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Martin Scorsese’s deep love of film shines through in his exploration of the marvelous movies by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. As directors with a true artist’s eye, Powell and Pressburger crafted some of Britain’s most imaginative and meaningful pictures. Through their company, The Archers, they strove to elevate cinema as an expressive art.

In Made in England, Scorsese brings their extraordinary body of work to new viewers. With infectious passion, he shares insights into their techniques and themes—and how deeply their films enriched his own career. At the documentary’s heart, of course, are illuminating clips and discussions that bring Powell and Pressburger’s brilliance alive. From The Red Shoes to Black Narcissus, their images leave a lasting imprint.

What makes this documentary so wonderful is Scorsese’s obvious joy in celebration. He treats cinema not as formula but as expressions of life. With Made in England,...

Given the sense of wonder and promotion of emotion over reason that courses through Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s work, it’s appropriate that David Hinton’s Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger starts with a recollection of a defining childhood moment. The film’s narrator and one of its executive producers, Martin Scorsese describes himself as an asthmatic child confined indoors and thunderstruck by these old films he was seeing on television. Giddy with the memory of being a young boy accidentally coming across fantastical mindblowers like The Thief of Baghdad, Scorsese says there was simply “no better initiation” into what he calls “the mysteries of Michael Powell.”

The film that follows does a thoroughly commendable job of providing that same initiation for unwashed viewers. But because Made in England is structurally a somewhat staid illustrated lecture from Scorsese on Powell’s directing career, and to...

"What they offer is a vision of love... of longing and loss, hope and expectation of wonder... I've watched these movies so many times, they've become part of my life." Cohen Media Group has also released their own official trailer for the wondrous documentary film titled Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger, set for a run this summer in limited theaters. The doc is a cinema history look back at the iconic Powell & Pressburger filmmakers. Narrated and presented by Martin Scorsese, this explores the history of the two famous filmmakers Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, known for their beloved films including Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, A Canterbury Tale, and Gone to Earth. It is "a love letter to one of cinema's greatest partnerships" with Scorsese taking us through his own admiration for their creations. Drawing on a rich array of archive material,...

"A valentine to British cinema's greatest dreamers." This one is for all the die-hard cinephiles! Mubi has unveiled the official trailer for the cinema history documentary film called Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger, made by filmmaker David Hinton. This originally premiered at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, and it's next screening at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival in NYC coming up this June. The doc is narrated and presented by Martin Scorsese, who explores the history of these two famous filmmakers: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, known for their beloved films including Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, A Canterbury Tale, and Gone to Earth. It is "a love letter to one of cinema's greatest partnerships." Drawing on a rich array of archive material, Scorsese explores in full the collaboration between the Englishman Powell and Hungarian Pressburger who thrived in...

In the narrator’s seat for David Hinton’s eloquent documentary on the filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Martin Scorsese is the ultimate fan. Tracing his all-around movie obsession to his first viewing of the U.K.-based pair’s 1948 tour de force, The Red Shoes, he leads us through a dozen of their features and a few of Powell’s solo efforts, connecting key sequences to memorable scenes in his own work. But beyond its clear explication of the films’ imaginative and technical power, Made in England is also a testament to mentorship and friendship; Scorsese was close to Powell, who died in 1990, for the last decade and a half of the British director’s life, and Powell married Scorsese’s longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, in 1984.

The documentary ignites a longing to see the movies, whether for the first time or the umpteenth (many are available on...

Without Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the films and career of Martin Scorsese would be very different. “Mean Streets” would be less red (thank those titular “Red Shoes”), the title fight in “Raging Bull” wouldn’t have been preceded by that thrilling oner (thank the duel in “Colonel Blimp”), and we wouldn’t have that audacious flash of yellow in “The Age of Innocence,” an idea swiped from the red-hot climax of “Black Narcissus.”

Scorsese has always been admirably honest about his tendency to steal from the best, and “Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger” is at its most fun when Marty talks the audience through how the ironic filmmaking duo’s most striking images reshaped the canon. And what — to him — ultimately made them worth stealing.

These seemingly spontaneous moments are well-illustrated by director David Hinton, a BAFTA-winning documentarian who also made an episode of the...

They made 24 often morally complex pictures before falling out of fashion. Now, as a monumental BFI retrospective kicks off, can their stricken pilots and posh ballerinas speak to our divided era?

