This impressive import collection of ‘Archers’ pictures is just one classic after another, including three of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Technicolor masterpieces. The boxed set also carries good extras, new input from experts plus a selection of the best existing documentaries on P&P. Plus, a couple of the transfers are big improvements on older discs: The Spy in Black, 49th Parallel, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Canterbury Tale, A Matter of Life and Death and Black Narcissus.

The Cinema of Powell & Pressburger Collection One
The Spy in Black, 49th Parallel, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Canterbury Tale, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus
Blu-ray
Viavision [Imprint]
1939 / Color & B&W / 1:37 Academy / 11 hours 38 min. / 7 discs / Street Date August 27, 2025 / Available from [Imprint] / 229.95
Starring: Conrad Veidt, Valerie Hobson; Leslie Howard, Lawrence Olivier, Raymond Massey; Roger Livesey, Anton Walbrook, Deborah Kerr; Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Dennis Price; David Niven, Roger Livesey, Kim Hunter; Deborah Kerr, Sabu, David Farrar, Flora Robson, Kathleen Byron, Jean Simmons.
Mostly Produced, Written and Directed by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

We’ve always been fascinated by the films of ‘The Archers’ Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, even if we weren’t clued to their existence as early as was Martin Scorsese, watching B&W TV broadcasts of  Tales of Hoffman back in New York of the 1950s. Our first blast of Powell genius was actually a collector’s print of  Peeping Tom that provided a bizarre thrill at UCLA around 1974 — thanks, Douglas Haise, for making that available!

We saw good Criterion laserdiscs of some Archers titles, some funky VHS tapes of other P&P classics, and were able to appreciate the Technicolor beauties of Jack Cardiff’s Technicolor camerawork when titles like  The Red Shoes graduated to Blu-ray. Now they’re beginning to arrive on 4K Ultra HD. The latest good news is that the Archers’ sublime romantic classic  I Know Where I’m Going!, long available in a fairly weak DVD, will be making the jump to restored 4K before Christmas.

The import disc set The Cinema of Powell & Pressburger Collection One contains 6 full-on Archers masterpieces. We’ve reviewed all but the first, so will be linking to those original reviews. Collectors likely to go for this boxed set don’t need to be sold on the films’ quality, so we’ll keep our notes short and go straight to a look at the transfers and the extras.

The Spy in Black
1939 / B&W / 82 77 min. / U-Boat 29
Starring: Conrad Veidt, Sebastian Shaw, Valerie Hobson, Marius Goring, June Duprez, Hay Petrie, Torin Thatcher, Skelton Knaggs, Bernard Miles, Graham Stark.
Cinematography: Bernard Browne
Production Designer: Vincent Korda
Art Director: Frederick Pusey
Film Editors: William Hornbeck, Hugh Stewart
Composer: Miklós Roózsa
Screenplay by Emeric Pressburger story and scenario J. Storer Clouston, Roland Pertwee
Executive Producer: Alexander Korday
Produced by Irving Asher
Directed by Michael Powell

First-time review at DVD Savant / CineSavant.

Alexander Korda put Powell and Pressburger together for this thrilling spy story, and the two remained partners for 18 years. The complex, twisting tale is actually set during World War One, with German star Conrad Veidt playing a German naval officer. His mission is to secure intelligence that will allow Germany to sink the entire British fleet near their anchorage in the Orkney Islands.

Released early in 1939, The Spy in Black makes Veidt’s charming naval officer Captain Hardt into the sympathetic hero, a loyal officer simply trying to do his duty. Only slowly does he suspect that his partners in espionage, Miss Thiel (Valerie Hobson) and Ashington (Sebastian Shaw) may be double agents. Thiel has taken the place of the schoolteacher Burnett (June Duprez), who has been plunged off a cliff. When Burnett’s fiancé shows up counter to plan, they have to imprison him..

The plotting is as sophisticated as any later spy tale, and the thrills are as effective as the English films of Alfred Hitchcock. The settings include a rocky, fogbound school house, a German hotel under harsh rationing, a German submarine and other vessels of both navies. The tone is suspenseful high adventure with an ironic attitude: spycraft is a ruthless business but also a tricky game, where we admire the crafty villains as much as the loyal patriots. When it came to patriotism, the Archers never took a straighforward God Is On Our Side attitude.

The P&P partnership continued with Contraband, a present-day thriller with Conrad Veidt as a Danish captain rooting out spies in a fogbound London; they then made the big success  One of Our Aircraft is Missing, shoring up the anti-Nazi camaraderie with Holland. An interesting, not-easy-to-see film is 1943’s  The Silver Fleet, which they wrote and produced but left to Vernon Sewell to direct. Pressburger was not happy that he had to soft-pedal his script, so as not to antagonize the German occupiers of Holland.

