Tag Archives: Emeric Pressburger

Stairway to Heaven (1946) Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, David Niven, Kim Hunter, Robert Coote, Drama, Fantasy, Comedy

stairway-to-heaven-1946
Returning to England from a bombing run in May 1945, flyer Peter Carter’s plane is damaged and his parachute ripped to shreds. He has his crew bail out safely, but figures it is curtains for himself. He gets on the radio, and talks to June, a young American woman working for the USAAF, and they are quite moved by each other’s voices. Then he jumps, preferring this to burning up with his plane. He wakes up in the surf. It was his time to die, but there was a mixup in heaven. They couldn’t find him in all that fog. By the time his “Conductor” catches up with him 20 hours later, Peter and June have met and fallen in love. This changes everything, and since it happened through no fault of his own, Peter figures that heaven owes him a second chance. Heaven agrees to a trial to decide his fate.
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Black Narcissus (1947) Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Flora Robson, Drama

Black Narcissus (1947)
This explosive work about the conflict between the spirit and the flesh is the epitome of the sensuous style of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. A group of nuns – played by some of Britain’s finest actresses, including Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, and Flora Robson – struggle to establish a convent in the Himalayas, while isolation, extreme weather, altitude, and culture clashes all conspire to drive the well-intentioned missionaries mad. A darkly grand film that won Oscars for Alfred Junge’s art direction and Jack Cardiff’s cinematography , Black Narcissus is one of the greatest achievements by two of cinema’s true visionaries.
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