In Praise of the Archers and Jack Cardiff

I knew of The Red Shoes long before I actually saw it. It’s one of those movies highly talked about in certain artsy film circles and in cinema studies classes. It’s one of Martin Scorsese’s favourite movies, he’s talked at length about it on numerous occasions. In fact that’s probably where I first heard of it, this unusual movie about a ballerina made by a directing duo in the U.K. with little studio interference and with no major stars of the era. And yet a film that has appeared near the top of many lists of the best British films. This only adds to its’ already enticing appeal; certainly the title is evocative, as is its’ Criterion cover which is a close-up image of a womans’ face serenely lit, hand to her head and sweat on her brow with a tantalizingly fearful or shocked expression on her face. What does that have to do with the Hans Christian Andersen story?

Collectively known as the Archers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger first came to my attention not through The Red Shoes, but through Black Narcissus. It was actually the third film of theirs I’d heard of, having come across a piece on A Matter of Life and Death in a book about important movies, and being sold on it right away by its’ premise. But I came to Black Narcissus on the Criterion Channel and remembering I’d put it on some list of essential movies I needed to see, chose to watch and subsequently write about it. And it remains one of my favourite discoveries made through my Criterion Channel series, perhaps second only to Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams. This is what drove me to seek out some of their other movies and I’ve not yet been disappointed.

Freed from the restrictions of the Hollywood studio system and its’ associated Production Code of that time, the films of Powell and Pressburger feel more liberated than general English-language movies from the 1940s. According to editor Thelma Schoonmaker, wife of Powell in his later years, it was also the independence granted to them by the British studios that allowed them to make the kind of movies they wanted to, generally unrestrained by outside interference. And many agree their creative output reached its’ height in the late 1940s, not coincidentally at the same time that they started collaborating with one Jack Cardiff.

If Jack Cardiff isn’t the greatest cinematographer in the history of the movies, he’s certainly in that conversation. Notorious for his breathtaking use of technicolor in an era when it was largely a novelty, he’s one of the few figures in that line of work whose mark is as instantly recognizable as any directors’. Cardiff’s affiliation with the Archers began on their equally marvellous The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp in 1943, where he was the second unit photographer, and it shows. Throughout that film are scattered scenes where the colours leap off the screen as much as they would in Cardiff’s later work -most notably in the face of Roger Livesey’s old General and in those those tranquil moments between him and Deborah Kerr. Off of his work here, they brought him on to shoot A Matter of Life and Death, and their partnership continued through the Archers’ subsequent two films, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes –for the former Cardiff even won an Oscar. They parted ways after this, Cardiff going off to work with Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston in Hollywood, and eventually into a directing career of his own (also in the 80s he shot Conan the Destroyer and Rambo: First Blood Part II, which is nuts!). Powell and Pressburger’s partnership endured, but their best regarded films remained that trinity they produced with Cardiff.  

And for good reason. Each of these movies is not only extremely creative and compelling from a narrative standpoint, but they are visual masterpieces. Made during a time when black and white photography was the standard, the sharp and powerful colours, lighting, and contrast to these movies are still awe-inspiring, putting even a lot of modern cinema to shame. Few movies of the last ten years can hold a candle to Cardiff’s visual potency of Black Narcissus, his stunning monochrome experiments of A Matter of Life and Death, or certainly his and the Archers’ impressionistic flights of fancy in the iconic ballet sequence of The Red Shoes, one of the most exciting spectacles of any classic film. These films though are also just unforgettable, all written by Pressburger and Powell (the former handled more of the writing while the latter did the directing), boasting strong original concepts that had a uniquely magical quality to them and characters that leave such bold impressions like Vicky Page, Conductor 71, and especially Sister Ruth. It’s just one of the best consecutive runs of movies any filmmakers have had and I want to talk about them. Certainly I feel all three of these guys and their movies deserve recognition beyond the film school set.

“Life is not only a beginning, just as death is hardly an ending. There’s so much in between and so much beyond. How do you put all the ‘in between’ and all the ‘beyond’ into one movie? Powell and Pressburger pulled it off in A Matter of Life and Death, a work of great audacity and joy.” -Stephanie Zacharek

By happenstance A Matter of Life and Death, a film about a man and angels, came out the same year as It’s a Wonderful Life. Contemporaneously it performed a lot better than the Capra classic even. Both films express a distinct and powerful post-war optimism through the use of fantastical divinity mixed with a modest humanism. It’s about an RAF pilot Peter Carter, played by David Niven, who as his plane is going down over the English Channel in the aftermath of a battle, gets in touch with an American radio operator June (Kim Hunter), and the two share a sad romantic conversation as he’s about to die (and yes, I too saw this scene as homaged by Captain America: The First Avenger before the original thing -still one of the best scenes of the MCU). In a twist of fate though, Peter actually survives, meets June and the two fall in love -but it’s all because of a bureaucratic error up in the afterlife. And when a representative comes down to inform Peter he’s supposed to be dead, Peter challenges the cosmic system on the grounds of his newfound love, mounting a passionate defence of his right to live.