We never reviewed The Spy in Black because we’ve never seen a good disc — there is apparently a Region B Blu-ray we haven’t seen. Most of the features in this collection are described as being ‘1080P high-definition presentations from a restored transfer.’ This first show looks better than we’ve ever seen it, even on TCM; it is slightly contrasty but vivid and handsome at all times, plus very clean and stable. The good English subs are something new as well — watching it now, I’m picking up on many new details.

Most of the extras for these shows are new, produced in 2025. The overall take on this show is handled by Kim Newman and Jo Botting’s commentary. Ian Christie’s Celluloid Miracle featurette outlines the early career of Powell & Pressburger, and Charles Barr’s A Dazzling Start focuses on the first full collaboration between the filmmakers who would soon call themselves ‘The Archers.’

49th Parallel
1941 / B&W / 122 107 min. / The Invaders
Starring: Eric Portman, Anton Walbrook, Leslie Howard, Raymond Massey, Laurence Olivier, Glynis Johns, Niall MacGinnis, Finlay Currie.
Cinematography: Frederick Young
Art Director: David Rawnsley
Film Editor: David Lean
Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams
Written by Emeric Pressburger, Rodney Ackland
Produced by Michael Powell, John Sutro
Directed by Michael Powell

Previously Reviewed at DVD Savant / CineSavant; the link is to a more elaborate review of an older DVD from 2007.

Morale-building Hollywood war thrillers were often spy chases in which intrepid Yanks outfox foolish German Gestapo agents and escape back to Allied territory. 49th Parallel is again more complex. P&P’s central characters are a group of German commandos. They land their spy submarine in Hudson’s Bay to spread terror, find themselves stranded, and proceed South to reach the ‘neutral’ United States.

The picture is finely-tuned propaganda to demonstrate for Americans and Canadians the necessity of opposing the Germans in every way. Eric Portman’s sub commander murders his way South, working his way through various star cameos (Laurence Oliver, Leslie Howard, Raymond Massey) and killing his own men that doubt the mission. The most impressive episode is in a German-Canadian Hutterite community, with strong performances from Anton Walbrook, Niall MacGinnis and a young Glynis Johns. The Canadian Mounties and a showdown at Niagara Falls wrap up the picture in patriotic style. The 49th Parallel is of course the latitude of the border between Canada and the U.S., which in 1941 was respected by both sides. We were once warm nation-neighbors.

The filmmaking is excellent, what with Freddy Young behind the camera and David Lean editing. Much of the movie was made on location in Canada. It’s straightforward wartime message was something that P&P wanted very much to get away from.

The fine transfer on view for 49th Parallel bests the old Criterion DVD. Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons tackle the overall audio commentary, while Ian Christie takes on the patriotic filmmaking mission in Call to Arms — what kind of movies did England need when it was under siege?  U.S. critic and author Jeremy Arnold’s piece, entitled Statecraft and Stagecraft, examines P&P’s approach to making morale-building pictures, that would also be entertaining and artful.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
1943 / Color / 164 and 116 min. /
Starring: Anton Walbrook, Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr, Roland Culver, James McKechnie, Valentine Dyall, John Laurie, Reginald Tate.
Cinematography: Georges Périnal
Technicolor cameramen: Jack Cardiff, Harold Haysom, Geoffrey Unsworth
Production Designer: Alfred Junge
Makeup artists: George Blackler, Dorrie Hamilton, Stuart Freeborn
Visual Effects: W. Percy Day
Costume Design: Joseph Bato
Film Editor: John Seabourne
Composer: Allan Gray
Based on a cartoon character by David Low
Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

Previously Reviewed at DVD Savant / CineSavant, a review of a Blu-ray from 2013

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is a watershed picture for Powell and Pressburger. Their artistic ambitions overtook the desires of their producers and a government eager to see that wartime film production sent the right messages. Practically filmed under official protest, it did not help the filmmakers in conservative circles. Our previous review goes into more detail on a film concept that will be obscure to viewers that don’t know the history.

Colonel Blimp was a cartoon character making fun of old, obsolete military officers. Actor Roger Livesey has an acting field day as the aging officer Clive Candy, often acting through age makeup that betters that in Citizen Kane. The present-day wartime episode is just a frame to permit the examination of Candy’s career, which began in the Boer War.

