Film / News
Bristol goes Technicolor for December
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made 24 films together between 1939 and 1972, becoming renowned for their creative use of Technicolor in such screen masterpieces as The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus and A Matter of Life and Death.
Now the BFI is marking the 75th anniversary of the release of The Red Shoes with a nationwide celebration of the duo’s partnership. Locally, programmers are exploring their use of the Technicolor process, alongside their favourite cinematographer, Jack Cardiff, and widening the focus to incorporate work by other directors. Among those taking part are the Watershed, Clevedon’s historic Curzon cinema and South West Silents.
The Watershed opens its Color by Technicolor season on December 1 with a screening of A Matter of Life and Death, followed by what’s billed as an “expanded Technicolor takeover of the Café & Bar, with live projections from DJ Cheeba”. Other films in the season include Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Dec 3-4), Fred Astaire musical The Band Wagon (Dec 5), Hitchcock’s Vertigo (Dec 6-7), Dario Argento’s Suspiria (Dec 8-9), featuring Italian prog-rockers Goblin’s magnificent score, Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (Dec 10-11), Visconti’s great epic The Leopard (Dec 12), the new restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mepris (Dec 13-14), a new 35mm print of The Red Shoes with an intro by Pamela Hutchinson, author of a recent BFI book on the film, (Dec 15-18) and the enjoyable Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn romp Charade (Dec 19).
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Over at the Curzon, they’re staging an ‘immersive screening’ of Powell and Pressburger’s Oscar nominated comic opera The Tales of Hoffman (Dec 8) with singers, dancers, a period fashion advisor, and a dress-up competition all included in the ticket price.
Bernard Lee and Peter Finch in The Battle of the River Plate. Pic: Park Circus/ITV
In recognition of Jack Cardiff’s early work in silent film, South West Silents has a double-bill of Technicolor wartime-set ‘talkies’ at the former IMAX cinema on Dec 10: Powell and Pressburger’s The Battle of the River Plate and the 1944 documentary Western Approaches, which was shot in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff. The Battle of the River Plate will be introduced by Antiques Roadshow militaria expert Mark Smith, while Western Approaches has an introduction by Dr Toby Haggith of the Imperial War Museum.
Bristol and Weston-super-Mare educated Deborah Kerr in Black Narcissus. Pic: ITV Studios/Park Circus
The final Bristol highlight is a site-specific screening of Powell & Pressburger’s Oscar winning erotic nun melodrama Black Narcissus in the converted city centre church The Mount Without on Dec 20. Go here for tickets.
Main pic: Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes. Restoration credit: UCLA Film & Television Archive in association with the BFI, The Film Foundation, ITV Global Entertainment/Park Circus
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