lodge COHGQG tage belongs to Mrs Bunn, of Dickens Avenue, Can- herbury. It is almost certainly the lodge house to Boume Park, at Bishops- »_bourne, which has recently been sold. But the pattern was a familiar one in the area, and there are several others around, including one at'Selling, which is the lodge house to_I4ees Court. do ‘ a " et,as -puttinginthefenceposts. The thatch looks new too, ‘the picture‘. i I THE TIMES ‘WEDNESDAY FEBRQAEY-21 1990 OBITUARIES MICHAEL POWELL Flamboyant film maker of idiosyncratic brilliance ‘ tsp? fiéqfa Michael Powell, one of Britain’s most 190,, talented and original film makers, xofi, died on February 19, at the age of 84. 3,5, For much of his career he tended to «S; be dismissed as a brilliant, if perverse, pqgtechnician but a revaluation of his ___work over the last 15 years has ,1 .selevated_him to the ranks of _the major ‘mp film artists. Though they _include a ‘£1 Nnumber of exuavagant failures, his 3} S films bear an individual stamp that is 9 ‘rare in the British cinema. .1112 Siry"".,l_1e made his last film back in 3' ,the .. ls, Powell’s reputation has 13;‘ steadily grown. He became an inspira- ,4“;‘ tion for the American “movie brat” gm‘ directors, particularly Francis Ford ad; Coppola and Martin Scorsese, and )d9' retrospectives of his work on both 9;, sides of _the _Atlantic have attracted at, wide critical interest. in Powell was a natural maverick. mi Instead of adapting successful books 9.1 and plays, he preferred to find his own )lq subjects. Against the carefully crafted in; film making of his contemporaries, 3 Reed, Dean and Asquith, Powell's tn work was often experimental and l( flamboyant. For realism be sub- u; stituted expressionism and fantasy 3]. and in a Britain constmcting its q; welfare state he preached the Tory values of tradition and individual ,-.9 decision. 3. His reputation for technical flair was well founded. He used Techni- ‘. color to great effect, notably in his .! agile‘, at... mi... 13...: 01...... u- Beecham, Robert Helpmann and Léonide Massine, and starred another Powell red-head, Moira Shearer. -» Typically, perhaps,.Powell followed it with a complete contrast, a taut, black and white thriller, The Small Back Room, from Nigel Balchin’s novel. Two American co-productions, Gone to Earth and The Elusive Pimpernel, proved to be unhappy experiences for Powell but Gone to Earth gained new admirers when shown in its original print and an uncut version. In 1951 Powell reunited many of the team from The Red Shoes for another colourful spectacular, The Tales of Hoflman. The attempt to transpose Johann Strauss’s opera, Die Fledermaus, to the Vienna of the 1950s as Oh Rosalinda! was less successful and the two war films that followed, The Battle ofthe River Plate and Ill Met by Moonlight, were, by Powell’s standards, conventional. At this point, the Powell- Pressburger partnership was amicably dissolved (though the two came together again in l972 to make The Boy Who Turned Yellow for the Children’s Film Foundation). Hence- forth, Powell found films increasingly difiicult to set up — for years he tried unsuccessfully to mount a cinema ,;—‘-';...-...- ,.\ .~-.-__.....,_...,____ _ _ __ _ _A . _~__;44\.x.... 4... .--,_ . —.-.4.—< ¢_z'-\ ¢4-as ‘A. version of The Tempest — and he 4 M worked mainly abroad, par_t_icularlyAustralia where, in the 5 bal - J al ns Jed colour and black and white r., ; . ‘éiiiriri a?{'Bi1‘r'aii}T'c’i5ns‘iFu"crir":'gf'"i't’s welfare state he preached the Tory values of tradition and individual : /_' decision. 1. .4 His reputation for technical flair was well founded. He used Techni- color to great effect, notably in his . film, The Red Shoes. He 3' witmn the same film, A Matter of Life ’ and Death, and made another picture, i One of Our Aircraft is Missing, without background music. Brilliant A‘ individual touches include a shot '1 from within David Niven’s eyeballs in 1 A Matter of Life and Death and the V alcoholic hero of The Small Back ' Room struggling with a giant whisky I bottle. . Inevitably, perhaps, his films at- tracted controversy. He was criticized for lapses of‘ taste, as in the war-time picture, A Canterbury Tale, where a - JPpours glue over girls’ headsinthe ; blackout, and a much later film, ‘ Peeping Tom, which was widely .r condemned on its initial release for . exploiting sado-masochism. He fell foul of the politicians as well. The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, tried to suppress The Lifia and Death ‘ of Colonel Blimp for what he regarded as a _too defeatist a view of the British soldier and Laurence 0llVlel' was 1 ‘refused leave from the forces to play the leading role. Powell made most of his important ; films in collaboration with an emigné Hungarian, Emeric Pressburger. In .1942 they formed their own produc- tion company, The,4Ar.ch.