Michael Powell

In 2014 an English Heritage Blue Plaque was erected to commemorate Powell and Emeric Pressburger at their old offices in London. The plaque was unveiled by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker.

In 2002 the Donostia-San Sebastián film festival included a retrospective showing 43 films by Powell. This was the largest number of his films that has ever been seen in one place--so far.

In 1987 he was awarded Hon Doctorate, Royal College of Arts.

In 1983 he was made Fellow of the British Film Institute (BFI).

He was Senior Director in Residence at Coppola's Zoetrope Studios in 1981, and in fact married Scorsese's longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker.

In 1980 he lectured at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.

In 1978 he was awarded Hon DLitt, University of East Anglia.

Although he was still married to Frankie Reidy, he lived for some years with Pamela Brown until her death in 1975.

Kevin Gough-Yates pioneered the recovery of Powell's and Emeric Pressburger's reputations in Europe. He organized the first major retrospective of their works in 1970 at the National Film Theatre in London and published the seminal interview "Michael Powell in Collaboration with Emeric Pressburger". In 1973 Gough-Yates organized the Europalia exhibition at the Royal Film Archive, Belgium, and featured the Powell/Pressburger films as its main focus. Another important interview with Powell was again published. Subsequently he was the main catalyst in getting the films known throughout Europe.

Powell went on to make the controversial Peeping Tom (1960), a film so vilified by critics and officials alike that he didn't work in England for a very long time.

He was "re-discovered" in the late 1960s and Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese tried to set up joint projects with him.

When he was in Crete to prepare the set of Night Ambush (1957) he wore a kilt. Seeing that, the inhabitants of the island thought he was "a Scottish general asking odd questions about partisans".

Between them, under the banner of "The Archers", they shared joint credits for an important series of films through the 1940s and '50s.

He directed Esmond Knight in eight films: Someday (1935), Blackout (1940), A Canterbury Tale (1944), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), Gone to Earth (1950), Peeping Tom (1960) and The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972). He co-directed A Canterbury Tale (1944), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), Gone to Earth (1950) with Emeric Pressburger.

In 1925 he joined Rex Ingram making Mare Nostrum (1926). He learned his craft by working at various jobs in the (then) thriving English studios of Denham and Pinewood, working his way up to director on a series of "quota quickies" (short films made to fulfill quota/tariff agreements between Britain and America in between the wars). Very rarely for the times, he had a true "world view" and, although in the mold of a classic English "gentleman", he was always a citizen of the world. It was therefore very fitting that he should team up with an émigré Hungarian Jew, Emeric Pressburger, who understood the English better than they did themselves.

Has been quoted as saying that A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923) had a very critical impact on his career.

The son of Thomas William Powell and Mabel (nee Corbett). Michael Powell was always a self-confessed movie addict. He was brought up partly in Canterbury ("The Garden of England") and partly in the south of France (where his parents ran a hotel). Educated at Kings School, Canterbury and Dulwich College, he worked at the National Provincial Bank from 1922-25.