Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.
This week, Alan’s series of posts about all the winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture since the very beginning continued with The Broadway Melody (1929). No trailer, once again, but here’s the actual film in its full length – enjoy!
We’ve been talking about it for years, and now it’s finally happening: we are dedicating an episode of our Damn Fine podcast to the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger – with a special slant. In our May episode, Matt and Alan look at three of the duo’s films that arguably were all made to be propaganda: 49th Parallel (1941), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) and A Canterbury Tale (1944) were all made during the Second World War, and they all have a purpose and elements that can be described as propagandistic: to persuade the audience, at a time of national crisis, of a certain mindset or course of action. And at the same time, these films very much bear the hallmarks of Powell and Pressburger’s work: they are whimsical, inventive, humorous, earnest, and cinematically adventurous, playing with the audience’s expectations. (For instance: who would expect a precursor of 2001‘s famous time jump from prehistoric times to the Space Age in a whimsical tale set in rural Kent?) Join our baristas as they discuss what makes propaganda, and how Powell and Pressburger – a born Brit and an immigrant who made England his chosen home – put their own spin on the format.
P.S.: For listeners interested in the topic of cinema and propaganda, check out our episode from last year’s summer series on propaganda feature films from the Third Reich: Lost Summer – Films from the Poison Cabinet.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 