Here are a pair of very rare posters for Powell/Pressburger classics.
This directing/producing team produced many beloved British movies in the 40s/50s, including A Matter Of Life And Death and Black Narcissus. Now, I first have to admit that I have seen neither The Red Shoes nor Tales Of Hoffmann, movies set in the worlds of ballet and opera respectively.
I also freely admit I bought both these posters with a view to flipping them. The terrific poster for The Red Shoes is a very rare and valuable ‘grande’ from the original 1948 French release; the Tales of Hoffmann poster is Belgian. The former will go up for auction in the UK later this year, the latter is for sale here.
Moira Shearer, who stars in The Red Shoes, crops up again, as a murder victim, in Powell’s hugely divisive 1960 serial killer tale Peeping Tom, a movie which effectively ended his career, given the revulsion with which it was received by many critics. Peeping Tom has of course since been reappraised rightly as a classic. In fact, it was the first film featured on my Film Studies course at The University of East Anglia. It has so many fascinating motifs in it that act as an allegory for cinema itself and the act of movie-watching
Around this time, I actually met Michael Powell – albeit very briefly. For reasons I don’t quite remember, my professor invited me to a screening of The Spy In Black, one of his very early films in London, for which the great director was in attendance (along with the movie’s star, actress Valerie Hobson. She was the original Bride of Frankenstein – the baron, not the monster – trivia fans).
He was sitting near me, and at the end of the movie I turned and asked him some inane question about the film we had just seen, to which his reply was “No, why?” That was pretty much the limit of our conversation, but I am glad I got to at least be in the presence of this legendary film-maker for a few moments!
UPDATE: I recently also picked up the above very charming Belgian poster for The Red Shoes. This very rare poster is from the first release c.1948. It can be found for sale here.