Reginald Mills - Ten Years With Powell and Pressburger

Ten Years With Powell and Pressburger

After the war he began a fruitful association with the film-making partnership called "The Archers", which was led by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. His first credit was for A Matter of Life and Death (1946), followed by Black Narcissus (1947). Mills received an Academy Award nomination in 1948 for his work on the Archers' ballet masterpiece, The Red Shoes. A 2010 appreciation of the film by Peter Canavese notes Mills' contributions, "The still astonishing expressionistic dance sequence that stands as a performance of the Ballet Lermontov's The Red Shoes ... is rapturous, as a feast of theatrical lighting and Technicolor photography (shot by the brilliant cinematographer Jack Cardiff), the choreography of Robert Helpmann, the music of Brian Easdale and the montage of editor Reginald Mills." Implicitly acknowledging its editing, Michael Sragow wrote in 2011, "Yes, The Red Shoes is ecstatic entertainment. ... But is it realistic? Only in the manner of an Expressionist painting. Powell and Pressburger create a stylized, intoxicating environment that fuses art and life and dance and cinema." The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) also incorporated ballet in its adaptation of the original Offenbach opera, and André Bazin wrote at the time, "The cinema thus creates here a new artistic monster: the best legs adorned by the best voice. Not only is opera liberated from its material constraints but also from its human limitations. Lastly, dance itself is renewed by the photography and the editing, which allows a kind of choreography of the second degree where the rhythm of the dance is served by that of the cinema."

One of Mills' assistant editors in this period was Anne V. Coates, who became an eminent editor herself. The Battle of the River Plate (1956) was Mills' last film with Powell and Pressburger, whose partnership broke up shortly thereafter. Mills had edited twelve films for The Archers.

Read more about this topic:  Reginald Mills

Famous quotes containing the words ten, years, powell and/or pressburger:

    I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name,—if ten honest men only,—ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    So cruel prison how could betide, alas,
    As proud Windsor, Where I in lust and joy
    With a king’s son my childish years did pass
    In greater feast than Priam’s sons of Troy?
    Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour;
    Henry Howard, Earl Of Surrey (1517?–1547)

    Growing old’s like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.
    —Anthony Powell (b. 1905)

    My father fight against you last time. We give you one good licking then and we do it again.
    —Emeric Pressburger (1902–1988)