It’s a premise unlike anything else in movies at the time, its’ extravagant concept of a non-denominational afterlife and a trial process over one’s mortality is just so intrepid; and the choice to keep ambiguous the reality of Peter’s interactions with this world allows a great deal of artistic licence and fantasy. It came from Powell and Pressburger being commissioned to make a movie designed to improve the “special relationship” between the U.K. and the U.S. during a time of some hostility between the British and deployed Americans. And then Pressburger came up with the central conceit after hearing about a man surviving a fall from a downed plane without a parachute. These prompts eventually mutated into a story about love and how far we’re willing to go for it. It’s the one thing that Peter cares about staying on Earth for, he was in fact quite ready for death during his final talk with June over the radio. She literally gave him a reason to live and he is not going to give that up. And with them each representing their countries quite well, the metaphor is pretty explicit, even before Raymond Massey’s British-hating prosecutor in Peter’s grand trial makes his appearance. 

That tribunal essentially becomes about Britain, Peter’s nationality forming a contentious issue, especially with a jury composed of representatives of the many cultures Britain has exacted violent colonialism on. For a movie made during an expressly jingoist period of British history, it’s so remarkable the Archers’ were able to get away with that. And it’s even more impressive when per request each juror is replaced by an American of the same cultural heritage -a celebration of American multiculturalism that was certainly not going on in their own mainstream movies at the time. There’s even a shot in response to the African-American juror of a bunch of black soldiers watching, acknowledging their under-appreciated role in America’s part in World War II. This is not the only area where Powell and Pressburger proved themselves ahead of the curb.

But before moving onto that we must talk about the technicolour here, and that’s where Cardiff comes in. In fairness the spectacular art direction of Alfred Junge deserves every credit, particularly his work on that garden enclosure Peter and June make love in, the afterlife reception area with its’ gorgeous and inventive tricks of scale, and the iconic escalator to the other world, so magnificent and breathtaking it gave the film its’ American title Stairway to Heaven. But Cardiff’s cinematography is what makes them look their best -that opening scene is so gorgeous as it cuts between Peter and June’s faces, June’s background having no character, as though she is literally appearing to Peter’s consciousness only. But the film divides its’ time between the colour of Earth and the black and white of the hereafter. 

It’s a very particular black and white though, brighter and more ethereal due to being shot in colour but printed without -making it easier for Cardiff to transition it into colour where he needed. “We are starved for technicolour up there”, says Marius Goring’s Conductor 71, an executed French aristocrat, moments after the extraordinary dissolve to colour emanating from his lapel that just about sets every other similar effect in motion pictures to shame. There are a number of these flawless transitions in the film, and on either end Cardiff shoots them stunningly. Each of his frames is a work of art, he knows how to make his actors look beautiful, but he’s also damn good when it comes to blocking and framing his shots -that stairway is composed so neatly and his long shots capture well the confused isolation of Peter as he explores that empty beach. Inventively, he also breathed on the camera lens to create a cheap fog effect around the survived pilot -these were relatively cheaply made films, but thanks in large part to Cardiff, they sure as hell don’t look it.

“Black Narcissus is a film about people who try and fail to remake the world to their specifications, and it was paradoxically made by people who control every square inch of the environment being represented.” -Kent Jones

Black Narcissus is definitely a movie that looks more expensive than it was, a movie that I’ve covered previously, joking that it was the first nun-sploitation flick. It came only a year later, the first Archers production filmed after the war had ended, and like A Matter of Life and Death it tackled some daring subject matter nigh impossible to see represented by Hollywood at the time. Based on a book by Rumer Godden, it’s the story of a small convent of Anglican nuns relocated for the purposes of starting a school to an isolated, abandoned palace in the Himalayas they name St. Faith, that was once where a Raja kept his harem. As such, erotic imagery decorates the enclaves, and the whole vicinity has some sensual power in the air, which despite the best efforts of Deborah Kerr’s stern Sister Superior Clodagh the nuns can’t repress and inevitably they fall under its’ sway. For some, its’ merely the unique Himalayan atmosphere that has a mystifying, distracting influence, but others are taken in by that pervasive sexual nature, bringing forth repressed feelings and desires in dramatic, impulsive ways. And it doesn’t help that their liaison Mr. Dean (David Farrar) is both a frequent visitor and a smoldering male specimen.

Of course the movie is about much more than just the sexual awakenings of some horny nuns. It’s also rather subtly about colonialism, and the fruits of the arrogance of trying to transform one world into another. Dean says early on that this palace is a terrible place for a nunnery, and he is absolutely correct. A western convent just isn’t suited for this environment, this ancient place built to be a brothel in a society with far less constrictive attitudes towards sex. For God’s sake, it’s right down the road from the spot of a Hindi Holy Man, who sits silent all day as people come to pay their respects. This nature is too powerful for the nuns’ institution -it’s no surprise that it wrecks it. It’s very clear why this story appealed to Powell and Pressburger, a low-key cautionary tale whilst still being innately exotic. Once again, they aren’t afraid to critique the British Empire. 

And as for the sexuality of the piece, it’s likewise incredible to see such themes tackled relatively openly for a movie of this era. Obviously in content it’s still mostly chaste, but there are so many lingering glances or pregnant pauses whenever Dean is around -to say nothing of the much less hidden sexual chemistry between the young prince (Sabu) undergoing tutelage at the convent and the servant girl Kanchi (an unfortunately brown-faced Jean Simmons). The Archers also explore eroticism in unconventional ways. For Clodagh, it means the recollection of her former life in Ireland and a whirlwind romance that went south leading to her joining the order. For Flora Robson’s Philippa it means listlessness. But for Kathleen Byron’s Ruth, who’s had a history of mental instability, it means full on paranoia and an extreme case of what the kids’ call “thirst”. Maybe the greatest casting choice of the Archers’ career was picking Byron for this role of an ill-behaved nun gradually going mad.

There is no turning away any time Cardiff’s camera is on her -she is the centrepiece of so many of the best images of the film. Her performance is phenomenal, but the way Cardiff shoots her, lights her, with especial attention to her captivating eyes, it’s unlike anything else in the movie. She is terrifying and alluring in equal measure, no more so than when she’s revealed for the first time out of habit, with her golden hair out and in that bright red dress exquisite against the shadows. It’s a magnificent use of such vivid colour absent anywhere else in the film -and nobody who watches it will ever forget it. Nor will they forget her gaunt visage appearing out of the shadows on that palace cliff-edge in the aftermath of Dean’s traumatizing rejection, with murder in those same piercing eyes. It’s a shame she was never involved in another project with Cardiff –they are a perfect match. 

Once again, Cardiff illuminates Alfred Junge’s magnificent production design, the matte painting backgrounds by W. Percy Day that look as enticing as the real thing –the three of them coming together to create one of the great set-pieces in cinema: the bell arch on the end of that deadly precipice. Cardiff’s most iconic shot of the film is that overhead above Kerr as she rings the bell overlooking a deadly drop, communicating that sense of imminent danger perhaps not apparent elsewhere in the movie. It is astonishing Black Narcissus was shot entirely in-house and again on a budget. The sheer talent of everyone involved cannot be overstated, and Cardiff and his crew’s ability to mimic the ambience and distinct tones of nature is unparalleled. At the same time, he was quite the expert at beautiful artificiality.

“In taking artistic expression through dance so seriously, The Red Shoes goes well beyond the confines of a “backstage musical” into areas richer, deeper, and darker than any such film had ventured toward before -or would after.” -David Ehrenstein

Few movies look less “real” than The Red Shoes. And yet its’ visual aesthetic is what more movies ought to aspire to. It’s a culmination really of the Archers’ and Cardiff’s partnership, their most elaborate, most magical, and arguably most gorgeous movie. The Red Shoes is probably they’re most discussed and acclaimed work as well, even if contention surrounding some of the ballet scenes may have robbed Cardiff of another Oscar nomination. It takes inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale of the same name, which also drives much of the plot. Scottish ballerina Moira Shearer plays novice dancer Victoria Page, who joins an elite ballet company where she rises through the ranks to become the favourite of impresario Boris Lermontov (Colonel Blimp’s Anton Walbrook), while at the same time beginning a romance with company composer Julian Craster (A Matter of Life and Death’s Marius Goring). Eventually she is selected for the lead in a new ballet based on the Andersen fairy tale, becoming enraptured by it as her duelling male suitors wage the importance of her art over her love -a debate even she perhaps can’t settle. And throughout there are hints that the red shoes she performs in, much like in the fairy tale, have a particular bewitching power.

