How Alfred Hitchcock influenced the career of Michael Powell
The ambitious and accomplished partnership between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger has inspired many modern filmmakers, most notably, Martin Scorsese, who cites several of their films as some of the finest pieces of cinema on offer. Certainly, out of all the British films that emerged during the middle of the 20th century, theirs were a cut above.
Both filmmakers were working independently in the industry until they met in 1939 through the producer Alexander Korda. They collaborated on The Spy in Black, which led to many other movies co-directed by the pair. To assist their projects, Powell and Pressburger formed Archers Film Productions, which supported films like The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I Know Where I’m Going!, and A Matter of Life and Death.
As their careers progressed, they found significant acclaim with movies like The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, and The Tales of Hoffman. They made their final Archers production in 1957 with Ill Met By Moonlight, only reuniting for two more movies in the ‘70s. In the meantime, the filmmakers pursued solo directorial endeavours, which led to Powell shocking audiences with his 1960 horror film Peeping Tom.
The film is incredibly Hitchcockian, and you’d be forgiven in thinking that it took inspiration from Psycho, with its themes of voyeurism and its focus on a man who kills women. Yet, it arrived a few months before Alfred Hitchcock’s classic horror. Evidently, Powell and Hitchcock had similar interests when it came to the themes they chose to explore, namely obsession.
Peeping Tom is bold, with its point-of-view shots from the killer’s perspective – a meek focus puller who murders women in his spare time. The movie destroyed Powell’s career due to its explicit and brutal nature, yet, if Hitchcock had made Peeping Tom, it’s highly unlikely it would have shared the same fate.
The reason for Peeping Tom’s Hitchcockian essence is perhaps down to the fact that Powell was significantly inspired by the Psycho filmmaker, who he worked with during the early years of his career and considered a friend. Powell had begun his career working with the filmmaker Rex Ingram, even acting a small part in his silent film The Magician. Following his early years in the film industry, Powell started working as a stills photographer, where he met Hitchcock. He was employed to do the job on several of his films, such as Blackmail.
By spending time on Hitchcock’s sets, Powell was able to study his incredible cinematic ideas and ways of working, taking them with him as he set off for a directorial career of his own. Powell’s interests naturally aligned with the work that Hitchcock was making, and it’s not surprising that when the former had a go at making a proper horror film, it just so happened to explore similar themes to those explored in Hitchcock’s daring take on the genre.
Yet, it wasn’t just Powell being inspired by Hitchcock. It’s clear from many of Hitchcock’s later films that he was inspired by Powell, too. Look at the gorgeous colours used in The Red Shoes, a dazzling tale of obsession, and you’ll find it hard to argue against its influence over Hitchcock’s Vertigo, a Technicolour movie about – you guessed it – obsession.
Both filmmakers came from similar backgrounds, each working their way to the top through the silent era and subsequently making psychological, thrilling, and dramatic films about the human condition. They dissected the ways that we become obsessed with other people, surveying their lives and private habits. They were both interested in violence and the differences and similarities between men and women and subsequently, parallels can be drawn between their cinematic worlds.
