Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
British filmmaker best known for his collaborative partnership with Emmerich Pressberger, producing, writing and directing some of the finest British films.
On the island
Eight records
I wouldn't like to be on the island and not somehow keep touch with something that has entertained me all my life, and that's the the sort of New York attitude to life.
Do not go gentle into that good night
as you know, few poets can read their own poems. But this is one poet who I think reads his own poems as no poet has ever read.
I've always admired for a long time uh Rostropovich and his wife Vishnevskaya. They're the kind of Russians that all all my life was when I was a young man in Nice I lived in the Russian quarter.
The Tales of Hoffmann: Barcarolle
it's pure corn, because it's Sir Thomas Beecham conducting The Barkero from our version of The Tales of Hoffmann.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:46How did you break out of [working in a bank]?
Went on holiday, got a job in a film company in the south of France, and never came back.
Presenter asks
4:48What do you remember about writing the script of the first British talkie, Hitchcock's Blackmail?
I met Hitchcock on the floor in Els J. I was shooting the stills for his pictures, and uh we got on awfully well. Blackmail was a film that changed its mind in mid-air. It started as a silent and then … we wrote it first of all as a sale, and that's probably one of the reasons that helped to fix Hitchcock's style, because when he turned it into a talkie, it was mainly a question of adding a few dialogue scenes and sound effects to what was already a very effective visual picture.
Presenter asks
7:08When did you start getting interested in films?
Already in Prague I go and later, when uh I went to study in Stuttgart in Germany, I went to the cinema as often as I could, and I wanted to have something to do, if nothing else, to build cinemas. But of course then my father died and my student years have finished, and uh I had nothing and so I came to Berlin.
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
Presenter asks
15:37How have you and Michael divided the work [through the years of your partnership]?
He's done a lot of the directing. … the director was Michael. I seem to have contributed … so much to the film beside of the the story and uh the script. … we have decided … that we are going to sign … together for the films, meaning that we … Regard it as contributing equax, yes, that's right.
Presenter asks
19:41What was that fuss about [The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp]?
the War Office didn't like the idea at all. … they wouldn't release [Larry Olivier] from the Navy to make the film. They they were so determined we should not make it. They tried to stop the film going overseas. … And when it was made they tried to stop it going abroad, yeah. But first of all they tried to stop us making it altogether.
Presenter asks
22:40Did you have trouble getting the money for [The Red Shoes]?
No, we didn't. The wonderful thing was that in those days, the rank organization … for whom we made uh most of our pictures. They wish to establish British films in the United States. And uh they were very free with money. Thinking that the only thing missing … In British-made films, was that we never spend enough money. So it happened … Mr. Reng himself came to our meetings and said, Well, could you use another hundred thousand pounds?