• A Matter of Life and Death (1946) When there is a mix up in heaven a British wartime aviator must argue for his life before a celestial court.
• Black Narcissus (1947) Five Anglican nuns attempt to establish a Himalayan religious community while facing isolation and innermost temptations.
• The Red Shoes (1948) Victoria Page, poised for superstardom, earns an impresario's scorn when she falls in love with the ballet's composer. Directed by Michael Powell.

"I live cinema, I chose the cinema when I was very young, sixteen years old, and from then on my memories virtually coincide with the history of the cinema. […] I’m not a director with a personal style, I am simply cinema. I have grown up with and through the cinema; […] insofar as I’m interested in images, in books, in music, it’s all due to the cinema."Michael Powell.

Online Reading: The following is suggest as background reading material related to the directors being discussed.

• Michael Powell by Bruce Eder. Overview of the director's life, films directed, and his work with Emeric Pressburger.
• Emeric Pressburger by Bruce Eder. The screenwriter half of the Powell/Pressburger team in association with Michael Powell.
• The Director as Peeping Tom: A Matter of Life, Death and Cinema by Adrian Danks. The work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Learning Outcomes: This seminar will provide participants with an overview of the contribution Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made to post-war filmmaking in England.

Instructors Comments:

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were a  writing/producing/ directing team who may have been the only major precursors to the Coen Brothers.  They worked together from 1939 until 1957, but their golden age was the 1940's.

They fell out of favor in the late 50's, and only now when great filmmakers, like Martin Scorsese, who acknowledge their influence on their own work, have begun speaking out, have the Archers reclaimed their position in the history of twentieth century cinema.  They were always outsiders in the British film industry.  Their skill and style and quality were always exemplary, but the critics of the forties found fault with their "tastelessness,"  their melodramatic excesses, their overt sentimentality.  Powell believed that British critics cared for nothing but "realism,"  and it looks like he was right.

The Powell and Pressburger "movies" were glorious expressions of fantasy, sometimes in theme, but always in presentation. Personally, one of the indelible images of my childhood came from viewing "The Red Shoes" in 1949 when Moira Shearer walks up that tall, moss-covered staircase.  I wasn't interested in ballet, but I was enthralled by the color and lighting and the shear artistry in the frame.

Retrospective reevaluations now find these films remarkable.  I like to point out that they were masters of romance in all of its forms and implications, and  I'd like to explore that idea in the discussions following the screenings.

Thomas Blank - March 27, 2008

About The Instructor:

Thomas Blank was an Equity actor in Chicago in 1961 before going into the Navy for six years.  His last job in the service was as a public affairs officer in the Hollywood office where he provided Navy cooperation to film and television projects with Navy backgrounds. He was in that office from the premiere of "In Harm's Way" until the preliminary scouting for "Tora, Tora, Tora."  His favorite duty was teaching Elvis Presley to salute on "Easy Come, Easy Go." 

Leaving the Navy, he stayed in Hollywood and worked as a story analyst for Columbia Pictures, before entering the Directors Guild-Producer Training Plan, and eventual Directors Guild membership.

Blank worked on various projects at Warner Brothers and Universal as an assistant director (working occasionally but briefly with Dick Donner, George Seaton, Robert Wise, Elia Kazan, and Alfred Hitchcock) until he started to receive directing assignments of his own. He directed second units for "Switch" and "Quincy" before getting his first show on the air on "Bionic Woman."  

He remained on a seven-year contract with Universal studios and directed several "Airwolf" episodes and TV series, like "Harris and Company" and "The American Girls" as well as an ABC After School Special.  

His directing after that was for Alan Landsburg Productions on syndicated, half-hour dramas for "True Confessions." 

Thomas Blank's television production resume goes back to "The FBI" with Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and includes: "The Name of the Game"; "The Sixth Sense"; "The Bold Ones"; "The Hulk"; "The Misfits of Science"; and several movies of the week, as well as the aforementioned "Bionic Woman"; "Ironside"; "and "Switch."  

Feature films include: "One More Train to Rob"; "Showdown"; "The Don is Dead"; "The Phynx" (never released); "The Stepfather III", and "High Roller." 

As a member of the Directors Guild, Blank headed the committees on runaway production and age discrimination.  

While in semi-retirement (working on a cable series called "Resurrection Boulevard") he went back to graduate school and got a Masters Degree in screenwriting from California State University in Los Angeles.  

Thomas Blank, now retired and living in Eugene, currently is the instructor for the DIVA Film Director Seminar Series and teaches screen writing at the series. He is on the boards of directors for the Boys and Girls Club of Emerald Valley and is a Media Arts Committee liaison with the DIVA Board.     

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