Michael Powell Double Feature [2 Discs]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Two Michael Powell movies from very different parts of the director's 40-year career -- one of them very long-awaited in the United States -- have made their debut with this double DVD set from Columbia Tri-Star. A Matter of Life And Death (aka Stairway To Heaven) (1946) marked the end (and the peak) of a string of extraordinary wartime films made by Powell and his writer/director/producer partner Emeric Pressburger. Starring David Niven and Kim Hunter with Roger Livesey, Marius Goring, and Raymond Massey, and shot in a strange mix of Technicolor and monochrome, it has long been avaiable as a Region 2 disc in England, which included that participation of cinematographer Jack Cardiff. For this release, the producers have included a commentary track by Ian Christie, a longtime writer on the movies of Powell and Pressburger, and an introduction by Martin Scorsese, an admirer of both filmmakers. Christie's commentary is lively and informative, though he misses a few opportunities to delve further into certain aspects of the production, the cast and crew's work, and the stylistic unity of the movie's aesthetics. The full-screen (1.33-to-1) transfer of the movie overcomes some of the problems inherent in the source material that have marred theatrical showings over the last couple of decades, though some graininess and other deficiencies does remain in certain of the black-and-white sequences. The second film in the package, Age Of Consent (1969), came at the end of Powell's directorial career, though it was also the beginning of the screen career of co-star Helen Mirren, who contributes a very generous, moving on-camera reminiscence of the production and the participants. Also present in framing interviews are the director's son, Kevin Powell], who worked on the picture, and the husband-and-wife underwater cinematography team who photographed those sequences; and there is a commentary track by film historian {$Kent Jones. Age Of Consent, which is shown here in its unedited and uncensored director's cut, has gotten a stunning letterboxed transfer (1.85-to-1) that makes it almost of demonstration quality. The sound on both movies is also mastered at a very healthy volume, though the 23-year newer Age Of Consent also has an advantage in this area. And Jones's commentary is a good companion to Christie's, as he is able to focus more on Powell's post-war output in discussing various attributes of the newer movie. Each disc opens automatically to an easy-to-use two-layer menu that is simple to maneuver around. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 2
• Subtitle: Eng/Fre
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Theatre Wide Screen)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo
• Features:
  • cc
  • A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway To Heaven)
  • Director Martin Scorsese on A Matter Of Life and Death
  • Commentary by Historian Ian Christie
  • Age of Content - Director Martin Scorsese on Age of Content
  • Commentary with Historian Kent Jones
  • Making of Age of Content
  • Helen Mirren: A Conversation With Cora
  • Down Under with Ron and Valerie Taylor

AWARDS

• Telluride Film Festival

•     Film Presented - 1977

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       David Niven - Peter Carter
       Helen Mirren - Cora
       Jack MacGowran - Nat Kelly
       Neva Carr - Glyn - Ma Ryan
       Antonia Katsaros - Isabel Marley
       Michael Boddy - Hendricks
       Harold Hopkins - Ted Farrell
       Kathleen Byron - Angel
       Bonar Colleano - American Pilot
       Hudson Fausset - New Yorker
       Edwin Max - Dr. McEwen
       Eric Reiman - An Art Lover
       Betty Potter - Mrs. Tucker
       Bob Roberts - Dr. Gaertler
       Abraham Sofaer - Judge
       Clarissa Kaye - Meg
       Judy McGrath - Grace
       Diane Strachan - Susie
       Roberta Grant - Ivy
       Geoff Cartwright - Newsboy
       Peggy Cass - New Yorker's Wife

• Director:

  Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

• Producer:

  James Mason, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, George R. Busby

• Screenwriter:

  Peter Yeldham

• Book Author:

  Norman Lindsay

• Screenwriter:

  Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

• Cinematographer:

  Hannes Staudinger, Ron Taylor, Jack Cardiff

• Composer (Music Score):

  Stanley Myers, Peter Sculthorpe, Allan Gray

• Songwriter:

  Phil Moore

• Editor:

  Anthony Buckley, Reginald Mills

• Production Designer:

  Alfred Junge

• Art Director:

  Dennis Gentle, Arthur Lawson

• Associate Producer:

  Michael Pate

• Costume Designer:

  Anna Senior, Hein Heckroth

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Tim Wellburn, C.C. Stevens

• Makeup:

  George Blackler

• Special Effects:

  W. Percy Day, Henry Harris, George Blackwell, Douglas Woolsey

• Camera Operator:

  John McLean, Graham Lind, Christopher G. Challis, Geoffrey Unsworth

REVIEWS:

• A Matter of Life and Death could easily be the most complex movie to come out of World War II. The film is a comedy that often leaves its viewers in tears; a romantic drama that makes audiences laugh; a literate movie with a multi-layered script that gives nods to Shakespeare and Schiller; yet, a film so dazzling in its visuals that it requires more than one viewing to absorb fully. A Matter of Life and Death (released in America as Stairway to Heaven) was the magnum wartime opus of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the writer/producer/director team who spent the years between 1940 and 1955 enthralling the world's filmgoers while outraging British officials and movie critics. A Matter of Life and Death was the first motion picture ever chosen for a Royal Command Performance, yet many critics thought it anti-British in sentiment, while still others felt that the romantic fantasy-comedy was tasteless in its very vivid reminder of the recent casualties suffered in the war.
  
  The film was inspired by Powell and Pressburger's awareness of the deteriorating relations between the British and the Americans near the end of the war, and by Pressburger's reading of an account of a Royal Air Force sergeant who had jumped out of a burning plane without a parachute, escaping with only minor injuries. The filmmakers wove the two threads together into a screenplay that presented its action against infinitely large and infinitely small canvases, often in the same scene. The story hinges on stricken pilot Peter David Carter (David Niven), who is at the center of a dispute (which may or may not be imagined) with the powers that rule the universe. From the deepest recesses of the human mind -- rendered in subjective, point-of-view camera shots from a man undergoing brain surgery -- audiences were treated to the fanciful sight of the universe expanding into infinity, and to a "trial" before a heavenly tribunal. In the course of the trial, the virtues and vices of the English and American peoples are satirized, concluding with the discovery of a common belief in justice and a recognition of the universal need for love. The movie's denouement is a celebration of peace and brotherhood reminiscent of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."
  
  Amid its extraordinary visual trickery and textural richness, A Matter of Life and Death was also one of the funniest and saddest films about death to come out of World War II. The proceedings have an almost Shakespearean complexity, and the script's parallels with the Bard's work are underscored by the rehearsals for an amateur production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that take place in the midst of Carter's adventure. Marius Goring's Conductor 71 is nothing if not a Gallic Puck, working his magic to correct a mismatched romance caused by his own error. (Ironically, Powell had intended Conductor 71 to be German, but the duo's films had been so heavily criticized for being pro-German -- when in fact, they were ferociously anti-Nazi -- that he and Pressburger relented on this point.) The film was still resented in some critical circles in England, but it found a public on both sides of the Atlantic, and anywhere audiences were prepared to embrace its message and its art. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
• It's far from the glories of his partnership with Emeric Pressburger that produced The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but Michael Powell's look at an artist recharging his creative batteries has its charms. Based on a novel by Norman Lindsay, the story will be familiar to fans of Sirens, the John Duigan film about Lindsay and his bevy of nude models posting in Australia's lush Blue Mountains. The scenery here is just as eye-catching, with Bradley Morahan (Powell's co-producer James Mason) decamping from New York to an island along Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Bradley allows nature to prick his muse, but its appearance of a young woman, Cora (the teenaged Helen Mirren, identified in the closing credits as a "member of the Royal Shakespeare Company") who really lights his fire. A comic subplot with Brad's drunken sot of a pal (Jack MacGowran) pursuing a local woman of some means, is pretty silly stuff, and the ending, with Cora's mean old granny conveniently out of the way and the young woman literally throwing herself at Brad, seems forced. But Powell elevates Lindsay's piffle into something intelligent and moving and, finally, rather autobiographical. The director had been wandering in the wilderness for a number of years following the failure of his scandalous Peeping Tom, and this film was his way of keeping his hand in. Sadly, whatever artistic success the fictional artist Brad gained managed to elude Powell. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi