Just a heads-up for this - I would love to see a restored print of Blimp in HD - it's one of those movies that looks vibrant and contemporary even 60-odd years on.
Yeah! Was gonna start a thread, others got in 1st .....
For those not familiar with Powell/Pressburger, high class art cinema AND hugely entertaining, some of the best films you'll ever see!
"What do these films have in common and why is Martin Scorsese so enamored of them? When summarized, Powell's films always sound more than a little laugable and, even in the viewing, there are moments of flat-footed silliness (not all due to the passage of time). But they are first and foremost visual experiences, not stories to be paraphrased. One can appreciate the Powell-Scorsese connection only to the extent that one can grasp that Scorsese is an unrealistic director -- not a creator of hyper docudramas but of counterworlds, purely cinematic and dreamlike."
This "purely cinematic" quality was in no small part due to "Technicolor Artist" Jack Cardiff:
"But his greatest artistic triumph is probably the 15-minute ballet sequence in The Red Shoes, a film for which he should have won a second Oscar. (What a swindle that was. Mr. Cardiff contends he was deprived even of a nomination because his American colleagues felt they would be disgraced if a foreigner were to win twice in a row.)
With its plethora of color, light and movement, the ballet sequence is positively phantasmal - a surreal carnival by Marc Chagall or a dancer's orgy by Edgar Degas that takes us into the mind of a dancer (Moira Shearer) as she performs a ballet that parallels her own life story. The real and the imaginary merge as she is torn between love and art."
..... The Red Shoes is very much about dance being "a religion", as anyone who knows dancers can testify .....
...... the opening scene of Colonel Blimp - with the motorbikes & Glen Miller soundtrack - is just amazing, it could have been made yesterday! Pure cinema, indeed ......
Comments
For those not familiar with Powell/Pressburger, high class art cinema AND hugely entertaining, some of the best films you'll ever see!
"What do these films have in common and why is Martin Scorsese so enamored of them? When summarized, Powell's films always sound more than a little laugable and, even in the viewing, there are moments of flat-footed silliness (not all due to the passage of time). But they are first and foremost visual experiences, not stories to be paraphrased. One can appreciate the Powell-Scorsese connection only to the extent that one can grasp that Scorsese is an unrealistic director -- not a creator of hyper docudramas but of counterworlds, purely cinematic and dreamlike."
http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/Micky/Perversity.html
This "purely cinematic" quality was in no small part due to "Technicolor Artist" Jack Cardiff:
"But his greatest artistic triumph is probably the 15-minute ballet sequence in The Red Shoes, a film for which he should have won a second Oscar. (What a swindle that was. Mr. Cardiff contends he was deprived even of a nomination because his American colleagues felt they would be disgraced if a foreigner were to win twice in a row.)
With its plethora of color, light and movement, the ballet sequence is positively phantasmal - a surreal carnival by Marc Chagall or a dancer's orgy by Edgar Degas that takes us into the mind of a dancer (Moira Shearer) as she performs a ballet that parallels her own life story. The real and the imaginary merge as she is torn between love and art."
http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/Jack/JackC25.html
AMAZING ARTICLE & PICS:
http://www.ascmag.com/blog/2010/10/11/jack-cardiff%E2%80%99s-magic-life-part-one/
..... The Red Shoes is very much about dance being "a religion", as anyone who knows dancers can testify .....
...... the opening scene of Colonel Blimp - with the motorbikes & Glen Miller soundtrack - is just amazing, it could have been made yesterday! Pure cinema, indeed ......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXNNAtNsVec