Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger film review — Martin Scorsese presents a love letter to two visionaries

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger have been so long and heartily celebrated as the very quintessence of British filmmaking that it is hard to imagine a time when they were largely forgotten. Yet for years they were — which is why it is always salutary to have a documentary like Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger remind us of their genius.

David Hinton’s film offers a reasonably comprehensive history of the two men, English and Hungarian-born respectively, who created some of cinema’s most enduring and eccentric visions of British identity in films such as A Matter of Life and Death, I Know Where I’m Going! and A Canterbury Tale. Some of their best were made for wartime propaganda purposes, but the duo fulfilled their brief with mischievous brilliance, not always to the delight of the authorities. Later, beloved dance fantasy The Red Shoes and Himalayas melodrama Black Narcissus pushed different genres into a visionary dimension.  

The film is narrated to camera by Martin Scorsese, who fell in love with the duo’s films, having discovered them as a child. Powell would become Scorsese’s friend and mentor, years after the wilderness period that followed the Englishman’s career-wrecking 1960 chiller (and, subsequently, acknowledged masterpiece) Peeping Tom.

With ample archive footage and extracts from the oeuvre, Scorsese offers his own account — enthused, but by no means hagiographic — of a team he describes as “experimental filmmakers working within the system” (they happily saw themselves as “amateurs in a world of professionals”).

Arguably, there’s a little too much Scorsese: his detailed explanations of the pair’s influence on his own work can be distracting. Still, this is a brisk, insightful guide to the masters from a superfan who knows their films inside out, has copied them avidly and doesn’t mind admitting it.

★★★★☆

In UK cinemas from May 10