érs, and the sight of the arrow thudding into its target became as familiar as 1. Arthur * ?"~Ranl’c’s' gong. ‘they took-joint credits, Powell was essentially the director and Pnessburger the writer. A Powell also worked regularly with the designers, Junge. and Hein Heckroth, camerrnen Jack Cardiff and Christopher Challis, composer Brian Easdale and actors like Roger Livesay, Anton Walbrook and Marius Goring. Powell was born at Bekesboume, near Canterbury, on September 30, 1905 and educated at the King’s School in that city and at Dulwich College. At the age of I7 he left school to join the National Provincial Bank but he had decided that his career lay in the cinema and in 1925 he went to Nice to work for Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer and the Irish-bom director, Rex Ingram. Three years later he moved to Elstree studios and worked on three Hitchcock films, helping with the script of the first British talkie, Blackmail. He made his debut as a director in 1931 and for some years cut his teeth on low-budget “quota quickies.” In 1937 he went to Foula in the Shetlands to realize a long cherished project, The Edge of the t World; it was his first personal film and it attracted the attention of Alexander Korda, who offered Powell a contract. Soon afterwards he met Pressburger and they began their partnership on a gfnrlgd Veidt vehicle,_-The Spy in ac . . . _ . A‘ 1. mnularwitume . 'Bagdad,.;and—thennmad from an original“Pn.e'$sbutger-nsubject about a group of Nazis on the run in wartime Canada, and One. of Our Aircraft is Missing, \,‘ilhich' followed ,...on.,. L .e. “Thj, 50f . the fortunes of British airmen forced to bale out over occupied Holland. The Powell-Pressburger partnership was cemented by the formation of The Archers, which ushered in Powell’s most creative period. The first Archers productions was The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a long, episodic and perceptive look at English (and German) national character suggested by the David Low cartoon character. Deborah Kerr, who played three parts, established Pow- ell’s fondness for red-haired leading ladies. A Canterbury Tale, glueman notwithstanding, was a celebration of English landscape and traditional values, while I Know Where I ‘m Going, filmed mainly on location in the Western Isles, drew on Gaelic legend in telling how a young woman (Wendy Hiller) forsakes a rich indus- trialist for the love of an impecunious laird. A Matter of Life and Death, one of the most ambitious Powell-Press- burger films, is set both in heaven and on earth, with a giant escalator connecting the two, and is based on the-hallucinations of a wounded:RAF pilot. Rising to the technical challenge of recreating the southern Himalayas in the studio for a melodrama about ' nuns, Black Narcissus -. Jack Cardiffs colour photography won; him , an . 95%,’ --"1?ri..~v..t.=11':~.,w,;,.;t¢ , ‘on site » m,ake:.. r iproba l hrsb1g‘gest)com?mercial'siic- N cess,,. T e Red Shoes. ,V~isua,lly_s,tun-' ningpit contained a complete ballet, Tenga‘ged,such "talents as Sir Thomas .....u. . .,,,..‘.c....;.w ...,.v...4 r.;.,. . ..,,,..» r, oscarfor her work,o'n Raging}? ‘' ;-. ..,....v u a...-......«=.....4.-r...¢....--.-.1...“ am...» ,..}..,',.»....J..-.»..t. ' " Z:ii’i1dr'é:i‘§ Fi1:"ii'i=ounda:i'o'i:). Hence- jp forth, Powell found films increasingly r ‘ difficult to set up - for years he tried unsuccessfully to mount a cinema version of The Tempest - and he : worked mainly - ‘abroad, particularlyAustralia where, in the 1960s, he made his last two two features, They're a Weird Mob and- Age of Consent. Of his later films, Peeping Tom (1960) stands out. The story of a V mentally disturbed photographer who M murders women and meticulously 1 films their death throes caused out- rage at the time, though subsequent reassessments have put it among ‘ Powell’s richest works. The young man's sadistic father was played by ‘ Powell himself‘. Despite his sporadic output in later A years, Powell's enthusiasm for the cinema remained undimmed. At the t‘: age of 75 he became artistic adviser -to_ Francis Ford Coppola’s studio in . Hollywood, though to general regret _ he was unable to get back behind the * cameras. In 'l9.8-3 he went to Moscow ' to supervise the production of an H Anglo-Soviet fihn on the life of the I dancer, Anna*Pavlova. During his final years, while en"oy- V A ing the adulation of young m- - makers and critics, Powell’s major. project was his autobiography, A Life in Movies. The first volume, a sprawling 700-page tome covering “- only halfhis life, appeared in 19.86. He“; . had just completed work on a sccondi f’ V volume. V ' ‘ Listing his recreation» in Whoig. ‘ >1}. ‘-marr‘ied,-~i‘n .1943, as «Frances nag .‘,and.-h7ad.twotsons. Hisiwife died 1.983 I and_v!