It is May 1945 and night has fallen across Europe. The world is at war, cities are aflame and a Lancaster bomber is falling from the sky. Inside the burning cockpit, squadron leader Peter Carter gives his name and age then outlines his politics. “Conservative by nature,” he says. “Labour by experience.” Played by David Niven, the hero of A Matter of Life and Death is your emblematic Englishman – in that he is a muddle. He is trad and prog, romantic and practical, and amiably optimistic even in the teeth of disaster (and perhaps then most of all). He is describing himself as the plane goes down. By proxy, he is describing the film-makers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, too.

Lovers of vintage English crime thrillers will have a lot to chew over with this pair of escapist gangster pix, one pre-war and one post-. In each an innocent young couple suffers a run-in with a criminal gang. John Mills and Richard Attenborough are the ‘fresh’ new talent on display. The leading lady of Dancing with Crime is Sheila Sim, playing opposite her husband Attenborough. The co-feature The Green Cockatoo sports credits for William Cameron Menzies and Miklós Rózsa.

Dancing with Crime + The Green Cockatoo

Blu-ray

Cohen Film Collection / Kino Lorber

1937 & 1947 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 82 + 64 min. / Street Date January 25, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Richard Attenborough, Sheila Sim, Barry Jones; John Mills, René Ray, Robert Newton.

Original Music: Benjamin Frankel, Miklós Rózsa

Directed by John Paddy Carstairs; William Cameron Menzies

The Blu-ray era has given home video devotees great opportunities to catch up with ‘exotic’ genre films from abroad. American TV...

This obscure 1972 thriller features excellent performances by Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed, and marks the feature debut of the great director Michael Apted. The wartime home front drama takes a surprisingly precocious and sensitive view of a bizarre incident that probably happened in real life: to escape his military service, a reluctant soldier cross-dresses as a woman.

The Triple Echo

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1972 / Color / 1:85 / 94 min. / Soldier in Skirts / Street Date March 25, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £18.36

Starring: Glenda Jackson, Oliver Reed, Brian Deacon, Anthony May, Gavin Richards, Jenny Lee Wright.

Cinematography: John Coquillon

Film Editor: Barrie Vince

Original Music: Mark Wilkinson

Written by Robin Chapman, from the story by H.E. Bates

Produced by Graham Cottle

Directed by Michael Apted

Billy Wilder would have given the makers of The Triple Echo cautioning advice about putting male actors in drag and passing them off as women: it’s a...

The wonder movie of 1946 sees the Archers infusing the ‘Film Blanc’ fantasy with amazing images and powerful emotions. Imagination and resourcefulness accomplishes miracles on a Stairway to Heaven, with visual effects never bettered in the pre-cgi era. Michael Powell’s command of the screen overpowers a soon-obsoleted theme about U.S.- British relations.

A Matter of Life and Death

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 939

1946 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 104 min. / Stairway to Heaven / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 26, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Marius Goring, Roger Livesey, Robert Coote, Kathleen Byron, Richard Attenborough, Bonar Colleano, Joan Maude.

Cinematography: Jack Cardiff

Film Editor: Reginald Mills

Production Design: Alfred Junge

Original Music: Allan Gray

Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger came into their own making wartime movies, most of which steered far clear of the accepted definition of propaganda. After their Anglo-Dutch...

Powell and Pressburger’s 1946 film, about a man who has to convince the angels that he deserves to remain on Earth, has a special place in the heart of Scorsese’s Oscar-winning editor – not least because she married its director

One of the most romantic movies ever made began its life in a government office. In 1945, the Ministry of Information suggested to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who had recently scored a success with A Canterbury Tale, that they might make a film to soothe fractious Anglo-American relations. Although Brits and GIs fought alongside each other in the war, American soldiers stationed in the UK had gained the unwelcome reputation of being “oversexed, overpaid and over here”.

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Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger officially become ‘The Archers’ for this sterling morale-propaganda picture lauding the help of the valiant Dutch resistance. It’s a joyful show of spirit, terrific casting (with a couple of surprises) and first-class English filmmaking.

