills were normally etched with his signature written in an art deco style.
References
- 1 2 Bergfelder, Tim (2003). "Biography: Gray, Allan (1902-1973)". Encyclopedia of British Film. British Film Institute. Archived from the original on June 1, 2004. Retrieved June 1, 2004.
Trained in Berlin under Arnold Schönberg, Allan Gray (born Josef Zmigrod in Tarnow, Poland) was an established composer for stage, cabaret, and screen before his emigration in 1933. His film scores in Britain were playfully eclectic in style, alternating between haunting romanticism, catchy melodies, and occasional stark modernist touches. Gray's arguably most experimental work can be found in his collaborations with Powell and Pressburger, particularly in "I Know Where I'm Going!" (1945), where he inventively used Scottish folklore, and in "A Matter of Life and Death" (1946), where ticking clocks and repetitive piano scales evoke the monotony of celestial afterlife.
- ↑ Palmer, Russell. British Music (1947), p 107-8
- 1 2 Obituary, The Times, 15 September, 1973, p 14
- ↑ "Allan Gray: A Brief Biography". The Powell & Pressburger Pages. Archived from the original on May 15, 2003. Retrieved May 15, 2003.
Allan Gray was, as was the case with so many Archers, a German emigre. Born Josef Zmigrod in Poland in 1902 Gray was a fully fledged participant in the culture of Weimar Berlin. Studying under the modernist Arnold Schoenberg, he paid for his tuition by composing jazz-inflected music for the cabaret. Schoenberg disapproved and Zmigrod took up the name of Oscar Wilde's famous hedonist (Dorian) Gray for his cabaret work. Gray realised his ability was for pastiche and incidental music and abandoned original composition of 'serious' music. He began to compose for films, at Ufa where he met Emeric Pressburger. Their paths were to cross again, working on the same film The Challenge in the mid-thirties. After the start of the war however, like Alfred Junge and Erwin Hillier as well, he was used for the Powell and Pressburger-produced The Silver Fleet. The first real use of Gray's talents however, came with The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, with its playful use of different periods and moods and Gray's capacity for making music referential and reminiscent of three eras, the eighteen-nineties, the nineteen-teens and the nineteen-forties. On their next film A Canterbury Tale, the film was to begin with the ringing bells of Canterbury Cathedral and Allan Gray selected the notes of the peal which they would ring (although in fact the bells which appear on camera are fibreglass miniatures), and he mixed this peal into the music at the beginning and end of the film. Gray's ability to create a 'playful referential score' was again needed to evoke the lingering spirit of the medieval pilgrims. Gray's chief task on the film after that was to write the orchestration for an Irish song, "I know Know Where I'm Going", which gave its name to the film. Gray's most memorable piece of music, which was also the most apparent to the audience, was written for A Matter of Life and Death. The composition was 'the hauntingly simple, slightly atonal piano theme which accompanies the staircase to heaven.' After A Matter of Life and Death the Archers began using Brian Easdale on their films. Initially this was only for Black Narcissus and Gray was recalled for The Red Shoes. However this called for original ballet music and Gray found he was no longer playing to his strengths. Michael Powell wrote: "His main gift was a dramatic one. He had the capacity to enter into the idea of a scene or a situation, but it was still film music in the traditional way, applied on, as it were, mixed into the sound-track and the dialogue of the actors, like glazing on a rich ham..". Robert Helpmann, the choreographer of the ballet declared at the time that the music he was writing was "utterly commonplace" and said he would withdraw from the film if it became any more "to the public taste". So it was that Gray parted with the Archers with Easdale again replacing him. Gray's music had become synonymous with the Archers at their most playful, but as their concerns with 'Art' became more pronounced, with Powell frequently referring to 'Art' as their aspiration post war, Gray's abilities no longer suited the company.
- ↑ 'Amersham nostalgia: Laelia Goehr – a passionate photographer in the 1940s', Bucks Free Press
- 1 2 3 4 Biography, Amersham Museum
- ↑ "Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Alan Bush | the Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams".
- ↑ Columbia DX 1320, reissued on EMI CDGO 2059
- ↑ RSC Performances archive
- ↑ University of Birmingham, Cadbury Research Library
- ↑ The London Gazette, 18 March 1947
