Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1980 and the presenter was Roy Plumley. On our desert island this week, two filmmakers who've produced, written and directed some of the best British films of the past five decades, Michael Powell and Emmerich Pressburger. Now together you've made several distinguished films based on ballet and opera so I presume you both have musical interests. Is either of you a musical performer?

No, not at all. Emmerich? I used to be. In what capacity? I used to play the violin quite well, if I may say so. Where? Mainly in ex-Hungary, now Romania. I was a student of 17 when I was playing in the orchestra of the town. And even more important, it was that I could get away from school each time whenever rehearsals. And so, of course, everybody ended with me. Do you think, gentlemen, that your musical tastes are going to differ to the extent... If you are having to live at opposite ends of the island, what do you think Michael? At the moment, after spending a lot of our working life together.

We're now living at opposite ends of England. I'm in Gloucestershire and Emmerich's in Suffolk. From your collections in opposite corners of England you are allowed four records each. I suggest we spin a coin to decide who starts. Is that all right? Heads for Powell and Tails for Pressburger. Here we go. And it's a tale. Emmerich, what's your first record? Would be Johann Sebastian Bach's Prelude and Fugue, number one in C major. And who shall play it? Svyatoslav Richter, if we can have it.

Richter playing the... From the Prelude and Fugue in C major by Bach, the first disc chosen by Emmerich Pressburger. Now Michael Powell, you're a man of kennel. Is that right? Yes, born east of the Medway. Near Canterbury? Yes. Educated at King's School Canterbury and... College you started by working in a bank yes where was that Bournemouth how did Went on holiday, got a job in a film company in the south of France and never came back.

Oh yes, your father had a hotel in the South of Rome. Yes, at Cap Ferrara. Yes. The what are now the Victorian studios near these? Yes and the company was MGM Metro-Golben-Mayer which was making a big film there with a director at that time a big director Rex Ingram. And what was your job? at the studio? Everything. You know, in that kind of small studio where a big company are working, you have a child. Of working in all departments, which is such a wonderful chance for anybody. And I worked in them all and ended up even writing the titles with Ingram. How long did you work in Nice? Three years. And then what? to Elstree where they were just starting to make big films because there was a big exodus starting from the continent because of the rise of...

Hitler. Although you didn't get a screen credit, you wrote part of the script of the first British talkie, Hitchcock's blackmail, is that true? Yes, that's right. I met Hitchcock on the floor in Elsjay. I was shooting stills for his pictures. And we got on awfully well. Blackmail was a film that changed its mind in midair. It started as a silent and then became a talkie. I wrote it first of all as a silent. That's probably one of the reasons that helped to fix Hitchcock's style, because when he turned it into a talkie, it was... Mainly a question of adding a few dialogue scenes and sound effects to what was already a very effective visual picture. Leading lady whose English wasn't all that good. Annie Andre, yes, but her figure was lovely. Well, at any rate, there you are, you're in the film business and seen pretty well all sides of it. What's your first record, Michael?

I wouldn't like to be on the island and not somehow keep touch with something that is... Entertain me all my life and that's the sort of New York attitude to life. Mike Nichols, who most people know as the director of The Graduate, a wonderful film, he was also a very good stage director and a stage performer. And he used to do some acts with Elayne May, his partner. Particular if you won't mind Roy called disc jockey which can It contains the kind of humor which one has to be conscious of it today if you're in show business. What do you play in the picture, sweetheart? Well, Jack, it's just like a real great break for me. Because I mean, it's a real change of pace for me. - Terrific. - I mean, I don't swim in this at all. Just really, you know, just lucky enough to get the part of

Uh-huh. I'm very surprised to hear that. I had heard Gertrude Stein was to be played by Spencer Tracy. Only as if you're a man. Child disc jockey by mike nichols and elaine may and request for a good to hear something about

About your early days. You're Hungarian by birth. Yes. When did you start getting interested in films? Already in Prague. And later, when I went to study in Stuttgart in Germany, I went to the cinema as often as I could. And I wanted to have something to do, if nothing else, to build cinemas. But of course, then my father died and my student years have finished. And I had nothing. And so I came to Berlin and I was standing in front of the UFA building, One of these days I can get into that company which was one of the most important film making companies in those times. In the world at that time. Yes, very very important.

