THE DANMAN CAN

I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) is my least favorite  Powell  and  Pressburger  film so far, but I still have many to see. I did greatly enjoy IKWIG , particularly the beautiful Scottish locations and the expressive black and white cinematography, but I found the romance a bit lacking. This might be a film that I appreciate more on a rewatch. Powell & Pressburger Films Ranked

After a string of successes with his longtime partner  Emeric Pressburger  (known together as The Archers ), including  The Red Shoes  (1948) ( review ) and  The Tales Of Hoffmann  (1951) ( review ),  Michael Powell  branched out on his own in the late 1950s. His second solo effort, Peeping Tom  (1960) (released two months prior to another, more famous, progenitor of the slasher,  Alfred Hitchcock 's  Psycho )— with its exploration of obsession, perversity, and childhood trauma—caused great controversy and was vilified in contemporaneous reviews, essentially killing Powell's career and ruining his reputation.  Having been critically reappraised since then, it is now (rightfully) seen as an influential and important work, as well as one of the greatest movies about moviemaking. Filled with lurid, voyeuristic subject matter, beautifully captured in Eastmancolor  by cinematographer  Otto Heller , and frantically scored b...

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger 's  The Tales Of Hoffmann  (1951), much like their earlier  The Red Shoes  (1948) ( review ), features incredible production design, costumes, cinematography, and special effects. There's less dancing and a whole lot more singing in this adaptation of  Jacques Offenbach 's  1881 opera , which blends theatre with cinema. A few minutes in I had to turn on the subtitles because I couldn't make out a lot of the words being sung. I'd recommend the same for first-time viewers.  The biggest gripe I have with this collection of tales is that the characters that surround the titular one are all much more interesting ( Robert Helpmann in particular is fantastic in all three tales). I also found the final segment to be the least engaging and the most straightforward (though it did take it up a notch toward its climax). I much prefer the weirder and darker aspects of the first two stories. Mostly I found myself craving ...

Passion, desire, art, heartbreak, tragedy. All these are portrayed with utmost craft in The Red Shoes  (1948), one of my  Top 100 Films . Via lush Technicolor—where every frame could be a painting—and an opulent score,  The Red Shoes  captures the devastatingly beautiful Moira Shearer  (in a stunning screen debut) and her captivating dance. The film is well known and highly regarded for its breathtaking, hallucinatory, impressionistic extended dance sequence. The film features some of the most gorgeous cinematography, costumes, and production design ever put to celluloid (and The Criterion Collection 's 4K UHD is truly something to behold). It says as much with words as it does by their absence. Like the best fairy tales, it deftly explores both the light and the dark—the heights of ecstasy and the terror of existence. The power of this seminal masterpiece simply cannot be denied. My Criterion Top 10 [Vol. 7]