The Archers made no military friends by implying that the army needs to abandon Candy’s chivalric values, and fight down and dirty against Hitler. Even more unusual is that the main theme is Candy’s long friendship with a German officer, Theo Kreschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook). The inference is that wars come and go, but relationships can be maintained. For romance, Deborah Kerr plays three distinct women in Candy’s life. He adores two of them but is too reserved to fully relate to them as women; the third is something of a daughter figure. That they look the same is perhaps a projection of Candy’s romantic desires.

Colonel Blimp is Powell & Pressburger’s first full-on Technicolor production. They let their art director and cameramen give it an intense look not seen in other color shows — every shot is stunningly gorgeous, but never merely decorative. Not really understood in its time, it likely displeased an England that could barely afford such expensive filmmaking. The counter argument is that Blimp proved that English filmmaking could create great art even in extreme circumstances. P&P didn’t make ‘rah-rah’ crowd pleasers, but wartime films that illuminated why British values were worth fighting for, worth preserving.

The show looks very nice on [Imprint’s] Blu-ray, in its 1983 reconstruction, with rich color. This particular transfer is from a 4K restoration. 1943 England is somewhat restrained in color until we get to Clive Candy’s bath house, where his mustache makes him look like a basking walrus. The flashback scenes take on various forms of design stylization, evoking long-lost atmospheres in plush German beer halls, haunted-looking battlefields and interiors of hospitals and mansions. The most applauded scene is a formal sword duel — with sabers. I’ve never forgotten a contemplation of a bombing site filled with water, which seems to remind Candy that his former glory is no longer all that relevant, that he’ll do good only by making himself useful.

Deborah Kerr is treated like a special effect, existing as a projection of Candy’s sentiments, but also looking like a woman caught in various social roles. The wife is the saddest — Clive’s idea of marriage is to sit in a chair while she attends him a few feet away.

All of the extras save for the commentary are set aside for a second Blu-ray disc.

The movie wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1947, and then the distributor radically re-cut it, dropping 48 minutes and re-ordering everything in chronological order. [Imprint] has located a watchable SD transfer, allowing us to see why Blimp remained an unknown quantity for decades. Powell and Pressburger’s best work was always experimental, risky.

Daniel Kremer provides the audio commentary, a monumental task if there ever was one: there’s so much context and background to get across just to understand what the movie is about. That’s a tough row to hoe, when the average film audience just doesn’t care to make any effort to understand an older artwork. Ian Christie’s A Breakthrough lauds Blimp as perhaps the Archers’ greatest achievement. We learn that Winston Churchill hated the film and lobbied to prevent its being exported. Christie covers his efforts to see the movie reconstructed in the late 1970s.

Martin Scorsese offers own brief piece on the restoration turns out to mostly be an explanation of the old Technicolor process.

Charles Drazin contributes An Evolving Propaganda, lauding Blimp’s essential originality and contrasting it with other Archers shows that follow more generic formulas.

A 24- minute documentary rounds out the video extras. It’s from the Carlton company, which I remember as the first video distributors of much of the P&P filmography.

A Canterbury Tale
1944 / B&W / 125 min. /
Starring: Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Dennis Price, Sergeant John Sweet, Esmond Knight, Freda Jackson, Judith Furse, Kim Hunter (U.S. Version).
Cinematography: Erwin Hillier
Production Designer: Alfred Junge
Wardrobe: Arthur Breton, Dorothy Edwards
Film Editor: John Seabourne
Composer: Allan Gray
Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

Previously Reviewed at DVD Savant / CineSavant from a 2006 DVD.

A Canterbury Tale is the Archers film that best expresses the sentiment that England is precious and worth fighting for. It stresses relationships over any particular story hook; it starts in such an eccentric way that we never know where it’s going. Three young folk end up in a small town on Chaucer’s famous pilgrimage road. Young Alison Smith (Sheila Sim) is a ‘Land Girl,’ a city sweller volunteering to help get the harvests in. Sergeant Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price) is a thoughful young man who wishes he could pursue his musical interests. Sgt. Johnson (John Sweet) is an American farm boy who makes fast friends with the English farm folk.

Local official Thomas Colpeper (Eric Portman) is an odd elitist who spends his free time giving lectures about history and art. The four of them meet over the ‘reign of terror’ caused by ‘The Glue Man’ — a local troublemaker who throws glue in the hair of English women that he thinks are fraternizing with Yanks. Alison is an early victim.

The movie is a fascinating appreciation of the land, the country, and the hopes and fears of these people ‘doing their bit’ in the war. The focus stays loose but eventually converges at Canterbury, the end of the pilgrimage road. When they finally get there we see how much of the city has been bombed and burned into oblivion; but the massive cathedral still stands. The pilgrims receive ‘miracles’ of a kind, one of which is one of the most well-earned tear-jerkers in cinema. The filmmakers hint at the fantastic through some nice visual play with a train window and steam: I’ll believe that when I see a halo ’round my head!”

Sheila Sim (who lived a long life married to Richard Attenborough) is adorable. A remarkable shot of Alison opening the dusty windows of an old travel trailer evokes a strong sense of physical delight. The previous review also discusses an important edit in the film, a cut that spans six centuries in the exact same way that a cut in Kubrick’s  2001 bridges millions of years.

A Canterbury Tale may have been produced in B&W because of blowback from Colonel Blimp; it’s hard to say. It also was not a massive popular hit — but it’s yet another Archers film that enlarges our notions of what a movie can be.

The ITV video presentation of Canterbury Tale begins with an Eagle-Lion logo; we immediately note that it’s an improvement on the old Criterion DVD. Some night scenes look very dark — which is how they were at a fine 35mm screening we once saw. The shots of bombed-out lots in Canterbury seem haunted — with many buildings gone, “you get a much better view of the Cathedral now.”

The audio commentary features author Paul Tritton, and the input of the film’s script supervisor Paddy Arnold and the assistant editor Jim Pople. Some of the accents are a bit rough. Pople is also present on-camera to talk about the film, in Pople’s Pilgrimage. Ian Christie’s contribution Listening to Britain shocks us with the news that P&P responded so darkly to Canterbury’s initial rejection, that they considered it a flop and wouldn’t watch it again. Christie says that the show is the first of their films with an anti- materialist theme, trying to revive a new spirit in postwar England.

Kim Newman’s Connection with the Magic analyzes the Archers films as a body of work, calling Canterbury the ‘problem’ film, suspended between realism and a spiritual dimension. Charles Barr is satisfied to simply applaud this show in A Continual Revelation. It also was for a long time viewable only in a weird American re-cut. The extras end with a new prologue and epilogue added to the American version, featuring Kim Hunter as Sgt. Johnson’s girl back home. Raymond Massey narrates a slide show explaining some context for American audiences. Sgt Johnson is now a postwar veteran, eager to take his new bride to share his experience of Canterbury.

A Matter of Life and Death
1946 / Color / 104 min. / Stairway to Heaven
Starring: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Robert Coote, Kathleen Byron, Richard Attenborough, Bonar Colleano, Joan Maude, Marius Goring, Roger Livesey, Abraham Sofaer, Raymond Massey, Robert Arden, Robert Beatty, John Longden, Lois Maxwell, Laurence Payne, Robert Rietty, Frederick Valk.
Cinematography: Jack Cardiff
Camera operators: Geoffrey Unsworth, Christopher Challis
Production Designer: Alfred Junge
Visual Effects: W. Percy Day, Peter Ellenshaw
Costume Design: Hein Heckroth
Film Editor: Reginald Mills
Composer: Allan Gray
Presented by J. Arthur Rank
Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

Previously Reviewed at CineSavant from a 2018 Blu-ray.

This Technicolor marvel is the best-known show in the set and perhaps the most entertaining. It’s a strange ‘Film Blanc’ that presents the Afterlife in B&W, and Reality in a hyper-real Technicolor that one spiritual emissary says ‘heaven is starved for.’ David Niven is Peter Carter, a wartime flyer in a doomed plane. He ends up alive when he should be dead, more or less like Robert Montgomery in an earlier  comedy classic. He’s caught between two worlds connected by the fantastic staircase indicated in the film’s American title. Roger Livesey is an eccentric surgeon who must operate on Peter’s brain; Kim Hunter is June, the American who fell in love with Peter during his no-chance-of-survival airplane emergency.

The show uses no end of elaborate, brilliantly executed visual effects. Planets spin in space and a staircase reaches seemingly to infinity. Giant eyelids represent an eye and the surgeon has an odd relationship with a Camera Obscura. The effects people and the genius cameraman Jack Cardiff execute numerous fantastic illusions, such as the sight of people walking through walls. It’s all in dazzling three-strip Technicolor; the finale is a romantic keeper.

The transfer of A Matter of Life and Death looks perfect in Blu-ray; the elaborate effects and art direction create a world partway between reality and fantasy. I like it a bit better than Criterion’s earlier BD, but can’t pin down the difference. Long gone are earlier transfers with misregistered colors. Some of those visual effects are simply startling.

Stuart Galbraith IV contributes a personally affectionate commentary, that unwinds a great deal of very true praise for this movie he says was P&P’s favorite. He has good inside information on many of the actors. Kim Hunter’s career arc is pretty inspiring. Stuart talks about the U.S. release, and also the politicized last act, which becomes a debate about the relationship of England and America in the postwar world.

