Part of Made In England: Powell and Pressburger x6
Back from bombing Germany, RAF flyboy David Niven crashes into the Channel, despite American operator Kim Hunter’s efforts to talk him down — but he isn’t dead yet, since Collector 71 (Marius Goring), a previously beheaded French aristocrat, has missed his scheduled soul pickup due to heavy fog. Asked to make a film promoting Anglo-American goodwill, Powell and Pressburger soared into otherworldly whimsical fantasy, moving from the great Jack Cardiff’s Technicolor-drenched Earthly photography (more dazzling than ever in this new restoration), to a grandiose celestial trial with Raymond Massey as Niven’s snarling prosecutor, in glorious pearly hued black & white. “One is starved for Technicolor up there,” Goring remarks from Earth.
Restored in 4K by Sony Pictures Entertainment from the original Technicolor 3-strip picture negative. 4K scanning by Cineric, New York; image restoration by L’Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna; audio restoration by Deluxe Hollywood; color grading, conform, additional image restoration, DCP creation by Deluxe Culver City.
“One of the most audacious, and frankly bonkers, courtroom dramas committed to film…. It’s basically an intellectual battle, held in an amphitheatre as large as a galaxy, about the right to life and the inherent tensions in U.S.-U.K. political relations (the undead prosecutor, played by Raymond Massey, is virulently anti-British). In other words, essential viewing.” —Kevin Maher, The Times (UK)
“What today's audiences will find amazing is the sheer energy of its invention. Powell and Pressburger (who always shared the writing, directing and producing credits, and whose production company was known as the ‘Archers’) were not timid in reaching for new visual effects…. The special effects…show a universe that never existed until this movie was made, and the vision is breathtaking in its originality. —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“Epic and intimate, surveying nothing less than the breadth of creation and the first spark of new love….This cosmic/civic pageant remains overwhelmingly powerful, a reminder from across the pond that the strength of America is in its diversity, its capacity for forward thinking and humanistic decency. It’s an ideal to aspire toward, no matter how often this country manages to disappoint.” —Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice
“The utterly unique, enduringly rich and strange romantic fantasia from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. You could put it in a double bill with IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE or THE WIZARD OF OZ, though its pure English differentness would shine through. It was released in 1946, the same year that Winston Churchill coined the term ‘special relationship’ — an idea that the film finds itself debating.” —Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (UK)