NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Martin Scorsese has spent a significant part of his life talking about the movies he loves. He has made documentaries about Italian cinema (“My Voyage to Italy”), Hollywood studio films (“A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies”) and individual filmmakers such as Elia Kazan and Val Lewton. But when Scorsese talks about the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, it means something different. It comes very close to something fundamental for him.
In the new documentary “Made in England: The Films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger,” Scorsese recalls watching “The Red Shoes” as a child. He describes it as “one of the origins of my obsession with cinema itself.”
“The Powell-Pressberger films have had a profound effect on the sensitivity I bring to all the work I’ve been able to do,” Scorsese says in the documentary. “I was so enchanted by them as a child that they are a big part of the subconscious of my films.”
“Made in England,” which hits theaters this month, is a moving crescendo in one of the greatest love affairs in movies. The films of Powell and Pressburger, the directing-screenwriting duo known as the Archers, have been an enduring pole star for Scorsese, who befriended Powell late in life. Scorsese’s longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker married him and has worked tirelessly to celebrate his legacy since his death in 1990.
Together, Schoonmaker and Scorsese have already restored eight of the films, including Technicolor masterpieces such as ‘The Red Shoes’, ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’, ‘Black Narcissus’ and ‘A Matter of Life and Death’, along with the beloved black and white gem “I Know Where I’m Going!” and, most recently, “The Small Black Room.” Once Scorsese and Schoonmaker finish editing their own films, like last year’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Schoonmaker turns to her other life’s work.
“I have the best job in the world and I have the best husband in the world. What more can you ask for?” Schoonmaker said in a recent telephone interview. “Working for Marty is just fantastic. Every film is different, every film is a new challenge. And then we sit and talk about Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.”
As an expression of cinematic love – of the power of film to fascinate you, to change your life, to live alongside you as you grow older – ‘Made in England’ could hardly be more exuberant. The film plays as part of a Powell-Pressburger retrospective currently running at the Museum of Modern Art, with stops in Seattle, Chicago and the Academy Museum in Los Angeles.
“The word ‘love’ rings true, for all of us,” says David Hinton. He directed ‘Made in England’ and first met Powell in a 1980s British TV documentary about him. He was approached by Schoonmaker, who initiated the film. Hinton quickly realized the zeal of his employees.
“Scorsese and Thelma want to capture every good moment from every good Powell and Pressburger film,” Hinton says with a chuckle. “Sequences flew back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean. They didn’t want to take credit, but a lot of what you see in the final film is actually their work.”
Powell, the British son of a hop farmer, and Pressburger, a Hungarian Jew who had fled the Nazis to Britain, forged their partnership during World War II. Together they shared their single-screen credits and made 19 feature films, many of which remain among the greatest films ever made.
Schoonmaker thinks she was in love with Powell before she met him. She saw “The Red Shoes” when she was twelve and “Colonel Blimp” not long after.
“It has devastated me in a positive way,” says Schoonmaker. “I had no idea who made it and no idea that I would later be introduced to the man who made it and marry him.”
When Schoonmaker met him, Powell’s career was over, a demise exacerbated by the response to his disturbing and now widely celebrated 1960 film, “Peeping Tom.” When Scorsese received an award from the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1974, he asked Powell to present it to him. But few remembered him. Powell, he learned, was then almost penniless and living in a cottage in Gloucester.
By the time Scorsese prepared to make “Raging Bull” (1980), he and Powell had become friends, a relationship that revived the forgotten filmmaker. Powell later wrote that he “felt the blood rushing through his veins again.”
At the same time, Scorsese continued to send Schoonmaker home with VHS tapes of the films. He also indoctrinated others, such as Francis Ford Coppola and Robert De Niro. The legacy of Powell and Pressburger began to revive. And a mutual film friendship developed.
“Michael also gave to Marty,” says Schoonmaker, recalling that Scorsese considered abandoning “GoodFellas” under pressure to shorten the drug scenes. “I read him the script and he said, ‘Call Marty on the phone.’ He said, ‘Marty, this is the best script I’ve read in twenty years. You have to make this movie.’ So Marty went back again and had it fixed. That’s because of Michael. He ruthlessly protected Marty’s artistic freedom.’
A photo of their wedding day appears in ‘Made in England’. Schoonmaker ultimately spent ten years with Powell before his death. She calls them “the happiest years of my life.”
“You know, he was an optimist,” says Schoonmaker. “He had me put ‘Film director and optimist’ on his tombstone. And he was. Living with someone who is an optimist is very special. He lived every second of every day.”
It’s hard not to see similarities between the collaborations between Pressburger and Powell and Scorsese and Schoonmaker, who has edited his every feature since “Raging Bull.” One of the most striking parts of “Made in England” is a comparison of some moments from Powell and Pressburger films that echo theirs. The ballet performance in ‘The Red Shoes’ influenced how Scorsese shot boxing matches in the ring in ‘Raging Bull’. In the Russian impresario Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) from ‘The Red Shoes’, Scorsese sees a model for Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro). Their movements are eerily similar.
But more than certain moments or characters, there is also the deeper way in which Powell’s marriage of image and music inspires Scorsese. The hallucinatory 1951 opera “The Tales of Hoffman,” which Scorsese — not your average child — watched obsessively on TV as a 10-year-old, he says, “taught me virtually everything I know about the relationship between camera and music.” The famous “Layla” montage of “GoodFellas,” says Schoonmaker, was inspired by the music-timed parts in the feverish finale of “Black Narcissus.”
While such a tribute may not be possible for all Archers enthusiasts, Scorsese’s deeply personal reflections in “Made in England” effectively convey the feelings that Powell and Pressburger films evoke in many who encounter them. “They are romantics and idealists, Powell and Pressburger,” says Hinton. “When I met Michael, that was what was so striking about him. He was still a romantic. He had a sparkle in his eye.”
The work continues for Schoonmaker. A few films – most notably the enchanting “A Canterbury Tale” and the WWII thriller “49th Parallel” – are awaiting possible restorations. And Schoonmaker continues to toil through Powell’s diaries in the hope of one day publishing them. She purposely didn’t read the whole book. yet, all these years later, they still have more to say to each other.
“I work chronologically, so I waited to read what he wrote about me until I got there,” Schoonmaker says. “I’m going to wait.”
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Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle at: http://x.com/jakecoyleAP