Jim Pople is on with a very brief memory of the editing, in Memories Matter; Ian Christie’s Heaven Delayed examines the way Matter was positioned as an opinion piece about the colonial past and the political future. The movie was apparently delayed because Technicolor facilities were not available in 1945.

In Unexpected Realism, Charles Drazin compares Matter some other examples of Film Blanc. Filmmaker Craig McCall’s The Colour Merchant is a nine-minute piece with Jack Cardiff talking about the film’s color cinematography.

Black Narcissus
1947 / Color / 101 min. /
Starring: Deborah Kerr, Flora Robson, Jenny Laird, Judith Furse, Kathleen Byron, Esmond Knight, Sabu, David Farrar, Jean Simmons.
Cinematography: Jack Cardiff
Production Designer: Alfred Junge
Visual Effects: W. Percy Day, Peter Ellenshaw
Costume Design: Hein Heckroth
Film Editor: Reginald Mills
Composer: Brian Easdale
Presented by J. Arthur Rank
Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

Previously Reviewed at DVD Savant from a 2010 Blu-ray.

Almost as heralded is the Archer’s intense, exotic version of Rumer Godden’s novel. The film world took notice when viewers couldn’t ignore Jack Cardiff’s intoxicating Technicolor cinematography; both Cardiff and art director Alfred Junge won Oscars. Star Deborah Kerr had perhaps already been picked up by Hollywood as filming commenced; a few months after the premiere of Black Narcissus she’d be playing opposite MGM’s Clark Gable.

The somewhat story goes against our Production Code’s exultation of everything church-related: a group of nuns climb to the top of a Himalayan peak to open a school and hospital, only to find that that isolation and the exotic surroundings confuse their callings and confound their efforts to create order. The new leader Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) finds that most all of her sisters are affected. The outright sensuality of the place is almost as troublesome as the refusal of the locals to meekly accept church instructions. A prince-like ‘Young General’ (Sabu) becomes involved with the attractive young Kanchi (Jean Simmons) and there seems no way to keep them apart.

Local guide and helper Mr. Dean (David Farrar) also proves a distraction. He makes no overt moves, but both Sister Clodagh and Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) are aware of his presence. At the high-powered climax, Sister Ruth succumbs to ‘worldly desires,’ loses her mind, and decides that Sister Clodagh must be done away with.

With such a strong and somewhat controversial story, Powell and Pressburger create a near-intoxicating experience. Powell talked about the story being arranged in terms of musical movements, and the final suspense scene at the edge of an impossibly deep precipice is a musical-editorial tour-de-force. Black Narcissus stresses that nature itself conspires to befuddle followers of churches with rigid rules that deny natural impulses. It’s all censor-proof, yet has a deliciously dangerous air of clerical subversion.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Black Narcissus is that it was filmed entirely on sets constructed in England … yet every frame makes us feel as if we’re in a foreign land. The use of painted backdrops, miniatures and matte paintings is utterly convincing. The film’s spell isn’t achieved with giant sets or a cast of thousands, just sheer cinematic artistry. Many fans think it is the Archers’ pinnacle achievement. We soon begin to appreciate the creative contributions of Alfred Junge, Brian Easdale, Peter Ellenshaw and especially Jack Cardiff.

There’s no faulting [Imprint’s] crystal clear encoding of Black Narcissus, which reproduces the colors well, looks rich even in dark scenes, and is unusually sharp.

This show rates two commentaries, an older one with Martin Scorsese and Michael Powell, and a new item by Kat Ellinger. The new array of expert video essays explain their subject with their titles: Hannah McGill’s The Strange and the Transgressive, Ian Christie’s Alchemy and Reckoning, and Pamela Hutchinson on Women at War.

[Imprint] has picked up two excellent documentaries, one on the film, and Craig McCall’s excellent profile of Jack Cardiff, Painting with Light.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Cinema of Powell & Pressburger Collection One
Blu-ray rates:
Movies: All Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Commentaries by Kim Newman & Jo Botting, Jonathan Rigby, Kevin Lyons, Daniel Kremer, Paddy Arnold, Jim Pople, Paul Tritton, Stuart Galbraith IV, Michael Powell with Martin Scorsese
Interview input from Ian Christie, Charles Barr, Jeremy Arnold, Charles Drazin, Kim Newman, Hannah McGill, Pamela Hutchinson
Plus documentaries, short films, alternate version excerpts (and a full feature) — delineated above.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: October 2, 2025
(7405arch)

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