And in which side did you want to get? I wanted to write. Yes. Film story after film story and everything came back until one day, perhaps six months after I came to Berlin, one story didn't come back. I went to the UFA and I asked them what happened to my story. They told me, Well, if you sent it in two months ago, you should have got it already. They never even thought of that, that somebody might send in something that they might accept. But in fact they did accept the story. Well, they didn't accept it, but it was sent to the chief dramaturg who called me and I

and I gave him straightaway another story. And so I had access to the head of the department, which was of course very, very important for me, until one day I met Robert Sjödmark. Robert Sjödmark, who directed that first film of yours, Abshid? Farewell. I hated it. Lovely title. I thought it was terrible. It was absolutely terrible. Then you wrote a script for Opel's and you wrote five or six more German films, some made in French versions as well. Then you decided to move to France. I decided to when Hitler came. It was decided for you.

Decided by him. Now although you didn't speak French, you have that splendid facility that most Central Europeans have in which Englishmen envy so much. You learned French and began writing scripts in French. Well, you can hear how much I learned here in this country. I'm a foreigner's foreigner. Ah, but you can write it without any trace of an accent. And then to Britain, you joined the Cawdor Empire, the Alexander Cawdor Empire. Yes, that was I think in '37. Was it Michael? Yes, a bit later than when you went doing them first. You were working with Staupenhorst, weren't you? Yes, yes. Is that legend true that he had... A notice in his office to be Hungarian is not enough. It sounds very good, but we didn't have this. It was very often enough.

It was, but he must have changed. What was the first film you wrote? I think it was The Spine. Black. The spine black. The one which we met. Yes. Was that the first one you wrote for Korda? I didn't realize that. Well, you remember, Michael, that Conrad Fait... Oh, I remember all about it, naturally. Who would ever forget it? Conrad Fait, a wonderful... That's how the collaboration started. Right.

We'll deal with that in a moment. Whose turn is it? Emmerich, your second record. What's that? My second record is Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata, and now an ex-violinist is speaking. And if I may choose the two artists who are playing the Kreutzer Sonata, I would like to have Kool & Kampf, George Kool & Kampf, and it will surprise you, Georg Scholte. Dr. He was a wonderful, wonderful piano player, as you will hear on the record.

Of Beethoven's Weil and Sonata in A, Op. 47, the Kreutzer, played by Külenkampf and Schulte. Now, Michael Powell, while Emmerich was getting himself established here in London, you had been very busy between blackmail and your first meeting with Emmerich. I believe you had directed 24 films. About that. Some of the earlier ones, of course. Rather cheap and rather quick. Oh, they were all cheap and somber nasty. But, uh, you-- We learned our business with them. They were mostly financed by the American distributors because they had to fulfill a certain quota, you see, of British films in the programs. And they also found it better. To commission cheap films to be made here with good actors because we had, as now, some of the best actors in the world. I don't mean the stars, I mean the general company.

Of actors and they found that this was a better way to see what they could do than making film tests. Was really a very unnatural thing. The actor knows he's being tested. He's working on a performance that's different. - I remember a first-rate early film of yours of which I remember exceedingly well, The Phantom Light. Very exciting lighthouse story. - Oh, yes, did you see that? - I did indeed, and I-- remember it, it stuck. Yes, it had a lot of things in it which repeated afterwards, perhaps an edge of the world and even in the spy in black. The Edge of the World, that was one film which you tried for years to set up, a very important film so far as you were concerned. Hmm. I read about the evacuation of St. Cote's. Hilda in the newspapers. And the idea of a whole population of an island being evacuated because they couldn't live there any longer.

It seemed to me a marvelous film idea. But it took me five or six years to get anybody to back it. And finally it was a... A little American producer who was working over here and who liked that kind of film too. A dramatized documentary, really. Now, in those days, all roads led to Cawdor, and it was to Cawdor that you went and through him that you met Emmerich. Yes, I was leaving England. I couldn't get a job here. Whenever I had a success here, I never could get a job afterwards. Was going to Hollywood and then Alex saw this picture at the edge of the world and gave me a contract for a year. About the same time I imagine that he gave you a contract for a year, Amrit. Which year was that? 37. Yes, it was then. And we never met then. This first film you did together, The Spy in Black, this was a vehicle for...

Fight. Conor O'Brien and Valerie Hobson. It was in fact, although it came out just before the last war started, it was in fact about the First World War. Yes it was. Did it do well? Yes always, Mr. Mayor. Yes always. Made a fortune. It was one of those strange things, you know, that here was a film about in breaking into Scarpa Flow with a heroic German in charge, comes to a sticky end, and the British loved it. It opened the day war was declared practically and knocked all box office records because nobody... Cared whether it was about the first war or the second war. What they liked about it was that it was a good, thrilling war film. Roughly through the years of your partnership, how have you and Michael divided the work?

a lot of the directing. This is a very difficult question to answer because although it is absolutely not to be touched that the director was Michael, I seem to have contributed so much to the film, beside of the story and the story. Script, looking with Michael together on rushes and changing. You know how it is in films that suddenly... Something goes wrong, something new has to be replaced, there is a new idea and that is replacing another part of the film. So that we have decided... That we are going to sign together for the films, meaning that we regard it as contributing. A complete collaboration. Yes, that's right.

Well we got to your second record, what's your second piece of disc? Well it's a poem. And as you know, a few poets can read their own poems, but this is one poet who I think reads his own poems as no poet has ever read. Into that good night old age should burn and rave at close of day rage rage against the dying of the light It's no lightning, they do not go gentle into that good night. Good men the last wave by, crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, rage, rage against the dying.

♪ King of the light ♪ ♪ Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight ♪ and learn too late they grieved it on its way do not go gentle into that good night Dylan Thomas. Let's run through some of the principal films of the Powell and Pressburger Erv. Having cleaned up with a film about the First World War, he went on to make, I think, four about what was then the current war. What was the first one, Emmerich? Contraband. In America it was called Blackout, do you remember? Blackout, yes. We have won something, but I can't remember now what, in America. I hope it was a prize. The best foreign film or something. Of that of the year something of it was a thriller in the blackout in London and that was new and it was also the first feature film of the war was it and then 49th parallel

and a very nice shiny Oscar for Emery. That was a very fine film, 49th Parallelly. It's still a good picture when it crops up today. Yes, I think it is. One of our aircraft is missing. Something very unusual about that. A feature film with no music. At all whose idea was that? Probably both of us. Somebody said this film shouldn't have music. It was our first sort of combat film. Proved generally of combat films, making fictional combat films when people are out there fighting and dying. We thought if we're going to make this story of the aircraft... Whose crew bail out, that we wouldn't have any music or any false emotion in it. Try and make it as realistic as possible, but not, curiously, documentary. You used the sound of aircraft. Of the engines and that sort of thing. And use them dramatically and emotionally. And the Silver Fleet. And then...

Isn't the life and death of Colonel Blimp an excellent film which nearly got you both put in the Tower of London? What was that fuss about Michael? Well, we... I had a scene in one of aircraft is missing that Emmerich wrote where the old Rear Gunner says to the young pilot When I was young, I was just as big a fool as you are, and when you're old, you'll be just as nice an old gentleman as I am. I couldn't understand what he was talking about. And afterwards we were discussing this scene which was dropped from the film. And every time I say it, I say it again. I think we ought to make a film about that theme, about the... Stability of the young people to understand the old people, and in this case the young soldiers to understand why the old soldiers are so bent on losing the war. Innocently, I said, let's couple it with the figure of Colonel Blimp. And we met Lowe, David Lowe, who of course was always ready for a nap.

Tech. Yes, he was the cartoon creator. One of the sweetest persons. Shall we just... It was to build the character around Colonel Blimp. His name in the film wasn't Colonel Blimp, of course, but he called the film Colonel Blimp. The War Office didn't like the idea at all. So we planned at first to have Larry Olivier, who loved the idea, and who would have done I think a much more vicious job than Roger Livesey did. And they wouldn't release him from the navy to make the film. They were so determined, we should not make it. They tried to stop the film going overseas. Yes, when it was made they tried to stop it going abroad. But first of all they tried to stop us making it all together. It's time we had some more music. It's your turn to play a record, Emmerich. What next? I would like Richard Strauss's opera 'Der Rosenkavalier'. Which part of it will you play? I would love to play the end.

Part of it.

An excerpt from the closing passage of Der Rosenkavalier, The Voices of Krista Ludwig and Teresa Stich-Randall, and a recording conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

Of the films of Powell and Pressburger. There are so many we can't deal with a lot. Let's talk about the musical films you made. The Red Shoes, about ballet, surely a risky subject commercially. Did you have trouble getting the money for that? No, we didn't. The wonderful thing was that in those days, the rank organization for whom we made most of our pictures, they wished to establish British films in the United States. And they were very free with money, thinking that the only thing missing in British-made films was that we never spent... Enough money. So it happened more than once that Mr. Reng himself came to our meetings and said, Could you use another hundred thousand pounds?

Which has never happened before and never since, of course. On the red shoes, you did go over budget, didn't you? We did go over budget, and everybody thought that it will lose everything. And of course, we thought that we made really, basically, the red shoes because we thought that war is finished and everybody will hate war films now. Everybody wants to get rid of those war times. So what is further away from war? Then ballet. So let's do film on ballet. Of course, if you made an enormous success everywhere. Yes, indeed. And everything of the best. So Thomas Beecham was your musical director.

Yes. He was also concerned of course with your next musical project, the opera, The Tales of Hoffman, the Offenbach Opera. Third one, the third musical. Oh, Rosalinda. Oh, Rosalinda, yes. A little safer commercially operated. Well, in theory, it wasn't so commercial as the others, though. Wasn't it? No. It wasn't, was it? No, it wasn't. Well, let's have your sixth record. It's your turn again Michael. I've always admired for a long time, Rostropovich and his wife, Bishnevskaya. Of Russians that all my life, because when I was a young man and niece I lived in the Russian quarter. Had this kind of Russian artists and also the songs of Mussorgsky that she sings.

Well... ♪ For you are ♪ Vishnevskaya

singing a song by Mussorgsky on the gnepper. What was the last film you did together? A children's film. Not so long ago, after a pose of, what, 15 years or something like that. And it was a children's film called The Boy Who Turned Yellow. And I got, and so did Michael, the children's Oscar here, which is called the Chiffy. It's a chiffy from children's film. I see. Got it twice. What was the other time for? For the same film. Because it came up again, didn't it? Yes, it's supposed to be a miraculous thing. Of course, every generation wants to see it. And I accepted my children's Oscar in Norwich. And they were showing the latest children's film that day. And I got my...

Oscar and a little boy came up on the stage when practically everything was finished and he said to me, Yours is the best. And during that 15 years when you were apart, you were both very busy independently. In your case, my... One remembers peeping Tom and the Queen's guards and the film Du Med in Australia. Emmerich, you were busy Producing and writing films and novels of course? I started to write novels, very, very few of them, only two. And, well, I think nice novels. Oh, that's good. You've got the next record, your last one. I would like to hear Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2.

For solo violin, if possible to be played by Menuhin.

Yehudi Menuhin playing the Bach Partita No. 2 in D minor, the closing passage of the Chaconne. Now we've got the last record, which is your last one. Michael, what have you chosen? Well, it's pure corn, because it's Sir Thomas Beecham conducting the Bacharot from our version of the tale. Of Hoffman. This is from the soundtrack isn't it? Yes.

The Barker Roll from... often barks the tales of Hoffman from the soundtrack of your film. Now the mechanics of you two living together on a desert island... How do we apportion the duties? Emmerich, are you the man to put up the hut? No. No? No. I think we'd have to get together and could build a hut together. I think we can. Not a part. Who does the fishing? Michael is a very good fisherman. Is he? Yes. And the cooking? We're both good cooks, but I think Emmerich takes the palm. I was waiting for that. He wanted to dock the job. Would you try to escape?

I wouldn't, no. Michael? Yes, I certainly would. Well, you would, leaving Emmerich on his own. You'll send somebody back for him. I would wave to him. Now, if you would have just one disc each of the four that you've chosen, which would you have, Emmerich? Rosenkavalier. Michael? Offenbach. And one luxury each, nothing of any practical use? A cask of brandy. That can be arranged easily. In fact, I might even be able to arrange two.

It's your choice for a luxury. Something from the wreck, would it be? Yes, not necessarily, but it could be. The ship's logbook with plenty of spare pages. What are you going to write? I'll keep a diary. Oh, you published the diary of the production of The Edge of the World and made a very good book out of it. Two hundred thousand feet on Fuller, I remember. Thank you. Thank you for remembering it. And one book each. I would like Saul Bellows, Hertz. Sol Bellows, Herzog. Yes. Michael? Well, I hesitate really between Montaigne, who always goes with me, or is there a collected therba? You know, the best of therba? We'll collect one for you. Montaigne or Thurber? A snap decision which?

Ah, mon sé. And thank you Michael Powell and Emmerich Presbürger for letting us hear your desert island discs. It was unexpectedly lovely. Thank you. It was a great experience. Thank you. Goodbye everyone. You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio.

Before.