emeric pressburger

Criterion Corner: I Know Where I’m Going! (#94)

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I’ve by no means seen all, or even most, of the films that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made together (mostly under the moniker of “The Archers”, the name of their production company), but I like, even love, the ones I’ve seen. I wrote about their wonderful A Matter of Life and Death earlier this year, and I’d consider The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp one of my favourite films.

Late last year, the BFI ran a series of Powell and Pressburger films, which sadly I missed, living in the wrong country altogether (for BFI series, that is) – but it made me aware of their 1945 romance I Know Where I’m Going!, which was released on the Criterion Collection as one of their very earliest films: it’s the 94th release in the series, which by now contains more than 1200 titles. More than just being another Criterion release from a pair of filmmakers whose work I’ve liked a lot in the past, I Know Where I’m Going! is set in the Hebrides, so as a fan of Criterion, the Archers and Scotland, I didn’t have to think long and hard about getting the disk.

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Criterion Corner: A Matter of Life and Death (#939)

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Of all the tropes in romantic stories that I’m not a big fan of, two people falling instantly in love is probably the most common. I can buy immediate attraction, especially of a sexual kind, and I am also okay with an almost instant sense of sympathy, a sort of mutual resonance that develops into something further – but when we’re supposed to believe in love at first sight, that there is deep, abiding love between two people the moment they meet, I roll my eyes, and they keep rolling if this instant romantic attachment is given a significance that is practically metaphysical. I am no fan of the notion in romances that someone is ‘the one’, that destiny has preordained certain couplings. In fact, I don’t find the idea particularly romantic to begin with.

There is perhaps one film where I buy into such almost instant love, and not just begrudgingly but entirely, 100%. That film is Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s wonderful A Matter of Life and Death (1946).

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The Rear-View Mirror: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

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Each Friday we travel back in time, one year at a time, for a look at some of the cultural goodies that may appear closer than they really are in The Rear-View Mirror. Join us on our weekly journey into the past!

My mother was an emigrant from England. Since both my parents were from countries other than the one where I was born and where I’ve always lived, I always felt to some extent that wherever I was from, it was elsewhere – and if pressed on the matter, I would have said that I felt a connection to England and to the UK that I didn’t feel to the place my father came from. However, over the last few years I’ve very much had both an opportunity and a reason to re-examine my feelings towards the UK. Probably it started before then, but ever since the summer of 2016 it’s been impossible to avoid the escalating conversation/shouting match/toxic circle-jerk that, at its core, seems to be about identity: what does it mean to be British? What does the UK want to be? What does it want to represent in the world? Does it want to look forward or backward, outward or inward?

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