The Red Shoes is a movie about art, but about the toxic side of art: being consumed by it, manipulated for its’ purposes, and even dying for it. To Lermentov, the talents of his muse and her performance is all that matters. He pushes her towards it, and she even does so herself. “Why do you want to dance?” Lermentov asks her on their first meeting. “Why do you want to live?” she responds. To both of them, these two things are the same, or at the very least they are inextricable from one another. It’s why Vicky and Lermentov make for a perfect and a fatal pair. The movie delves into obsession, image, self-confidence –all sorts of themes but all dictated by this overwhelming sense of the grand importance of art. And paradoxically, for what’s considered often among the best of its’ art, The Red Shoes doesn’t come down favourably on it. Very boldly it critiques those sacrosanct notions of art, the idea that it is above all –and those artists who say their art is the only thing worth doing or, more extremely, living for. Certainly such things lead Vicky to a bitter end, in deliciously tragic parallel to the fairy tale. Yet smartly the film doesn’t let Vicky alone be the architect of her self-destruction through dance, Lermentov and even Craster play as big a part, in trying to shape her destiny to suit their needs, to enact a kind of ownership over her that additionally impacts her psychology detrimentally. 

None of this would have come across, certainly not with as much brilliance, if not for Powell and Pressburger, who inherited the script from producer Alexander Korda’s failed attempt to make a ballet movie in the 1930s for his then-wife Merle Oberon. But Powell, who co-wrote the initial script, didn’t like the idea of hiring a double for dance scenes, so for the Archers’ production they made the choice to fill the cast with real ballet dancers, starting with Shearer. Next to Kathleen Byron, Shearer may have been their other greatest casting choice, proving she could act as well as she could dance –and she dances magnificently. She’s got tremendous screen presence too, and as commonly noted, exuberant red hair for the technicolour. The other stand-out cast member for merely his striking appearance both in the ballet and out is Léonide Massine as Grischa –a figure straight out of German expressionism as he fashions Vicky’s character her shoes.

These shoes leap off the screen as much as Dorothy’s ruby slippers do, and yet they are a mere margin more vivacious and exciting than the colours in the rest of the movie, which are simply breathtaking. Every moment in some way sizzles with a radiating energy –Cardiff’s framing is never more extraordinary. It really feels like a genuine fairy-tale some of the time, especially in the way the shots and lighting are married to great moody effect. This is a film that traverses genre from drama to thriller to musical to outright horror –but each makes sense by how it is constructed and how it is rendered. I think Cardiff does the horror stuff particularly well, as he did in Black Narcissus, accentuating elements of a ballet scene like Vicky’s face or the shoes, and keeping the environment behind them dimly imposing. And on a few occasions he applies this technique to Lermentov and Craster as well -in one shot witnessing a performance, Craster is lit like a gargoyle. 

The Red Shoes is particularly famous though for a fifteen-minute ballet sequence composed and staged specifically for the movie, and it is the best work of Cardiff’s career –easily topping most other show-stopping musical interludes of the likes of Gene Kelly (who was directly inspired by this film for An American in Paris). Beautiful and haunting, the sequence is full of hypnotizing visuals, impressionistic techniques that manifest as both a part of the narrative and on some other plane entirely –ideal for the tone of the piece. There are a lot of great unconventional shots and edits through this (a favourite is a close-up of the shoes as Vicky leaps into them), as well as plenty of evocative overlays. A feat of staging, choreography, and of course cinematography, this whole episode is also just a mesmerizing thing to witness. It’s no wonder this visual extravaganza is what it took for Cardiff to be finally scooped up by Hollywood.

Apart from Powell’s own Peeping Tom, I haven’t actually seen any of the Archers’ movies after they split with Cardiff. There are almost certainly some gems in there I look forward to seeing, The Tales of Hoffmann, similar to The Red Shoes, has a lot of admirers. But I believe there is a unique magic to the three films these artists made together -and to Colonel Blimp as well, which precedes them by a few years, looks almost as good, and tells just as great a story (but I haven’t the time for it). No one can photograph a movie quite like Jack Cardiff, and his and the Archers’ creative juices just melded so perfectly. In the following decade Powell would start making his own movies again for the first time since he and Pressburger were partnered in the 1930s. They’d continue working together until 1972, but perhaps they knew they’d hit their peak by the end of the 1940s.

A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, and The Red Shoes are marvels of early technicolour filmmaking and extraordinary stories well ahead of their time. Critics, filmmakers, and enthusiasts are right to acclaim them, they really are top tier cinema. But in that declarative they are still accessible, thrilling, compelling movies apart from the higher echelons of artistic merit. They have so much to teach and inspire, but also to simply entertain. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, and Jack Cardiff were visionaries of a singular kind, their trilogy together is a show of this. And chances are your favourite movie owes something to them, so pay them their due. 

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