All Slights Deserved

In director Lindsay Anderson's final film, the quasi-documentary Is That All There Is? he's asked by the critic Tom Sutcliffe whether it's true Peeping Tom ended director Michael Powell's career. "Complete rubbish" retorts Anderson, adding that Powell "didn't have a marketable talent". It tells us more about Anderson's penchant for pithy aphorisms, but there's probably some truth that had Powell been commercially savvier he might have found it easier to reclaim some standing in the British film industry. The glory years of his collaborations with Emeric Pressberger had long passed by the time of Peeping Tom 's release in 1960 and a host of younger directors, including Anderson himself, were about to set forth with a fresher outlook. As it was Powell would have to travel overseas to seek out directing jobs. After filming an adaptation of the opera Bluebeard's Castle in Germany he headed down under for two films shot in Aust...