Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment

The 1978 retrospective that kickstarted the Powell and Pressburger revival

Carl Boehm and Anna Massey Peeping Tom
Peeping Tom (with Carl Boehm and Anna Massey) inaugurated Scorsese’s lasting devotion to supporting Powell and Pressburger’s work. Photograph: ©Michael Powell (Theatre) Ltd

Clyde Jeavons’s letter (18 October) doesn’t quite explain what part the British Film Institute played in reviving Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s reputation.

In fact it was a 36-programme retrospective at the National Film Theatre in 1978 that really set the ball rolling. This also drew on restoration work the BBC had been doing, notably on A Canterbury Tale and Edge of the World; and only being able to screen The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp in a restricted nitrate print inspired a determination to fund the film’s restoration – kickstarted by a charitable donation that Derek Jarman helped to secure.

But it was laying out the full canon of the film-makers’ work that inspired similar retrospectives in Paris, Locarno, Munich and elsewhere. Among these, the New York Museum of Modern Art’s retrospective in 1980 gave Martin Scorsese the opportunity to back a relaunch of Peeping Tom, inaugurating his lasting devotion to supporting Powell and Pressburger’s work.

When Blimp’s restoration was ready to premiere in 1985, Scorsese was happy to play a supporting role at the National Film Theatre, not wanting to upstage the veteran film-makers in their moment of vindication – a scene happily preserved on video.
Ian Christie
Former head of distribution, British Film Institute

• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.