One of Our Aircraft is Missing

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1942 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy /103 82 min. / Street Date November 15, 2016 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring Godfrey Tearle, Eric Portman, Hugh Williams, Bernard Miles, Hugh Burden, Emrys Jones, Pamela Brown, Joyce Redman, Googie Withers, Hay Petrie, Arnold Marlé, Robert Helpmann, Peter Ustinov, Roland Culver, Robert Beatty, Michael Powell.

Cinematography Ronald Neame

Film Editor David Lean

Camera Crew Robert Krasker, Guy Green

Written by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Produced by The Archers

Directed by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

There are still a few more key Powell-Pressburger ‘Archer’ films waiting for a quality disc release, Contraband and Gone to Earth for just two.

It's the final Hollywood film by the legendary Ziegfeld star Marilyn Miller, and it's also a terrific talkie feature debut for W.C. Fields -- with one of his dazzling juggling bits. But the real star is director William Dieterle, whose moving camera and creative edits rescue the talkie musical from dreary operetta staging. Her Majesty, Love DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1931 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 75 min. / Street Date January 19, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Marilyn Miller, Ben Lyon, W.C. Fields, Leon Errol, Ford Sterling, Chester Conklin, Clarence Wilson, Ruth Hall, Virginia Sale, Oscar Apfel. Cinematography Robert Kurrie Film Editor Ralph Dawson Songs Walter Jurmann, Al Dubin Written by Robert Lord, Arthur Caesar from story by Rudolph Bernauer, Rudolf Österreicher Directed by William Dieterle

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Warner Archive Collection has been kind to fans of early talkies. We've been able to discover dramatic actresses like Jeanne Eagels...

(Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1951; Studio Canal, U)

One of the great experiences of British cinema in the mid-20th century was to sit in the stalls as the curtain drew aside and an arrow hit a bull’s-eye on a target, announcing a film by the Archers, the team of British director Michael Powell and Hungarian émigré screenwriter Emeric Pressburger. They took a joint credit as “writer, director and producer”. This logo presaged a wartime movie such as 49th Parallel or The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which took a subtler, more humane view of the conflict than the usual black-and-white propaganda, or it proffered a thoughtful view of a possible postwar world the way A Canterbury Tale and A Matter of Life and Death did.

In the 1940s and 50s, the Archers stood apart from the prevailing social realism of that period in their feeling for the mystery of the landscape,...

To begin with, no, 49th Parallel is not a Canadian film. At least not technically. The Hungarian Emeric Pressburger, who had been working in England for about five years, wrote the 1941 feature, and the Kent-born Michael Powell, who had been making films since the early 1930s, directed it. All but one interior was shot at Denham Studios in Buckinghamshire, and Ortus Films, a British company, produced the picture after the Ministry of Information commissioned it. The cast is a veritable who’s who of prominent British actors, including Laurence Olivier, Anton Walbrook, and Leslie Howard, among others. David Lean, then the preeminent editor in England, cut the picture.

Still, it is a great Canadian film. Locations range from Winnipeg to Quebec to Alberta. Perhaps more than any other film, certainly of the era, it also deals explicitly with Canada’s largely ignored involvement in World War II—as far as the movies are concerned anyway.

Cinematography festival to present retrospective on the innovative British film-making duo, attended by Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker.

Camerimage (Nov 15-22) is to host a special retrospective around the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

The film festival that celebrates cinematography, held in the Polish city of Bydgoszcz, will be attended by Powell’s wife and three-time Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker as well as film scholars and Powell-Pressburger experts Erich Sargeant and Ian Christie.

Films of the due set to be screened at Camerimage include:

The Edge Of The World; 1937; cin. Monty Berman, Skeets Kelly, Ernest Palmer

One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing; 1942; cin. Ronald Neame

The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp; 1943; cin. Georges Périnal

A Canterbury Tale; 1944; cin. Erwin Hillier

‘I Know Where I’m Going!’; 1945; cin. Erwin Hillier

A Matter Of Life And Death; 1946; cin. Jack Cardiff

Black Narcissus; 1947; cin. Jack Cardiff

The Red Shoes; 1948; cin. Jack Cardiff

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British film duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's film company, the Archers, produced classics including A Matter of Life and Death and The Red Shoes

• Martin Scorsese: why I restored Colonel Blimp

In the dog days of the second world war, the heart of British cinema could be found inside a three-room flat off the Marylebone Road in London. This, from 1942-1947, was the headquarters of film-makers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and the production office for such pictures as A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. In the event of air raids, the office came equipped with a set of camp beds.

Now the flat at Dorset House has been commemorated with an English Heritage blue plaque, honouring the work of Powell and Pressburger's film company, the Archers. Attending the unveiling were Powell's widow, the Oscar-winning American editor Thelma Schoonmaker,...

Xan Brooks's account of his emotional engagement with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale (A pilgrim's progress, Review, 10 August) captures beautifully what many feel about this evocative film. Unfortunately, he plays down two important elements that make the film what it is. Most important is the contribution of Pressburger, who was much more than Powell's "regular collaborator", but a full partner in all departments except directing on this and 16 other features.

Having organised the first full retrospective of their work for the BFI, I can testify that they considered the film a "failure", but were gratified when the BBC's restoration of the truncated original premiered to acclaim at the Nft in 1978. Emeric later introduced the film at MoMA in New York and spoke about trying to create the conditions for "magic" to happen on screen – his contribution shouldn't be downgraded. The other vital ingredient was the non-professional Sgt John Sweet,...

The top-line on the big news stories in cinema today – plus a preview of what's coming up on the site

Welcome to the first in a new series, launching every week day at 7:30am GMT, giving you the latest movie headlines – and a look ahead to what's coming up on theguardian.com/film.

News today

Disney boss booed at D23 convention after failing to spill beans on Star Wars.

Pixar have changed the Finding Nemo sequel in wake of Blackfish documentary.

George Galloway has turned to Kickstarter to fund his documentary, The Killing of Tony Blair.

Footage from Jerry Lewis's The Day the Clown Cried has shown up on YouTube; likewise from Werner Herzog's "don't text and drive" documentary.

More Expendables 3 cast additions: Mel Gibson and Antonio Banderas.

World War Z has become Brad Pitt's highest-earning film ever.

James Gray's next project is to be White Devil,...

Seventy years after it was made, Michael Powell's A Canterbury Tale remains the perfect remedy for self-pity. Xan Brooks seeks out the film's locations, still haunted by the ghosts of a film that celebrated the values and traditions of an England under fire

In August 1943 the director Michael Powell came to east Kent to shoot his most ambitious and personal film to date. A Canterbury Tale took its lead from Chaucer to spin the story of three modern-day pilgrims uprooted by the war. It showed us the hedgerows and the hop gardens and the ancient road atop the downs. It celebrated the values and traditions of an England under fire. That wartime summer, the film's locations came haunted by the ghosts of the pardoner, the falconer, the garrulous wife of Bath. Today, for me, they are haunted by the ghosts of A Canterbury Tale. Seventy years on, it's as...

There’s a fun little series on NPR, titled “Watch This,” which occasionally takes a look at the favorite films from filmmakers such as William Friedkin, Paul Feig, and Kevin Smith. The latest edition features “The Sopranos” creator David Chase and it’s filled with a lot of interesting choices. It’s always fascinating to learn more about what influences certain filmmakers and Chase’s list definitely reflects that. His list includes Stanley Kubrick's “Barry Lyndon,” Vittorio De Sica's “Bicycle Thieves,” Laurel and Hardy’s “Saps at Sea,” Powell and Pressburger’s “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” and “A Canterbury Tale” (check out our recent retrospective on the filmmakers), Lindsay Anderson’s “O Lucky Man!,” Luis Bunuel’s “Tristana” and “Viridana,” and Johnathan Demme’s “Something Wild” (the most contemporary picture of the bunch). David Chase cites “Barry Lyndon” as his favorite Kubrick movie, saying “What’s great about it,...

After much media hoopla about "Vertigo" toppling "Citizen Kane" in its poll, Sight and Sound magazine have now released the full version of its once a decade 'Top 250 greatest films of all time' poll results via its website. The site also includes full on links showcasing Top Tens of the hundreds of film industry professionals who participated in the project.

For those who don't want to bother with the individual lists and to save you a bunch of clicking, below is a copy of the full 250 films that made the lists and how many votes they got to be considered for their positions:

1 - Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) [191 votes]

2 - Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) [157 votes]

3 - Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) [107 votes]

4 - La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939) [100 votes]

5 - Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927) [93 votes]

6 - 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) [90 votes]

7 - The Searchers (Ford, 1956) [78 votes]

8 - Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929) [68 votes]

9 - The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer,...

Full of smoke, casual sexism and happy punters, a series of nostalgic films about pubs leaves Nicholas Lezard mourning our lost sense of community

The low point in Roll Out the Barrel: The British Pub on Film (BFI), a 2-disc collection of corporate and promotional films about pubs, comes about halfway through the second disc, in a 21-minute film from 1972 extolling the alleged virtues of Bass Charrington Ltd. After a dismaying montage of modern architectural horrors that apparently hoped to trade as licensed premises, and boosterism about the new popularity of lager (cue shots of endless cans of Tennent's rolling off the production lines; in one unintentionally amusing set-piece, a French cognac magnate is poured a tin of Carling Black Label by way of hospitality), the mouthpiece for the corporation confidently says that what Bass is doing is "giving the public what they want".

Usually, when one comes across something like this,...

Powell and Pressburger's Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp is typical of Archers Film and almost un-English in its audacity

You live abroad for a couple of decades and it's surprising which memories of the old country flicker into a different kind of focus. I'm not the nostalgic or homesick type, I haven't been home in six years. And yet two decades have made me feel more English than I ever did in England – and technically I'm not even English (I'm Scotch-Irish). I never read Trollope or Wilkie Collins in England, I never swooned exultantly over finding a Virago-edition Rosamond Lehmann novel, or a Two Ronnies video at a yard-sale.

Neither did I celebrate my birthday every year, as I do now, with a large scotch watching A Canterbury Tale alone, certain in the knowledge that when Eric Portman talks about the mysterious continuity of ancient tradition I will find myself,...

"So, what the hell is James Gray, anyway?" Evan Davis at the House Next Door: "That's the question Paris-based Hollywood Reporter critic and Gray enthusiast Jordan Mintzer attempts to answer in his new book, James Gray. Comprised of interviews with Gray and his collaborators, along with storyboards, annotated script pages, production stills, and frame grabs, Mintzer's volume is the first full-length study of Gray in any language. It is, unfortunately, only being published in France. But fear not: Synecdoche has released a bilingual edition that can be purchased on their website for a cool $65 Usd."

Gray will be on hand this evening for a Q&A following a screening of We Own the Night (2007), part of BAMcinématek's Brooklyn Close Up series. And in December, Moving Image Source ran an excerpt from the book's chapter on The Yards (1999).

Meantime, Gray's wrapped Low Life, his first period film. Featuring Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Renner and Marion Cotillard,...

We're rounding up the best of your comments and reviews on our My favourite film series, in which our writers pick their favourite films of all time.

Here's what you had to say in week one, when we championed the films Raging Bull, A Canterbury Tale, Swingers, Ghostbusters and Broadway Danny Rose

The first time he saw it – when he was 19 – Raging Bull left Peter Bradshaw wanting to "run all the way home, or pick up parked cars and flip them over". Scorsese's depiction of the rise and fall of boxer Jake Lamotta was pitted with fight scenes that showed the inside of the ring as an "expressionist newsreel footage of a bad dream". Life outside was just another battle. Robert de Niro as Lamotta was "tense, moody, seeming to vibrate like a plucked guitar string" – primped and pulled from glory to the gutter by family and the Family, both.

In our writers' favourite films series, Charlotte Higgins applauds a picture that jetés through the imagination's darkest recesses

• Think you can post a better review of The Red Shoes? Then get moving – or take the floor in the comments thread below

I remember the first time I watched The Red Shoes. I was a child, it was on the television some rainy afternoon, and I watched it on my own. I think I was probably expecting a straightforward retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale, also called The Red Shoes – though why that would be reassuring viewing I don't know, since Andersen's story, like his disturbing tale The Little Mermaid, is a thoroughly disquieting piece of work.

Instead, this film – which I would later discover was made in 1948, by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger – was set in postwar London, with an aspiring ballerina at its heart, played by the luminous,...

That was the week in which Roland Emmerich applied his delicate style to the Bard and our writers fessed up to their favourite films

The big story

Roland Emmerich likes to destroy things. We in the film world know this: we've watched him blow the planet up for years. Let's face it, it's why we love him. But the theatre world is less familiar with his style, and this week they have been traumatised by the unleashing of his new film Anonymous, with which, in characteristic fashion, Emmerich attempts to completely obliterate the reputation of William Shakespeare.

Arguably the most inspired response to the German director's waste-laying ways came from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, who this week took to graffitting road signs to make their point. A very sophisticated one, we should point out - if Shakespeare was "anonymous", see, then he doesn't exist. Emmerich is no doubt pulling together...

Xan Brooks continues our writers' favourite films series by confessing devotion to Michael Powell's A Canterbury Tale

• Tell us your version of A Canterbury Tale by posting your review, or join the throng of pilgrims in the comments

I first watched A Canterbury Tale with my father, nearly 20 years ago. He warned me that while he liked it, most people did not. It was too flawed, too rum, it didn't hang together. So we sat in the lounge and saw the hawk turn into the fighter plane and the trainload of pilgrims pull into Kent and the first, scurrying escape of the "glue-man", who pours adhesive into the hair of the girls who date the soldiers – and about half an hour in, my dad hit the pause button and asked if I maybe wanted to watch something else instead. "No, it's Ok, I like it," I muttered, because it's...

Being a Christian in the 21st century is difficult at the best of times. Even without Mel Gibson constantly putting his foot in it, or Westboro Baptist Church spitting venom at the very people they are supposed to be helping, we have to contend with a media backlash whenever a seemingly ‘Christian’ film is released.

The problem seems to be that people don’t mind Christianity per se: if people are Bible-bashing in the streets, they can ignore them or talk back. What they resent, or appear to resent, are films with Christian undertones – allegories or parables which introduce Christian beliefs or ideas in a supposedly secular context. When The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe came out in 2005, The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee accused it of “invad[ing] children’s minds with Christian iconography… heavily laden with guilt, blame, sacrifice and a suffering that is dark with emotional sadism.” Ouch.

It’s a poor thing, to command in love.

Have you ever been to a Renaissance Faire? I’ve been to a few over the years, though I’m far from being a regular attender. The last Ren Faire I visited was when I took my family to one here in Michigan sometime in the early 2000s when The Lord of The Rings was at the zenith of its pop-culture ascendancy and my kids were into stuff like swords and magic and capes and gowns.

I figure most readers would know what I’m talking about, but for those who don’t… Ren Faires are public events where people who are into that sort of thing are employed or pay admission to dress up in the garb of various types of medieval personae, spending a day, a weekend or longer getting into the roles and habits of Europeans who lived around 500 years ago or so.

Really, what's not to like about reissued rustic village shoot-'em-up, Went The Day Well?

Playing like some stiff-upper-lip, second world war, homefront version of John Milius's Red Dawn, it should delight us that Alberto Cavalcanti's Went The Day Well? is back in circulation once again. In its casting and its subversive storytelling, its 1942 setting offers a parallel universe wherein not only are the Nazis invading Britain and coldly massacring the Home Guard, but postwar TV battleaxes such as Thora Hird and Patricia Hayes are caught in cinematic amber as plucky young Land Girls vigorously sticking it to the filthy Boche (with axes, bayonets, rifles and household pepper). And the goose-stepping enemy are played by quintessentially English postwar actors, including Powell and Pressburger's phallocratic fave David Farrar and perpetual Pow Co James Donald, plus Alexander Korda's very own imperialist hero, Leslie Banks, as the head Nazi collaborator and local squire.

Compton Bennett burst upon the British filmmaking scene in 1945 with The Seventh Veil, a weird, sado-masochistically-inflected semi-gothic love story which did much to boost the careers of Ann Todd (neurotic piano prodigy), James Mason (sadistic music teacher) and Herbert Lom (sympathetic psychotherapist). By 1960 he was working mainly in television, having sunk into a kind of middlebrow lethargy along with most British cinema. But in 1948, at the peak of UK cinematic creativity, he directed Daybreak, one of the few British noirs, and a bleaker story than many of the social realist dramas that followed Bennett's career in the sixties. In fact, as with many of the best downbeat stories, the movie somehow leaves the audience exhilarated, glad to be alive.

This is a movie which, as Sam Goldwyn might put it, begins at a hanging and descends deeper into misery from there. Eric Portman (best known perhaps as the sinister squire...